Susan Aldous - The Angel of Bang Kwang Prison

Acknowledgements

After you have been kind, after love has stolen forth into the world and done its beautiful work, go back into the shadows again and say nothing!

It is with a grateful heart that I wish to acknowledge the numerous souls who have helped me to live my dreams, especially those who saw beyond a distraught teenagers hard exterior; their care, respect, prayers and support have been invaluable as they set me on a path to many wondrous adventures.

Thank you to my parents, who have always stood by me, allowing me plenty of encouragement to be the person that I was destined to be. It has been a daunting journey, yet you held fast with great faith. My sister, Annabel, thanks for being you and doing so with grace.

All at Maverick House; John Mooney, Jean Harrington, Adam Hyland, Gert Ackermann, and Sarah Ormstonyou have been superb. Thank you for opening the challenging door to write this book, for your genuine respect and patience. Permitting me plenty of wriggle room was a gift indeed. I love that you see the importance of each life you publish.

Special credit, along with hugs and kisses, needs to be given to two incredibly gifted folk; Pornchai Sereemongkonpol and Nicola Pierce, without whom, my story would have remained locked away in my head. They diligently and lovingly worked their magic while wading through prisons, piles of paperwork, shelters, hours of tapes, embracing excursions to the middle of nowhere to meet with a solitary inmate, analysing endless emails, letters, documents, and articles, and all the while doing so with great respect and concern. I cannot thank you both enough.

Aree , Peter , Anne , and Tom my fellow warriors, thanks for contributing to this book by freely sharing your stories where ours met. Your willingness to regurgitate difficult times with sincere honesty is highly commendable, as are your accomplishments. You and all the families who trudged, cried and laughed with me are the real angels.

Thanks to the handful of lovely women who are my dearest friends. You come from far and near; Australia, Norway, North America and Thailand. You will catch glimpses of yourselves throughout this book; you have made so much of it possible with your support, kindness and wonderful womens caring intuition.

To my guy friends too, love you all, you treat me like a lady and once in a while, let me be one of the boys your insight, support and presence throughout many projects have always been particularly reassuring especially when it comes to dealing with heartbreaking situations.

To my crusading media compadres who have been brilliant throughout the years, thanks for taking up the cause and helping bring about change. Lives go on for the better because of your due diligence.

Muchas gracias, wonderful ones in Monterey and Santa Monica, you helped me keep spirit in body, head in place and heart beating, and still do in so many ways. True friends come in when the rest of the world go out! You are true friends forever! Hey Kenny Khan, heres looking at you Carney Kid! Can you believe it? We did it! Deidre, appreciate you girlfrien!

To those who hold this book in your hands, thank you for choosing to read it. I pray that something, somewhere amongst the jumble of my life encourages you and makes you believe that you too can inspire another life for the better. I mean to say, if I can do it, so can you!

Lastly and most importantly, I wish to express gratitude to those who have and still do suffer in the darkness under the weight of unjust systems and indifference. To you who wait for the light to come; this book is to your credityou are my teachers, my heroes, my friends, deeply affecting me to the innermost parts of my being through your bravery. By allowing me precious opportunities to reach out to you, true purpose and great beauty has been born into my world. I went to bring change to you, but you changed me, and it is through those changes I have found my life, my love and my work. You humble me.

With that said, I go back into the shadows.

Afterword

I remember the contradictory emotions I felt about my mother while growing up. People were constantly praising her for her accomplishments, constantly interested in her life story, and almost always finding themselves bewitched by this 5ft 6 spunky, down to earth, blonde bombshell. They were almost always telling me what a jewel she was and how I should aspire to be half the woman she is when I grew up.

I suppose I was more than a little confused how my mother my mother who laughs hideously loudly, cried hysterically over dying her hair the wrong colour, gets pimples, bad haircuts, and sometimes suffers from horrific black moods, could be portrayed as the Angel of Bang Kwang; a saint who roams some of the filthiest maximum security prisons, slums, wards etc., yet always seems to emerge pure and untouched, and smiling. I thought, Shit, I want a refund because this isnt exactly an accurate perception of the mother I know.

The mother I knew was bouncy and full of energy, temperamental, yet always as compensatory with her affectionate mannerisms. My mother is a classic example of a strong woman, a real woman, because, of course, she is not perfect and she is not a saint and no, she does not flitter above us all with perfumed farts and angelic melodies to thrill all who suffer. In fact, shes tone deaf and a terrible singer. But, she does try her damnedest to make a difference and she does genuinely care about other people. She is the most unselfish being I knowmost of the time she is so consumed in helping others that she would forget to take care of herself. Sometimes Ive wondered who is the parent as, occasionally, Ive had to remind her to eat, remind her to run and pay the bills, make her cups of tea and comfort her when she bursts into tears of frustration and exhaustion.

Yet, when it comes right down to it, she has never been lackadaisical in providing me with a healthy, stable homesometimes going without so that I wouldnt miss out. She also never made me feel like I had to hide anything from her, which I did anyway. Ive discovered since then that honesty is always the best policy when dealing with her. And I am eternally grateful that I always had, and have, both such a cool friend to confide in and a mothers wisdom to guide me through the tribulations of childhood and everything that prepubescent ignorance brought me. Thanks to her open and unconditionally accepting attitude I had a safeguard to keep me from ever really falling off the ledge.

Not that she had all the answers, far from it, but who does? She has had to deal with the heartache of being both father and mother to me, which I greatly resented because she had to be both the disciplinary guardian and the loving, caring one toowhich made her appear hypocritical in my young eyes.

Sometimes we got along like Siamese twins, skipping out on my school work to go to a movie, having hot cocoa, dancing hysterically around the living room, taking long walks; listening to her mad stories about her experiences and her defending me against my evil grade-school teacher who made my life a living hell. Then, around the time our hormones started to wax and wane, we fought like rabid hyenas on steroids. Sometimes, I was tempted to feel a little neglected, what with her busy schedule and jailbird love.

At other times, she seemed detached and too preoccupied to focus on me, which gave me ample time get into mischief. However, her approach as I got older was to give me independence and the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them by myself, while she stood on the sidelines watching me carefully, which was a double-edged sword because I was still a child and should have been wrapped up in protective layers, and coddled and cossetted, and not trusted to have the maturity to decipher between right and wrong.