I'm Margareta, 50+, have been working as a nurse for more than 30 years. At first in an Emergency Room and the last 5 years as a district nurse.
The tsunami made me think that I would like to do something for the people in Thailand. Me and my boyfriend Finn have been travelling in Thailand many times during 13 years, and we both appreciate the Thai people and their hospitality. Not to mention the food, the climate and the marvellous beaches.
I started looking for voluntary projects, and OMP seemed to be a good choice. At first they offered me a teaching project for children,including to arrange different activities on their free time. That is something which does not suit me, I wanted to work with some kind of health care, and I rejected the offer. Then OMP made me a special offer, I could teach English to the staff in a small hospital on Koh Chang. The hospital is situated in Baan Dan Mai on the east coast of the island. It was a new project and in a way an experiment. The offer included my boyfriend, he was supposed to teach English in the police station, located near the hospital. After some reflection we accepted and started planning for two weeks work.
Included in the project is a 3 day introduction in Nong Khai, where OpenmindProject's head office is located. Since we have been travelling a lot in Thailand, we felt that maybe we didn’t need to go there, but we like Nong 
Khai very much and have been there many times so we decided to go. That was a good decision; the introduction was very useful. We got a lot of information and learned some Thai language. We were very well taken care of, and we feel that we got some friends up there. We strongly recommend future volunteers to take part of these days before starting their work.
After the introduction we went to Koh Chang, and we met the first members of the hospital staff already on the ferry to the island. It was one of the pharmacists and the ambulance driver. They had been on the main land and on their way back they picked us up. We arrived at the hospital on Monday afternoon and were met by the hospital Director and one of the nurses, who could speak good English. They welcomed us and took us to the dormitory, where we got a 3-room flat with private bathroom and TV. OMP's Eva Agnello arrived and introduced herself, and when we had “checked in” and taken a shower, some members of the staff took us out for a welcome dinner.
Tuesday morning we turned up at the hospital. Finn was picked up by a policeman, and I got instructions by the hospital Director,
Khun Maw Natthiya. She had made plans for my teaching, and wanted me to teach between 13:00 an 15:00 for the technicians and administration staff, and between 18:00 and 20:00 for medical staff. She also wanted me to be at the hospital during the day to speak English with the staff, and to assist them at the reception, if needed, when they had foreign patients.
The teaching between 13.00 and 15:00 worked well, there was between 6 and 16 “students” present. The lessons took place in their working time, so they sometimes had to leave during the lesson. If possible they came back, they were all very interested in learning English. To my help the head nurse joined the group, she assisted with explanations since I don’t speak Thai. I also had a Swedish-Thai dictionary, which was very useful. The hospital had a conference room, well equipped with white-board, overhead projector, PC projector and a lap- top, which was of good help for me.
The medical staff, that was supposed to be at lessons later, was not so motivated. Those who had working time between 8:30 and 16:30 didn’t want to stay for another two hours, and those who were on duty in the afternoon had work to do and could not spare time for lessons. They all had good knowledge in English language, but they needed to learn how to pronounce the words. They also were anxious to learn how to express themselves in their contact with foreigners, all because they had a strong wish to be polite. Because of these circumstances, I only had one “real” 
lesson, but I tried to be with the staff during the day and speak English with them when they were working. This was for me as a nurse very exciting, because I had full admission everywhere in the hospital and could follow the work compared to my own work at home.
During our 2 weeks stay in the hospital and police station we were very well taken care of. We got our breakfast delivered to our flat every morning, and every evening we were taken out for dinner by different members of the staff. One night I got cooking lessons by one of the pharmacists, another night we were invited to a party. Two nights we went together with the Primary Health staff delivering condoms in different places on the island. We also were invited to breaking-up parties both with the policemen and the hospital staff.
Finn’s story:
I am 65 and retired and have 35 years experiences from among others international business and also some experiences from teaching. 
I was picked up at the hospital by a police captain, being the administration manager at the police station, for the 300 m drive to the police station and was presented to most of the policemen. The lessons were planned to take place in the conference room. Approx. 12 policemen were present at the first lesson, but as they were on duty the entire day, they had to leave now and then. This is the reality when you are teaching people at their working place. Anyhow, we were working in 2 hours and I managed to evaluate their knowledge in the English language. This varied from nil to rather good (one of the policemen was studying English in Trat in the weekends).
We had our lunch at a local restaurant, being the closest neighbor and after this, I was taken to the police box at White Sand Beach. There are 5 police boxes at Koh Chang, and some of their policemen were gathered to the White Sand Police box for the English lessons. I think we were around 10 persons, gathered around a small table and with a minor whiteboard. In 2 hours we went through some useful vocabulary, being useful at a 
checkpoint and for assisting tourists.
The next day we had another two lessons at the police station. I found out that they knew a reasonable amount of words, but the pronunciation was miserable, so this was trained a quite a lot. After lunch another 2 hours at the White Sand police box, and to practice their new knowledge in English, the policemen established a checkpoint just outside the box. In half an hour they fined 38 persons for not wearing helmet when driving motorbike; most of these were farangs. I kept myself in the background as I felt a bit responsible to the fines. The day was finished with a nice seafood dinner at the beach together with the police colonel.
The following days, there were only lessons at the police station before lunch. I was taken care of by Police Sergeant Sawat and during our (my) time off, he was taking me for sightseeing in Baan Dan Mai.
The number of participants was varying between 2 and 10, depending upon the work situation at the police station. As I was free after lunch, I joined the lessons at the hospital to support Margareta.
The first weekend we went to the western side of Koh Chang and stayed at a guesthouse. Even there we were taken care of.
During the second week the work at the police station proceed in the same manner lessons between 10 and 12 hrs and then lunch at the local restaurant. In 
the afternoons I was supporting Margareta at the hospital or went with Sawat on sightseeing. In the evenings the people took care of us in the best way.
I finished my job at the police station at Friday and then there was arranged a party for me (and Margareta) on the beach in White Sand by the policemen where gifts were exchanged.
These two weeks were a very exciting and instructive experience for both of us, and we are very happy that we had the courage to accept the challenge. Both at the hospital and on the police station they expressed their wishes of further visits from volunteers.
According to the planning, the volunteering job should now be finished, but some weeks later there came a continuation, off the records. Our police friend Sawat called us when we were in Chiang Mai. One of his sisters had died and we were invited to the funeral in the countryside at Chiang Rai. As we had made some reservations already, we were 
no able to come until later. Some days later we took the bus to Chiang Rai, where Sawat met us for a bus drive to his parents, living in a small village, where his father was a rice farmer. This was the first time farangs had visited their home. We took a bike ride around the rice field and in the evening we were picked up by another of Sawat’s sisters to her house where we should stay. The sister was a teacher in a primary school, and it came out that they had no English teacher at the school and “maybe could you come to the school for a couple of days and have some English lessons?” Well, we were in Thailand to seek the adventure and now the adventure seeks us – so why not? We were taken to the school next morning and when we arrived, all 300 children (grades 1 – 6) were formatted in the playground welcoming us. We had to introduce ourselves before the lessons started. As we of weight reasons had left most of our English literature, we had to improvise a bit. We found out that, like in the hospital and police station, they knew a lot of word which they pronounced in a wrong way, so the we focused to improve this.
This was a hit!! If the children in Sweden had had only a tenth of the discipline as the Thai children had, their teachers would have been happy. 
The second day there came a request from the secondary school in the village if we would like to come and tell about Sweden. A blackboard and a very old map of the world helped us to give a brief information about Sweden in 11/2 hours. The day ended with a roundtrip in the village with some of the students as guides. We visited some houses, looked at a pig slaughter and visited a funeral.
The third day started with shaking hands with 80 nursery school children; most of them had never seen a farang before. Thereafter the 5 and 6 grades took farewell with flowers and by singing the only English song they knew: I wish you a Merry Christmas. Finally they wanted to be photographed together with us; alone or in various combinations. 200 photos.
This unplanned visit in countryside strengthened our impression that volunteering work in Thailand will be of a great importance and not only the Anubaanmaiya School would welcome volunteers.
