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Yupaah Porntipyen
Springtime smells of onions in Mae Wang District, about 50 kilometers from Chiang Mai. Big yellow onions are a popular cash crop during the dry season and the harvest is on.
Thais don’t like big onions much, they prefer the small red ones. All of the harvest is exported to China or Bangkok. Good business, since labor is cheap here: 120 baht per day ($ 3.52 / € 2.60).
Yupaah Porntipyen, 41, stares over barren fields which are not her own but which she has worked for most of her life. The onion harvest is done. What will be next?
"We have no land of our own. The piece of land we live on is government land. My father build the house here 36 years ago, he’s 79 now. He is healthy but he doesn’t get much work now. He has no pension.”
"We have no electricity here since we live here illegal. Luckily we have a well with good water. Firewood for cooking we have to chop and collect ourselves.”
 
"My father built this house here, because we’re in the middle of the property of the landlords. In this way we are close to our work and hopefully there is work every day.”
"My husband left me for another woman eight years ago. I have a daughter and she is nine, her father doesn’t pay for her. Her school is 15 baht per day ($ 0.41 / € 0.33), and she has to walk five kilometers to get there.”
"My younger brother is 24 and he lives with us. He and I are the ones who support a family of four persons. We are laborers and make 120 baht per day ($ 3.52 / € 2.60) per day.”
"The money we make goes into our daily food. Nobody drinks or smokes in our family. We try very hard to save money, but it’s nearly impossible, we live by the day.”
"For us there is no tomorrow. We don’t know what more tomorrow will bring than just enough to eat. We never had money to buy a bicycle or a motorbike, we go by foot.”
 
Sticky rice is the staple food in Chiang Mai Province. People usually eat 1 liter per day.
Here’s our plan. Every month we will bring Yupaah 30 liters of rice for 300 baht ($ 8.82 / € 6.52).
In this way, Yupaah won’t have to worry about the daily rice.
If you feel like supporting someone in need for 300 baht per month ($ 8.82 / € 6.52), please contact us.
We would like to thank Mrs Dang Dejkhamron from Chiang Mai for being a rice sponsor for Yupaah.
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