Pat has been living with HIV for more than seven years. Isolated and alone, the 38-year-old has no family or loved ones left in her life; her parents died when she was young, and her husband died almost a decade ago.
It was a motorcycle accident three years ago that revealed Pat’s health condition. She had been feeling ill and suffering respiratory problems for about four years prior, but thought little about the cause.
When doctors ran a pathology test to determine her blood type, they discovered she is HIV positive. Pat, who describes herself as a simple housewife, says she still does not know how she contracted the disease.
With no family to support her, Pat was transferred to a HIV “home” in Chon Buri province, where she was surrounded and supported by people suffering the same illness.
Everything was going well until the home, run by the Glory Hut Foundation, was forced to move to a new location last July. From the tolerant community they had experienced before, Pat and the other HIV patients found themselves in the middle of a hostile environment where their presence was resented and reviled.
“Get out of here,” read one sign posted by locals near the foundation compound. “We don’t want HIV patients here,” said another. “HIV infected patients must move out of the community.”
“What did we do wrong? Why do they have to be so mean?” Pat said, breaking into tears.
‘Disgraceful sights’: Some locals say they are disturbed by the appearance of the patients.
MOVING IN
The Glory Hut Foundation began operations in Pattaya in 2006. Founded by American missionary Sandy Trepiccione, its main focus was to serve the community’s ill and underprivileged.
When the time came for Ms Trepiccione to return to the US in 2010, she left the foundation under the control of a fellow Christian pastor from Chon Buri’s Adonai Church, the Reverend Ponsawan Victoria Christpirak, who soon shifted the shelter’s main focus towards caring for HIV/Aids patients.
But when one of its donors cut its funding to the foundation last year, the shelter was left with a 400,000-baht hole in its budget, and was forced to move to a cheaper land plot in Ban Lang Nern.
Kornthep Inoon, a caretaker of the foundation who is also an HIV patient, said that once the rental contract was signed, nobody foresaw any problems with integrating into the local community.
“We put up a sign which clearly identified us as an HIV foundation,” Mr Kornthep said. “We taught English to local children, and gave them music lessons; we even took the villagers to a water park nearby.”
Ms Ponsawan blames herself for not communicating better with the community.
“We were too busy moving from the old place to this place without even thinking about anything else but moving here as quickly as possible,” she said. “All we thought about was that we did not want to pay the rent of the old place, which was a lot more expensive than what we are paying now.”
Learning to cope: One of the aims of the foundation is to improve the health of HIV patients who have not started taking anti-retrovirals. Once they can take care of themselves, they return back to society.
‘WE ARE VERY CONCERNED’
Construction work on the new shelter was rapid. Patients strong enough to work helped with the labour, and within five months everything was completed. The first 50 patients took up residence in July last year. Several were in the late stages of Aids, who displayed skin conditions and other symptoms. Many were former sex workers.
“We keep the patients here for three months, six months, or one year before we let them go back to live their lives again,” Ms Ponsawan explained. During that time, the foundation provides training at a vocational college to give them the necessary skills to enter the workforce.
But for some of the villagers, the sight of sick people in their community was too much.
Sombat Klankheow, 49, moved to the village shortly before the foundation arrived. He owns a piece of land which is considered prime property in the area, with sweeping views of Pattaya Bay. He had planned to build several houses on his property and sell them off.
But Mr Sombat says his dreams of developing the land have been shattered by the arrival of the Glory Hut home, as no one wants to live in a village where there are HIV patients. He said he personally has no issues as he understands that he can’t catch HIV “by breathing the same air”, but he remains concerned about other diseases.
“When the patients first moved in, they walked all over the village. Many of them have skin conditions which aren’t pleasant to look it,” Mr Sombat said. “Sometimes I see them walk by my house when I am eating, I have to turn my head as I don’t want to lose my appetite.”
Other locals complained that patients used the community washing machine, frequented the local grocery store, threw cigarette butts on the ground, and disposed of their waste in community bins. “Some children in the village pick up the cigarette butts to play with,” Mr Sombat said. “The dogs also go through the rubbish bin, pulling out diapers or bandages, and drag them around … We are very concerned.”
Local opposition: Vichaen Ciloovan, president of Ban Lang Nern community, says the foundation betrayed the trust of locals; Lao Changlek owns nine rental homes right next to the foundation, and is worried about loss of income; Sombat Klankheow said the community is concerned about health hazards.
EVICTION NOTICE
After about six months, tensions reached boiling point, and in December the villagers told the community president to contact Nong Preu Municipality and take care of the problem.
A short time later, Glory Hut received a letter from Nong Preu Municipality ordering it to deal with three matters urgently: erect a proper fence around the shelter, implement proper rubbish disposal methods, and take care of waste water coming from the site.
Mr Kornthep said the villagers had complained that the barbed wire fence which was already around the shelter was not sufficient to stop people looking inside.
“The locals complained that they didn’t want to see the ‘disgraceful sights’,” he said.
Glory Hut had little choice but to comply. It addressed the rubbish complaints by placing all potentially infectious waste — such as diapers and bandages — in red plastic bags and taking them for incineration every day at a nearby hospital.
Villagers also complained about the waste water, saying it had an unusual odour and fishy smell to it. The foundation installed a system to treat the water before releasing it.
But it wasn’t enough. On Dec 12 last year, the villagers gathered and held a vote on whether or not they wanted the foundation to remain in the community. Only 30 were in favour, while 134 said they wanted the HIV shelter gone.
Mr Kornthep told Spectrum that after the vote, five patients died due to stress. “Since then we stopped accepting new cases. We want to wait until the situation improves first,” he said.
Today, the foundation has only 27 patients left, although many new cases are waiting to be admitted.
Marching orders: An HIV patient sits out the front of the Glory Hut shelter, which is being forced to relocate amid community concern.
‘TOO LATE TO NEGOTIATE’
The villagers who voted for the foundation to pack up and move gave a six-month deadline. But Glory Hut has showed no sign of leaving, and has even purchased the land on which the shelter is built.
Lao Changlek owns nine rental homes right next to the foundation. She said her tenants are slowly moving out because they don’t want to live close to HIV patients, and she was finding it nearly impossible to find people willing to live in the houses.
“The longer they [Glory Hut] stay the more I lose in terms of money and business opportunities,” Mrs Lao said angrily. “I am disgusted by them. I want them to move out before I lose more money.”
Since the eviction vote took place, Ms Ponsawan has told all patients at the shelter to avoid wandering around the village.
A small grocery store has been set up inside the shelter grounds, and if there is something else they need to buy, staff members will accompany the patients to a nearby shopping mall or convenience store.
Vichaen Ciloovan, president of Ban Lang Nern community, said the two sides are now locked in an awkward situation where no one is willing to do anything to solve the problem.
“The municipality asked us to take down the [protest] signs and go easy on them, but we all agreed that they have to move out. Sadly they don’t seem to even be aware of that,” Mr Vichaen said.
“It is easy for the municipality’s mayor to say since he is not living here. It is not his problem.”
Mr Vichaen said the villagers might have been more welcoming if the foundation had approached them with truth from the beginning.
“If the foundation manager had at least come to see me directly, I might have been able to help. But they lied to me and all of the villagers about the objective of their foundation,” Mr Vichaen said.
“Now it is too late to negotiate.”
After provincial-level discussions, Mr Vichaen was urged to allow the patients to integrate into the community, but the locals opposed the idea.
“I feel bad for them,” Mr Vichaen said. “No one wants to get HIV, and after all we are all Thai.
“It’s not their fault that they have contracted HIV, they just happen to be in the wrong place.”
He said the only thing the community wants is for the foundation to move out from the area so everyone can return to their normal lives.
“If the foundation moves out, I will personally donate 20,000 baht to help them,” Mr Vichaen said. “I will even recruit free labour to help them build another shelter.”
Not welcome here: A sign directly opposite the shelter reminds patients that they must soon leave.
OUT OF OPTIONS
The deadline for Glory Hut to move out of Ban Lang Nern passed on June 12. After discussions with the Chon Buri governor and Nong Preu mayor, a 30-day extension was agreed on.
Nong Preu Municipality has offered the foundation a new site which it said would be suitable for a shelter. But the land borders a garbage-strewn swamp that is dirty, smelly, and highly toxic to the quality of life of HIV patients who are already weak.
“It looks more like a place where you go to die than a place to get better,” Mr Kornthep said.
Ms Ponsawan is now in the process of looking for a suitable new site to move the patients to. She told Spectrum that she feels very grateful to the mayor of Nong Preu, who will provide three million baht to help the foundation purchase new land.
“We have no problem moving as long as the new site is not too far from a hospital and it has all the necessary utilities that we need,” Ms Ponsawan said.
In all the years that Ms Ponsawan has operated the shelter for HIV patients, this is the first time that she has had this kind of reaction from the public. She admitted to being scared and surprised at the hostile response, but said she doesn’t hate those who want to see the back of her.
“I understand why they have reacted this way,” she said. “It’s only a matter of understanding and knowledge. If they knew what HIV is, they wouldn’t be this afraid of us and we could live together.
“If this community is upset about the patients, we are more than happy to move to a new community that welcomes us and is willing to give us the opportunity,” she added.
Mr Vichaen said that he has no hard feelings or personal issues with Ms Ponsawan and her foundation, and is more than happy to help the foundation if they come to talk with him directly.
“I don’t hate the foundation. In fact I’m ready to support them,” he said.
Ms Ponsawan told Spectrum she is ready to do anything that will make the community happy. She wants everyone to understand that all human lives are valuable no matter who they are, and that everyone has the same value as a human being regardless of their sickness.
“If any society or community lacks love and sympathy, that place can’t call themselves a complete community,” said Ms Ponsawan.
“If we all have love and generosity for each other, we can live together happily as one.” n
Beneath the skin: Some patients are in the late stages of Aids, and suffer from skin lesions.
Life inside: Patients have been told not to leave the Glory Hut compound due to complaints from local residents, meaning they must do all their shopping and other daily activities inside the shelter.
Confined: A patient takes a rest on his bunk bed inside the Glory Hut shelter.