English in the hills of Tak at the Umphang Wittayakom School

Story by NIKI THONGBORISUTE

It is the daily roll call in one of Thailand's most remote schools. Khaiwan stands in front of her fellow students and announces:

"There are 15 in our dorm, but today there are 14 because Lata has gone home. Thank you. Please sit down."

This is not a translation. The shy 16-year-old has just stood in front of 325 of her classmates and spoken in English.

Yes, that's right. Daily roll call in the remote school is in English, which is not bad considering these are students whose first language isn't even Thai. In fact, 11 dialects are represented at the school, and the students come from all 26 hill tribe communities in the region.

The school is Umphang Wittayakom, and it's a testament to the sheer determination of the human spirit that children here are getting an education, when only recently they would otherwise be growing corn on the side of a dusty field.

The hill children from different tribes in the remote district of Umphang, Tak province, have a chance to learn and enjoy at Umphang Wittayakom School. — PHOTOS: RUNGTAWEE PANRANA

School director Somprasong Mang-ana. — PHOTO COURTESY OF ‘KOR KHON MAGAZINE’

The Umphang Wittayakom School provides education for different hill tribe children. — PHOTO COURTESY OF ‘KOR KHON MAGAZINE’

The road to Umphang winds through steep mountains and plunging valleys, but this is not a scenic Sunday drive. Umphang is in Tak province in northwest Thailand, on the border with Burma. It is a 14-hour drive from Bangkok and at least four hours and 164km from the nearest town, Mae Sot, reachable by only one navigable road.

It's a long journey through this stunning province, famed for its waterfalls and natural beauty. Buffaloes and herds of cows graze along the single-paved road, some sitting laconically in the middle of the road, forcing pick-ups and motorcyclists to drive around them. Scarecrows in navy blue shirts dot the endless fields of corn and cabbage.

This is a part of Thailand that remains unmolested by the urban sprawl of concrete shop houses, overhanging cables, gas stations and neon lights advertising spare parts. Yet the price for such rural splendour is near-total isolation, and therefore a life of hardship. Here, a large part of the population are Karen, who eke out a living from subsistence farming in small hill tribe villages. Annual incomes run less than 5,000 baht per family. Many earn earn barely enough to live on, let alone to send their children to school.

There is only one secondary school in the district, and this is it. Umphang Wittayakom stands out as a beacon of hope for many local families who see education as the only way out of the poverty trap for their children. The school differs from most not only in its extreme remoteness but in that it caters to a majority Karen and hill tribe student population, many of whom come from families who do not have legal statehood.

Rungtawee Panrana, director of the school's scholarship programme, says the determination of the students to get an education can be seen by the distances they travel. "Many live far away in villages that cannot even be reached by car," he says. "One student lives in Ban Chong Pae. That's 190km away. It takes her three days to walk to school."

And so, the school offers these children the option of full-time boarding.

All of this comes down to the school's director, Somprasong Mang-ana, whose determination to give children the right to education has created an oasis of intellectual growth, social interaction and multi-tribal cohesiveness in one extremely successful educational endeavour.

When Somprasong started working at Umphang Wittayakom School seven years ago, there were 412 students, eight of whom lived on the school grounds. Today, there are nearly 1,100 students and 325 boarders. It's a remarkable achievement, considering that the Thai government does not subsidise boarding and gives only 11 baht per child per day - which must cover the cost of schooling and all meals. Teachers, too, are often unwilling to come to the party since the posting is such an extremely isolated one.

With the notion that every child, no matter how poor, should have the opportunity to go to school, Somprasong decided to travel to remote villages "to persuade parents to send their children to study at my school, which offers free education".

The youngest ones, some just 12 years old, are homesick and miss their parents, having few opportunities to travel back to their far-off village homes. For them, the director and his teachers have become surrogate parents, a role they take as seriously as their teaching responsibilities.

Teaching is just one of the many things the staff at this school have to do. Generating money for the children to continue studying is a major issue and a full-time consideration.

Taking advantage of a growing tourist industry in Tak, the school sells products like T-shirts, stickers and postcards to tourists. Many of the local tour operators support the school with donations, or send tourists to the school to buy school products. Students staying in the dormitories during school breaks visit resorts in the area to sell handmade items and give performances. In addition, the school has a scholarship and sponsorship programme for needy students. Today, 493 students are sponsored under the programme.

Recently a Bangkok-based publisher of driving maps and atlases, Roadway, sponsored an event teaching map reading skills to the students and handed out hundreds of children's map reading books and games as well as supplies for the teachers.

"We don't just want to sponsor these children from afar," says Aaron Frankel, 40, managing director of Groovy Map, which publishes the Roadway Map series. "We really want to be involved. That way we can get a better understanding of what they need."

Frankel, who has lived in Thailand for most of his life and speaks Thai, found the students happy to apply themselves to the map reading games and activities, even though there were clearly cultural gaps that had to be bridged. The company sponsors several students at the school and plans to make annual trips to Umphang to host education-related activities in the field.

By generating such sponsorship aid for the children, Somprasong has created enormous potential for children whose fates would otherwise have been to toil in the fields of corn lining the road to Mae Sot.

Khaiwan, who, like many hill tribe people, has no last name, is a full-time boarder because Maeklongkee, her village, is 32km away from school in the majestic mountains. There are no buses between the village and Umphang and the treacherous roads create a natural barrier to easy transport. Her parents are farmers who earn a meagre income planting corn.

"My father worked in the city for some time to help buy rice for our family and to send his children to study. But he had a gallstone, and my mother suffered a stroke. We didn't have enough money to pay for proper treatment for them, so I had to go and help them on the farm," she recalls. Had she not received sponsorship, she would have stopped her schooling by the age of 10.

"I want to be a nurse or a teacher," she says with a shy smile, adding that her favourite subject is mathematics.

Somprasong himself knows first-hand of the perils of being poor and lacking in opportunities. While growing up in the northern province of Kamphaeng Phet in the 1960s, he studied English thanks to a Peace Corps volunteer.

To this day, Somprasong and his staff have been making a concerted effort to make English a core part of each student's day, and all the students are expected to speak at least a few sentences in English. At meal times in the cafeteria, all the students recite a daily prayer ending in English. For the daily roll call, a member of each dorm stands to call out the names of the students in his or her dorm, including enunciating the reasons for those who are absent, all done in English.

There are precious few resources. The school library has just one shelf of English books: tatty, dog-eared tomes from the 1970s bearing titles ranging from Egyptian archaeology to business administration.

There is a clear need for a full-time English language teacher, and Rungtawee smiles eagerly at the thought that one can be found. "We can offer applicants a work permit and visa and also provide room and board," he says. He himself teaches an English class and makes do with the government handouts and books that are out of touch with the modern methods of teaching English as a foreign language. The school has had English teaching volunteers in the past, but it is hard to attract expatriates to teach in such a remote area of Thailand.

Coming from Thailand's northeast, Rungtawee understands that Umphang may not be everyone's choice of location, but he loves it. "I've been here four years and have no plans to leave," he explains. "The students are keen and easy to teach, unlike students in Bangkok or other big cities. The children here know they are among the privileged, are happy to be in school and welcome the chance to learn."

There is a clear effort to ensure that the children maintain their cultural identity. Students weave their own formal dress uniforms - hill tribe outfits - each unique to the wearer, each in some way showing where the student comes from. There is at once independence and cohesion in this small but important part of the school's practices.

In recognition for his years of work in the field, in 2007 the Education Ministry presented Somprasong with one of Thailand's "Teachers of the Year" awards. He was praised for his ongoing campaign and for donating his monthly salary of 5,600 baht to the school.

In the cafeteria, as the children sit to eat their evening meal, Somprasong stands at the microphone to lead them all in prayer before meals. The meal of rice and chicken stew, which is doled out by student monitors, will be eaten until every last grain is finished and every last drop consumed. There is no waste, not when others have nothing.

At end of prayer, there is a final recitation.

"Be hard working, be diligent, be thankful," comes the chorus of a thousand hill tribe students and their dedicated teachers - as if anyone would be accusing them of otherwise.

Donations are welcome.