Finding David : Chapter 2 - The Incredible Journey Begins

For those who have read my note entitled "Will This Be A Journey Worthwhile".
Here is this second installment written to give you guys more insights into this journey.

So here we go.

Someone once said, finding a person in a country with more than 60 million people is likened to finding a needle in a haystack. Its actually an understatement which I soon found out. With one information that David was in Bangkok, it helped us narrow our chances of finding the child. One in 5,700,000.

With close to 6 million people living and working in busy streets of Bangkok, finding the child in Bangkok's massive labyrinth of small alleys and crowds is a very real challenge. But something in us refused to give up.

Two of our senior staff visited David's aged grandmother who has no idea where the child was, but only knew of another kid who may knew. According to David's grandmother, this kid used to work with David and should know of his whereabouts. Our hopes were raised and despite the grandmother's age, she personally went to find David's friend, the only hopes of finding David.

She found the boy after much searching, but this boy too did not have David's contact. All hopes were dashed.
With morale at an all time low, the team trudged on hoping to find one, just one credible link. With a dead end in sight, the team pressed for more links from the family and suddenly David's brother remembered another neighbour who just returned from Bangkok and a close friend of David. The team wasted no time and before long, we're started tracking the boy as he was the only credible link we have and the probably the hope in finding David. His name is Kam.

Kam was not an easy boy to find, the team visited his home, favorite haunts, the streets and when we finally found him late at night. He gave us another lead, he told us David was selling fried chicken in a mobile shop in Bangkok and our hearts dropped..... now its going to even harder !

However, the next piece of new made our hearts leap. He has a mobile number of friend who stays with David !The number was now our only link and we knew we were just 2 steps away from finding the prodigal son.

For an entire day, we tried calling, but to no avail. On our final attempt, a young boy's voice answered the phone. Our staff introduced us over the phone and asked him if he knew where we could find David.

There was a moment of silence on the phone.

For a child not wanting to be found by his relatives, he would have told his friends to push away all calls from people who showed any intention of finding him. The thought of our final contact hanging up the phone raced through our minds. We prayed for a miracle, a miracle in any form, a telephone number, an address, a shop location. Anything, just not hanging up the phone !

Before we knew it the voice came back on. His reply exceeded all our wildest imaginations !

The boy replied with a chirp......"I'm David !"

Update : http://radionjournals.blogspot.com/2011/03/finding-david-chapter-3-finding-lost.html