Amid the ramshackle homes, dust and desperate poverty of the Hmong refugee village of Wat Tham Kra-bok, there is laughter.
It comes from children who play throughout the camp. The grime of the camp is all they have known and, in their innocence, they don’t see it as a place without a future. They see it as a playground.
The children use their wits, imaginations and ability to improvise to play the games that, on one hand, nearly everybody in the world would recognize and, on the other, are unique to their culture and corner of the planet.
Children and adults play familiar games such as soccer, often with fraying, leaking and soft balls. Volleyball is another popular game. The refugees also play kato, a cross between soccer and volleyball in which players kick a rattan ball across a high volleyball net.
A group of preteens prove that baseball can be played without bats, bases or a sideline of preening parents. All it takes are a rolled-up rag or sock to use as a ball, two closed fists held together for a bat and a wish for an inside pitch.
Almost all younger children play a tossing game with their flip-flops.
Children set up a small stick inside of rubber bands, then toss their sandals at it, trying to knock the stick out. If successful, they keep the rubber bands and put them around their wrists.
Schoolchildren play a game with a ball that’s a cross between American dodge ball and duck, duck, goose.
Xong Mouacheupao, a mental health counselor from St. Paul who started working as a counselor for the Hmong at Wat Tham Krabok in mid-June, said she’s seen children make dolls from drinking straws.
“It’s healthy,” she said. “They’re still kids. And they’ll still play at a kid’s age.”
Inside, many of the refugees have access to televisions and video games. At a video game arcade in the camp, young people play virtual soccer or blast away a computerized alien.
The arcade has no air conditioning. Fans push around humid air made hotter by the machines. It costs 15 baht an hour to play the games, or about 37 cents.
Xeng Lee, 13, comes to the arcade a lot.
He doesn’t have one favorite game, although he said he plays combat games and soccer the most. “I like them all,” Lee said.
