Finding David : Chapter 3 - Finding The Lost

Here is my third installation of our journey to find and build a bridge of hope for a young 17 year old lad by the name of David. This series is unlike a novel where the author has already an end in mind, instead its a very real depiction of our journey, the difficulties, hardships and love for a child that people have given up hope.

So here we go !

After what seemed like a roller-coaster ride in locating David amongst the throngs of people in Bangkok City, we finally made contact with the child. The voice of the child over the phone had our hearts were racing. We were overwhelmed by a flood of emotions, unsure of what lies ahead.

A round of pleasantries and we learnt that he was living in the house of his "owner" in Inthamara. Inthamara is a rough little neighborhood laced with sleazy joints and dark alleys. His "owner" sends him every day another area called Lad Prao where he fries & sells chicken on a street side stall. At this point, he was multi-tasking, attempting to fry chickens with one hand and holding the phone in the other. We can hear the bustle of sales in the background and we tired to land the next question. Can we visit him ?

Despite the hustle and bustle of the cars and screeching of bikes, his answer came though the lines as clear as a bell.."Yes..yes.. you can visit me at the stall as well". The boy was obviously excited but he has little idea where he is, every day he is sent to this location and takes a ride back. The boy frantically started asking the fellow stall holders of the location and soon enough, he was able to give us a rough location of where to find him. Soi 48, Lad Prao. Near a 7-eleven.

Knowing that the boy has meet his sales target, we told him that we will visit just before he closes his stall for the day, so as not to disrupt his work. But of course this is a tricky arrangement and we withheld the urge to visit the child immediately.

The volatility of working from a street stall will be that if David finishes selling the chickens, he would have to immediately head back to give the day's earnings to his "owner". So everything pivots on sales. If its good, knocking off will be 7pm, if not its late at night. We decided to visit just before 7pm just to play safe.

We're terribly excited and we made provisions for the traffic congestion and made our way there early. We arrived at Soi 48 just before 7pm and starting to combing from the 7-11 the landmark that David provided. Soi 48 was not what we expected, it was not a quiet street, instead it had rows of food stalls catering to the crowd. We looked around and could not locate any stall that bear the resemblance to a fried chicken stall.

After some searching, we decided to ask a middle-aged man who too operated a mobile stall, hoping he could point us to the correct direction. He looked up and said.."yeah there is a fried chicken stall up there (pointing), but it closed early today"

Our hearts sank.... Seeing just a empty space, we knew we were too late, David must have gone home.

Suddenly, out of the dimly lit street lights, we saw a little silhouette of a boy peering out, as if he was looking for someone. Our hearts raced and we went closer to have a closer look. As we walked closer, we saw the face of a boy whom we so fondly remember. It was indeed David smiling from ear to ear (in his usual sheepish look) !

Update : http://radionjournals.blogspot.com/2011/03/finding-david-chapter-4-home.html