A Leper Colony
In the Mist of War, Blood, and Lust

Kon Kan Province

“The disease gradually eats away your fingers, your toes, and your limbs; your entire body is saturated and controlled by penicillin until it becomes disabled. But the worst part of the disease is that it erodes your soul; you lose all the will to live and to continue fighting,” says Kommee as he explains the emotions of a man behind the grisly disease. That man was himself. And the year was 1962.

Thailand was then the largest US military base in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, and General Sarit was in charged of the country’s day-to-day affairs.

Kommee was 12-year-old at the time. He came from a poor family in the countryside. Like all the other folks in the rural area, his living conditions were deplorable. Malnutrition and diseases were the norm among his friends. The Thai government – while catering the new sex industry to the American troops – recommended that the poor be sterilized and that their population be truncated. They argued that poverty and disease were the direct result of uncontrolled population growth among the poor.

Yet the poor refused to accept this sterilized truth; they continued dreaming. Kommee recalls going on a hiking trip with Fon, his childhood sweetheart, in the hills of Kao Yai. At night, under the stars, he recalled telling Fon how he wanted to become a mechanic; how he would take her to Bangkok, rented a small room in a flat, and started his own business there – repairing watches. They talked about how they would name their kids. His son would be ‘nicknamed’ James – after the late James Dean – and his daughter would be named Sophia after a popular Italian actress at the time. Kommee recalls:

“Those are funny names,” said Fon. “I prefer Thai names better.”
“You’re very Thai,” said Kommee.
“As Thai as your buddy here,” said Fon; her hand contracted into a squeeze as she kissed him long and hard.

Kommee soon learned that he was infected with leprosy. He promptly entered the treatment program. The doctor found that he was not recovering fast enough so he suggested that Kommee stayed at the hospital until he was cured. During this period, he also received a small stipend. At first, there were only 150 patients, but after a while the hospital became very crowded.

By the end of 1964, the program decided to move all the patients to a larger area – 1126 acre site – in the rural province of Kon Kaen so that new patients could be placed far apart from the ones who are being cured. All the patients were given an acre of land - which belonged to the Treasury Department - to build their houses and to grow their own food.

Kommee still wrote letters to Fon about how much progress he was making; how he would soon be able to see her again. Little did he know; the new place would soon transform into the first Leper colony in Thailand.

General Sarit - who reputedly had more than 6 mistresses - died in 1963. Before he died, a policy was put in place to surgically sterilize all the patients in the leper colony. Kommee was among the many that were eligible for General Sarit’s final solution.

As Kommee was incarcerated in the leper colony - fighting his own battle - he learned that some of his friends in the army had joined the American troops in Vietnam. He also learned that Fon, his childhood sweetheart, was working in the Farang bars; servicing the American troops. It was not a comforting thought.

For unknown reasons, Kommee managed to escape sterilization. He was an amiable man who had many friends who could help him circumvented the authorities; other people might not be so lucky however. During these difficult times, Kommee took refuge in farming and the reading of Buddhist texts. Since the government had allotted an acre of land to each person to do his living, Kommee spent most of his time thinking of ways to live a life based on self-reliance and sufficiency. He was not alone in this endeavor. Soon he found that the people in the colony were his only friends, enemies, co-workers, and lovers.

Kommee ended up marrying a local girl and had two kids. His friends in the colony did the same – in defiance of the late General Sarit’s mandate. Soon the colony grew to 500 families. The land that used to feel large now grew smaller with the new addition of family members. There emerged a child-care center and a small school. The colony now operated like a small city.

The members of the colony started to form groups which started some rather innovative projects together. They formed community saving group, which takes a few hundred baht from each family per month, and put the money into a large reserve fund in the event of emergency and illness. “It was like having an insurance company,” says Kommee. Some women also formed their own exclusive “women saving group” for reasons unknown to the men. Now the colony has over 1 million baht in saving.

“My wife belongs to a ‘Vegetable Saving Group’ where members deposit and borrow vegetables in the same manner as cash,” says Kommee. “It’s an innovative non-monetary exchange system, you know, especially in a closed agrarian society like us.”

Another group of his friends also formed their own rice mill cooperative. They grew their own rice; hulled it and milled it themselves. Members of the cooperative also received shares in the form of dividends.

Kommee’s nextdoor neighbors were all working as handy men within the colony; they did electrical, plumbing, carpentry and building works. Anyone who wanted to fix up something in his house could call up these local handy men for a fee. Some of these men also worked at the job training center; training folks - who were on their way to recovery - new skills so that they could earn their own living.

“We have zoning within the colony,” says Kommee. “The land was divided into residential, commercial, agriculture, and manufacturing zones.” The residential area rests on 86 acre of land. He says that there are now 3,111 residents officially living here; of these about 786 people are still infected with leprosy.

“For some reasons, the disease never leaves them completely, it’s like poverty. It comes and goes but in the end it’s always there.”

As time progressed, some arable land was converted into housing which prompted several disputes among its members. The land was allocated for people infected with leprosy only; their children – who are free from the disease – are technically not eligible to continue living in the colony after their parents died. Some organizers within the community had asked the Community Organization Development Institute (CODI) to help them negotiate a land lease contract with the Treasury Department.

In 2007, CODI had successfully negotiated a temporary 3-year-renewable land lease from the Treasure Department. Once they have formed a cooperative, the land lease could be extended into a 30-year renewable contract. They would be paying the lease using the money from their own saving group.

CODI also gave the community 13.26 million baht in grant money – which came down to 20,000 per household – so that they could make improvements to their houses. At that time, many of the old wooden shacks from General Sarit’s era were falling apart. The old unpaved walkways and the drainage system – which were opened – required endless repairs and adjustments in order to keep the place in good hygiene. The families got together and ask CODI to help them improve the general infrastructure of the site. CODI gives out a total of 16.58 million baht in subsidy so that the families could do their upgrades and planned their community collectively.

Kommee says that the families had divided into 15 working groups. Each group was in charged of designing and planning an area within the colony; they decided where to pave the roads, where to run a new drainage system, where to place collection points for solid waste, how to construct septic tanks, where to plant new trees, and how to improve their houses. There are a total of 663 houses in the colony, and most of the people preferred to make improvement to their existing houses rather than rebuilding them from scratch.

Throughout the entire episode of the Vietnam War - peppered with General Sarit’s idiosyncrasies - the colony had transformed itself from a specialized dependent ward into a small independent city. After the war, Kommee’s condition was much improved; he was free to leave the colony as he pleased. He worked on odd jobs; laboring to survive the life outside the colony. It was hard. The people outside the colony, when they had found out where he came from, turned away in revulsion at the sight of him.

He was discriminated and shunned by the outside society. Any job he held lasted for no more than a couple of months. All his friends had experienced the same treatment when they set foot outside the colony. They were treated like an alien race. They were treated like the Elvis look-alike singers - and the whores - who were relegated to second-class citizens soon after the Americans had left. Kommee became a sullen man when he learned that Fon - his childhood sweetheart - was beaten to death by some unknown men. The police never found out who did it. What’s left of her resides in the memory and dreams they shared in the hills of Kao Yai.

His son had more luck. He had found work in the Sam Chuk antique clock shop in the northwestern area of Bangkok. Kommee, now back in the colony, still regrets that he no longer gets to sees his son after the move. It’s a psychological trauma for the sons and daughters of the leper colony to come back and visit their parents. They would be branded “sons of the lepers!”

Most folks in the colony never see their sons and daughters again after they had moved out. Kommee had given his son a mechanical wrist watch to remember him by. His son still wears it to this day.