‘Everything happens for a reason.’

As we got closer to Thailand my text conversations with my cousins got more excitable and a lot funnier. We ended up with a group chat entitled OCTWWC, and I will literally give a foot massage a day to anyone who guesses what that stands for (…not you Natascha and Bob!)

It was like being guided in by a huge lighthouse…we knew where we were going and the light of home was so comforting, and close in that last week.

We walked out of the station in Chiang Mai and there they were, beautiful smiles, our OCTWWC sign clutched in Bobs hand, and Natascha and I started to cry…we hung onto each other for a good minute, it really was an oasis in the distance we’d covered, and the miles yet to travel…

Bob took us out for a delicious breakfast which was a wonderful way to land after eating packet snacks for most of the last 26 hours…and then it was time to go and meet the twins.

The drive to their house was lovely, interesting stalls lining windy streets, so different from Laos and China, getting a sense of place in the northern part of Chiang Mai, and then we were home. The garden was full of tropical plants and flowers, two white ducks waddled round the side of the house to meet us…and the front door opened.

Leilah and Zacky are five and a half years old and I feel like I know them so well because Natascha shares regular sweet little videos and day to day moments of joy…but they don’t know me at all. Time to walk softly into their lives.

When you are making friends and connecting with children for the first time it turns out it’s great being a family – Theo is fantastic at being silly and falling over, Rosa is fun and young and remembers how wonderful it is to have older people to play with…and I will keep trying until I find something that works.

Theo got the first laughs and even though they were shy they came into mine and Theo’s room and as they often do, camels broke the ice. There was a stunning collection of miniature jewelled camels on the drawers by our bed and Leilah and Zacky liked to play with them…as I write this I’m smiling, remembering hearing their voices for the first time, seeing how they were with each other, and the feeling of certainty that we would get to have fun together!!

There were fresh flowers in our rooms and beautiful foods that we hadn’t been able to get on our journey in baskets…such thoughtful kindness and attention to detail was evident in both our room and Rosa’s – Bob and Natascha had even been and got a table and chair for Rosa for her balcony (although we are not yet hardy enough to enjoy sitting on balconies in the heat …but I suspect after travelling through Indonesia and a summer in Australia, Thailand will feel cool!)

Their home is big and it’s full to the brim with toys, books, creativity, life and stories…Bob has nine children, and whilst only two live with him now the others do visit regularly and Natascha’s mum lives with them sometimes too.

My cousin Bob has lived and worked in Oman (a small country next to Saudi Arabia and just above Yemen) for nearly all of his adult life. He has the sensibilities of the Middle East, the mind of a lawyer (he actually is a lawyer so that’s lucky really…) he has the heart of a giraffe and the accent of an English gentleman. He is funny in a playful way and whilst he has in theory retired his role and position in Oman has him still in high demand. He is a wonderful person and he stole the show at our wedding when he wore the most stunning handmade coat (worthy of Doctor Who) as he gave a Muslim blessing to our marriage – he looks after all things family with consistent attention and cares passionately about our world.

Natascha met Bob and his family when she was nine years old. Her mum had moved to work and live in Oman and they have been friends throughout their lives. The strength of that friendship has been clear to see here, they know each other really well. All partnerships have their challenges but whatever they have to face they face together, both of them thinking about the space and needs of the other, in daily little ways and in the bigger picture as well.

I first head about Natasza when Bob sent me a link to an article about a woman who had left her job working in an airport in Greece to go and see what she could do a few days after the tsunami had hit Aceh in Indonesia in 2004. The tsunami had killed over 80,000 people and had rocked the world that day after Christmas. I remember sitting watching the news, sobbing with my baby in my arms. Like most people I found myself giving money to the relief agencies…but not Natascha, she bought a plane ticket and headed out there.

Listening to her down to earth stories of an extraordinary life choice has been incredible. What can we do in the face of such disaster, such utter devastation?!

Natascha was not attached to any aid agency or government body and her work began on the flight to Indonesia  which got diverted to Bangkok in Thailand – the American military told all the passengers to leave the airport when they arrived but for the Indonesians on the plane they would be in Thailand without visas so Natascha refused to leave until it was safe for all of them to go together. She also pointed out to her fellow westerners, on another military flight – where you are strapped in to a freezing hold effectively – that the Indonesians didn’t have shoes or socks and were really cold and now might be a good time to start helping the very people they were here to help…her work in the airport in Bangkok earned her the thanks of the Indonesian embassy, she knew then that she was in the right place, that she wasn’t crazy to have come all this way with just the certainty that she had to do something.

My cousin is practical, loving, open, honest, really funny and works like she means it. She gets up early every day, takes a little time for herself before her children wake up and then dives into her day. The children are her priority and she and Bob have made the decision that they won’t be going to school anytime soon so their home has a room dedicated to learning through play, the walls and surfaces covered in pictures, three dimensional art and ongoing projects.

We took it easy that first day and learned the rhythm of the house, and where everything was…as part of the welcome committee my cousin had booked massages for the weary travellers…I flinched at the idea of anyone touching my sweaty body so I had a shower.

It turns out Thai massage in Thailand is an endurance sport! It hurt…properly hurt, and I had to beg her to stop pummelling my calves – ‘you never show weakness’ my cousin laughed at me afterwards…’never admit it hurts or they will stay there the whole time!’

I had tried the grimacing and hoping she’d move on for about fifteen minutes but the direct ‘I can’t take it anymore’ was what eventually did the trick, amidst gales of laughter at my whimpy calves my massage lady got the oil out, and her strong hands were incredible…she did keep trying to go back to my calves but I was onto it now…’Noooooooooo!’ I’d cry and she’d laugh again and move away…

Our first few days were filled with trips to the playground, pillow fights and going swimming. Zacky and Leilah love swimming and the local outdoor pool was cheap and close…we had loads of fun together and it was exactly what we had hoped it would be.

But life is rarely without its challenges and we learned that there had been a fire in Rosa’s room back home after we’d been here a few days…everyone was safe and there was minimal damage to the roof – it had happened in the morning and by the time the fire brigade had arrived the Kingshill community had managed to put it out…we were shocked, grateful, worried and we felt a long way from home…a lot to process!

Natascha’s philosophy is ‘everything happens for a reason’. I have never been able to hold that in my heart…many of my closest friends seem to hold it with such effortless ease and for me it seems impossible. I can see the strength it gives them and the pathway through really difficult things, but my life hasn’t given me that safety net…and I think I’d really like it, it looks so comforting and strengthening. Whilst you clear up the mess of the latest disaster you have that certainty that ‘everything will be revealed’, maybe not quickly, maybe not for years but that underlying sense that life has your back and brings you what you need to learn gives meaning to hard and difficult experiences.

I have been trying it on for size.

It doesn’t fit yet…but I have promised myself I will keep practicing during our time away.

I know I am grateful for the quick reactions of the people living in our home and our friends and neighbours at Kingshill – that we haven’t had to go home is a miracle in itself…

It has been hard for each of us in different ways, Rosa has lived in that room and it’s been her sanctuary for fourteen years and it’s horrible to see part of the roof torn away and beams burned, but she knows it has been made safe – that her room will still be there when she gets home and that together we can make it lovely again. We have good neighbours with practical skills who tell us how it is – we are so lucky in truth, and we are really grateful for it.

Two days after the fire Natascha shared some more stories of her time in Aceh that helped me get perspective…she met a man clutching a small pink rucksack, it was all he had found of his family and his entire home, all gone.

She shared the story of a child in the mountains in urgent need of an operation to save her life and the battle to get the aid agencies to help because it wasn’t directly disaster related. She told me how that child’s life, and heart breaking ultimate death, lead to her setting up a fast track system involving a TV station and the hospitals with the right equipment – a system that saved over 100 children’s lives…

She told me about being shipwrecked and having to leave Aceh with just a few hours notice because her life was in danger…it was moving and inspiring listening to all she achieved in the five years she lived and worked there. Opening six schools with funds she raised from donations, and run entirely by Indonesians, the wages of one western teacher for a week were the same as her entire budget for the year when she opened her first school…she knew she was on borrowed time living in Indonesia and these schools needed to function without her and three of them are still open today!

One of the first things she was told was ‘forget the adults always teach the children’. When she settled in the village she lived in for five years dengue fever was a serious threat to life and one of the first lessons she taught was the life cycle of the mosquito, watching the children grasp the dangers of still water becoming breeding grounds …she smiles as she remembers walking through the village later that week and seeing banana leaves covering the wells and buckets upturned, she tells me that there were two years with no cases of Dengue in that village.

I love listening to her stories, how when she first arrived she lived on a chair in the hospital, it nicely puts into perspective a night in a train without a bed…and all the while she’s telling me about her struggles she’s reminding me that the people she’s there to help have literally lost everything.

She lived with what she carried and fundraised for what she needed, and now she is living a completely different life married to my cousin Bob and with two children of her own, and her ‘everything happens for a reason’ has been properly tried and tested.

My cousin Bob loves a bargain and hunting for treasure so each weekend the family outing is to local markets, we have been to five of them in our two weeks in Thailand and our favourite was the flea market – a car boot sale with added sticky rice in banana leaves, baking heat and interesting looking chickens rooting around at the edges for scraps of food.

It was relaxing meandering around each of the markets we went to…seeing the local colour, the life of the town is often in its market, and Rosa found two tops and a pair of shorts for £1 at the flea market …and it turns out coconut sticky rice is lush!

My cousin told us the story of how he came to Thailand and built a house in the mountains – one of his friends really needed to get out, work was drowning him so Bob bought him a plane ticket to go to the country he had been dreaming of for years – he handed him the ticket and told him, as only really close friends can, go and find your happiness again. His friend came back his old sunnier self and insisted Bob came and saw what he had discovered for himself…paradise.

Cousin Bob is good at getting things done and after he had fallen in love with Thailanc he leased some land and built a beautiful southern style Thai house, designed on the back of an envelope. It’s main living space is all outside in a covered area with rooms coming off it for bedrooms and a kitchen – I had known about ‘Bobs house in the mountains’ for fifteen years – I’ve seen loads of photos including a short video of a snake moving across the outside living room. Snakes! I’d love to see one of them in the wild…

Sadly it was Rosa who got that particular piece of wildlife joy on our first afternoon walking on the land…’a bloody big black thing’ is how she remembers it, properly freaked her out it did…but the only snake I got to see was a small squashed one on the road.

We headed up to the mountains after our first week and on the way we stopped for lunch at a beautiful organic restaurant. They grew the food they served and when I tried to pay for the meal, which was up there in the top three most delicious meals we’ve had since we left home, Natascha wouldn’t hear of it and when I pushed a little harder she said if we wanted to give them a gift we could buy trees.

It was cooler in Ben Gow, which literally means ‘Old House’, and on our first morning the twins and I made loads of paper aeroplanes, flying them off the balcony and then rushing downstairs to pick them up… simple fun followed by a day picking coffee beans, pepper corns, lemons, limes and digging for wild blue ginger

It is a wonderful thing to experience something that you’ve held in your imagination for years and find out it’s every bit as amazing as you thought it would be, and three dimensional paradise is pretty hard to beat. It was a joy to go mad in the ‘happy tree man’s shop’ – (and he really was happy) we bought cashews, pink guava, lychees and macadamia nuts, mulberries, Chinese chestnuts and mangosteen, Himalayan orchid and a tree with beautiful orange trumpet flowers.

Rosa, Theo and I planted over thirty of them the next day…it took us all day, and sweaty and proud we surveyed the beauty that was this piece of Thailand. Natascha told us how the land had been covered in GM corn when she had first arrived, about planting these tall magnificent trees we saw all around us in the pouring rain and how next year they would have their first crop of chocolate. They were already self sufficient in mangos, bananas, pepper and they grew and roasted a lot of their own coffee.

Theo, Rosa and I went for a walk into the village the next morning to say goodbye a little and to reconnect with each other, we have been so well looked after, both here and at home and although there have been some  tough times we are a family and we’ve got each other. I saw a kingfisher on that walk, the blue on its back catching the light the same way the sparkly tiles on the temple did. Beauty.

…and what am I taking away from Thailand? a deeper connection with all four of my cousins, I love them and they me. A more intimate feeling of place in a new country, and the knowledge that there are thirty trees on a hillside in the mountains near the infamous ‘golden triangle’ which might just feed my family and the animals and birds that live on that beautiful land in years to come