Iron fist. Big boss. Older sister. Independent. Determined. These are the words describe Wah, adiposity who I’ve known since I started living at the UHDP centre in 2008. Our friendship has grown slowly. She’s worked as UHDP’s office manager for more than six years. Many female foreign volunteers have passed through and shared life with her. She was wary of me from the beginning and I think it had to do with the fact that I was the first western asian person to live there. I remember one of her comments to me in my first three months: “Your hair looks terrible. You look like you didn’t wash it!” Ouch. She made me speak English with her in my first year at UHDP so she could improve her speaking ability.

She is the first adult I’ve met who grew up as a recipient of a child-sponsorship program. This is a common thing in the ethnic minority villages of Thailand. When I went to her village for New Years last year, ed she told me how her father preferred that she studied and excelled in school instead of staying home and planting rice. Her siblings have all stayed in the village and worked in the fields, except for her and her younger brother who is studying at Chiang Mai University. She says he’s a good kid, no drinking, no carousing, no chasing after girls.

She’s getting her Bachelor’s degree in business administration this May. For two years, she went to school every Saturday and Sunday, communting 40 minutes each way from UHDP to Fang. She was always cranky and tired. Now she wants to return to her village, build a house for her father and for herself and she dreams of opening an orphanage to help the kids who have no options. She’s 30 this year and still single and wants to buy a truck. She also wishes the Thai Bible was written in simpler language. It’s odd for a female from the Karen culture to be so in charge of her destiny. For the time being, she’s second in command at UHDP and all the staff there tremble when she scolds them.