Among the widows of the South

EIGHT YEARS AFTER her husband became a victim of the violence in Thailand’s deep South, Rosanaming Waedaraseh and her two school-aged children are still struggling to cope. The Pattani woman’s tears have yet to dry.

Her husband was the family breadwinner, running a teashop and grocery with Rosanaming’s help, until he was killed in 2007. Unable to keep the business going while raising the children, she was forced to close the shop. In its place, she took bakery classes offered by a non-governmental organisation, but failed to earn an adequate income. Then she sold kreu po that she made herself – a crispy snack fashioned from fish paste.

Hoping for better, Rosanaming is now counting on additional vocational assistance from the Raks Thai Foundation, which, with its partners, has undertaken a two-year project to help 250 women who were widowed amid the ongoing unrest in the three southernmost provinces. Chevron, the US-based energy corporation, is providing the funding.

The foundation brought 27 of these women to Nakhon Si Thammarat earlier this month on a “field trip” that let them establish work-related connections with people there.

Pennapa Kongdee, the foundation’s co-ordinator in the three southern provinces, points out that most women there depend on their husbands and that few are properly educated, so those who lose their spouses are plunged into dire circumstances.

“Compensation money from the state [for losses stemming from the violence] just covers the short term,” she says. “These women need more than that, such as legal aid, vocational skills and help in acquiring the assistance from state agencies that they’re entitled to.”

More than a decade of unrest in the South has incurred immense losses among its citizens. Some 2,500 women have lost their husbands and are left alone to care for themselves and their children, and their numbers grow as the violence continues with no end in sight.

“We normally reach out to the widows via local volunteers,” says Pennapa. “Sometimes we visit their home ourselves because we want to see firsthand how they’re doing. We know some of the women are reluctant to leave their homes and speak out, in accordance with their culture.”

Pathisa Yiwaeni, 36, of Narathiwat, was married to a sub-district employee and contractor. He was killed and one of their daughters wounded in a 2004 attack on a teashop by militants. Pathisa can at least say that her family did recover, although it took five months. She’s been the breadwinner ever since. 

She left her four children with her mother to take a course in embroidery on Langkawi, Malaysia, and stayed there working for a year. On her return, she had to manage the disbursement of the Bt500,000 she received in compensation for the loss of her husband. “The money was almost gone once I’d repaid our debts and covered our expenses,” she says. 

In 2007, ISOC, the government’s Internal Security Operations Command, arranged a job for Pathisa at the Ban Sum Pia Nursery in Reuso district. It paid Bt4,500 a month, and the children each received a Bt1,500 education scholarship from the Narathiwat Provincial Administrative Organisation. 

“If possible,” she says, “I want to send my kids somewhere for their higher education and move away from here, maybe at least to Hat Yai.” She also bakes banana cakes to sell, harvesting the fruit on her own property, and plans to make banana chips as well.

“Every day when I’m back home I still look over my shoulder, especially when travelling on a motorcycle, because attacks can happen anytime,” Pathisa says. She keeps the children close to their house, which is shared with 10 other relatives. An aunt was fatally shot last year. Her husband’s elder brother was wounded in a separate incident.

Mariam Soying, 44, hails from Pathum Thani, but when she married she moved to her husband’s home in Yaring, Pattani. They’d been there only a year when he was fatally shot in 2006, leaving Mariam with three children to raise and a sweets stall that they’d operated together. Her in-laws asked her to stay on in Pattani, so she did. 

Almost all of the Bt200,000 she was given by way of compensation went to repaying debts and various family needs, so Mariam took a Bt4,500-a-month job in Yaring, also courtesy of the ISOC. She borrowed Bt8,000 from the Raks Thai Foundation to grow mushrooms as a sideline and has since repaid the loan. 

Now remarried with two more children, she chairs a support group for women in Yaring who’ve been affected by the violence.

Jehnora Beuraheng, 45, from Narathiwat’s Waeng district, isn’t a widow, but she sustained an injury serious enough that it took her almost a year to recuperate. In 2004 she was struck by an Army truck whose driver lost control in an ambush by the militants. Three years later she found work through the ISOC, again worth Bt4,500 a month, and as a sideline earns Bt1,200 a day selling fish balls. It’s a good return on her daily Bt400 outlay for 20 kilograms of fish, and a big help in caring for her mother and a nephew who’s in school. 

Jehnora rides a motorcycle to the market to buy fish every day, and every day she’s frightened. “I keep changing the timing of my morning visits,” she says. “And as an added safety precaution I avoid crowded places and anywhere there’s a military presence.”

And Jehnora too chairs a group for affected persons in her district, while also soliciting funds for better schooling for local kids from struggling families who show good academic performance. “Education gives kids more opportunities in society,” she says. 

She’s grateful to the Raks Thai Foundation for teaching her skills, loaning her money – and giving her the confidence to venture out and voice her opinions.

Empowering these unfortunate women is crucial to the foundation’s mission, Pennapa says. “Through us, they realise that there are many other people facing pretty much the same fate, and that they can stand up and find their place in society.”