Way up in the back streets of Isaan, a stone's throw from the big river where you look across to Laos, there's an American priest who's been there since the war.

Father Mike Shea is 67 now, but leads a life that's chock full of charity, chores and children.

A farmer's son who grew up in Wisconsin, he seems naturally suited to the slower pace of events out by the Mekong, where the air is clear, the roads free and the people friendly and poor.

It's a fair journey from the "great Midwest" to Thailand's far Northeast, but Father Mike has become a significant figure in Nong Khai, the border port, and small communities in this distant corner of the Kingdom, especially in recent years.

For the bulk of his time he was a country priest, preaching to small congregations of Thai and Lao Christians - and a part-time doctor, as most of the early missionaries were.

Then, six years ago, he got drawn into full-time social work. Given his religious pedigree, you could say this was virtually inevitable, as Father Mike comes from a group of Catholic priests whose achievements in Thailand are extraordinary. He's a Redemptorist, and went through seminary with men renowned for their humanitarian work in the Kingdom - Joe Maier, Ray Brennan and Larry Patin.

Father Joe has set up more than 30 schools in the Khlong Toei slums, where he also founded the Mercy Centre, the biggest Aids hospice in Bangkok, treating more than 220 people, young and old.

Father Ray, who died several years ago, left an even greater legacy in Pattaya - a large orphanage, schools for the blind, the deaf, plus an acclaimed vocational college for youths with disabilities and an outreach programme for street kids.

Home for children

Father Larry, who spent years in Khon Kaen caring for Thais with leprosy, now oversees the facilities in Pattaya, which cater for about 800 students and orphans.

It was the Aids epidemic and a request to help from his Thai bishop in Bangkok that set Father Mike on a similar path to his peers. Knowledge gleaned from his colleagues' many endeavours also helped when he decided in 2000 to create a home for children with HIV.

Sarnelli House was built in a pretty, tree-lined valley half an hour out of Nong Khai. It seemed unusually happy when we visited recently. The introduction of cheap anti-retroviral drugs has been one of the great miracles of recent years. Aids orphanages all round the country have been transformed from quiet places full of sick emaciated children to homes much more alive and normal.

Sarnelli echoed with laughter and raucous children's games. Youngsters kept coming up to hug "Luang por" (Uncle) Mike as we spoke beside their play room.

"They're from all over the Northeast - Si Sa Ket, Sakon Nakhon, Nakhon Phanom, Loei - but the majority are from this area," Father Mike said.

"I wasn't even doing Aids work. Then a girl came in, aged 22. She had TB and Aids. Then I found five or six families living just out the back here [pointing behind the block] - all had Aids. And all were dead within a year.

"Three kids were there, one was crippled. I got left with them. And the Thai bishop asked me to build a place for kids with Aids.

"This was an illegal village. The governor gave two rai to a family. And we spent Bt100,000 on land here - the first section to be a cemetery. Then they said it was OK to build on it. So I hired staff.

"I got a loan from the Redemptorists - it ended up they gave me Bt1.5 million. We just kept adding on - we have computer and TV rooms now. And we're trying to build a dormitory for all the girls. We're gonna teach them to cook and learn to take the medicine they're on."

Today, there are about 120 children at four homes he has established for orphans, the abandoned and disadvantaged. Close to 30 staff, half of them at Sarnelli House, look after the kids. They are paid wages a little above the norm (Bt4,000 to Bt6,000), which helps ensure loyalty and some truly devoted caring.

"We have 53 kids here [at Sarnelli] and they all have Aids. You look at them now and you can't tell. The anti-retroviral drugs are really doing good. Eight or nine are on another cocktail [of different drugs].

"At the House of Hope we have 16 babies and toddlers - two of them have HIV. Then there is the St Patrick's Boys Home, which has 18 boys. And Viengkuk, which has 34 girls.

"Seven of our kids are now in college - they're getting old. All of a sudden they're teenagers. It's certainly fulfilling. But there are days when you'd like to take 'em all out and kill 'em."

Father Mike's dry humour is evident on the updates he logs each month on websites set up by supporters to help raise funds.

'Garage crew'

Back in the late '50s and early '60s, he was part of the "garage crew" - a small group of trainee priests who got their kicks tinkering under the bonnets of cars.

"I was ordained in 1964 and Joe Maier was ordained in 1965. There's only eight of us left and the youngest is 66," he said. "If you were trouble in the seminary, you either ended up in Brazil or Thailand.

"Father Larry Patin, another country boy, came to Thailand one year ahead of Father Joe and me. In the seminary, we three were the guys repairing cars, washing cars, and welding when needed. Larry is now in charge in Pattaya, taking Father Ray's place, together with Brother Denis Gervais.

"Joe comes up here a couple of times a year. Those guys have a lot more to do - more responsibility - than I do. They run schools.

"I started late and I'm out in the middle of nowhere. But I love it up here."

Father Joe and Father Larry both did terms in the Northeast. Joe Maier described his buddy in Nong Khai as a "straight shooter and a real farmer".

"Shea doesn't do well at cocktail parties. Up there [in Isaan and Laos] we all had to do medical work. So, he's quite a good doctor. We had to memorise medical manuals, like the old-fashioned missionary doctors. You learn a tremendous amount of independence because you're living alone.

"He's an old-fashioned Irish priest. And the people there, they not only become your parish. They've got to know him very well. He's baptising the grandchildren of people he's known for many years, so there is tremendous continuity and stability in this. He's fulfilled as a priest - he's been there forever. The people know his good and bad points. This is real Christianity; like the village policeman, you know everybody and they know you."

Arriving in Isaan

Father Mike arrived in Thailand in February 1966, just as the Vietnam War was gearing up.

"Isaan, when I came, had a bad reputation, because all the killers were out here; they still are a bit. But Isaan people, they wear their hearts on their sleeve. They're very quick to bring food.

"I'm a farm boy. And I know that farmers aren't stupid. They're very shrewd and they're good to you - until you screw them, which they never forget. I've very seldom had trouble with them. I'm always very careful. I avoid weddings because of the drunkenness."

He went through language school to learn Thai after landing in Bangkok - "then came up here [Isaan] and found few spoke it."

His superiors sent him "way down-river" to an isolated post on the Mekong. It was another year before he learnt the local dialect - "Lao".

"I went up and down the river by boat for six to seven years. The communists would come in for medicine. And they'd take rice trains back into Laos."

Vientiane fell to the Vietnamese-backed Pathet Lao and the young priest was told: "Thailand is next."

By 1975, the war was over and the Americans began closing their bases. Father Mike applied to go to Alaska but wasn't able to get there. "So I just decided to stay. Every three years I get home."

In 1999 he also pondered going back for good, "but thank God I didn't. I didn't want to go to Bangkok - I'm a country boy and not into cities. Then I got into this [Sarnelli House]. I'll die here if they don't put me away first."

Like his colleagues, Father Mike knows that once you open one facility, things just keep on growing.

"We've gotta build in December - a 30-metre building for high-school girls with Aids," he said. "I've got the staff to do it and all the kids go to a Catholic school. Then we're gonna build for boys at St Patrick's.

"We need about Bt12 million a year - for salaries, food, medicine and utilities [power, water, etc]. That takes care of everything. We do our own fields; that gives us six months' rice a year. But I want to rent some more rice land. The kids do all the fields - we have 16 rai behind the House of Hope down in the [Don Wai] valley.

"I never did fund-raising before." As with the others, the money comes from a dozen different sources. Lutheran church groups in Germany sent funds to buy a house, while the Marist Mission in Australia donated the cash to build St Patrick's boys home.

"I've just written to Liz Taylor [the actress] for US$10,000 [about Bt400,000] - for the second time."

Thais in Bangkok send up food, clothes and money. "We get as much from Thailand as we do the States. We get a lot from Germany too."

They watched kids die

Father Mike's brother set up a foundation to raise funds for the Nong Khai charities. Relatives who came to do volunteer work got a grim view of the situation a few years back before the government started producing cheap anti-retroviral drugs.

"They watched kids die while they were here," he said.

It motivated his family and friends to organise an annual 175km bike ride from Madison to Fondulac. All the proceeds - $50,000 last year - go towards medicine for the kids and blood tests.

"We really depend on this because a lot of these viral load tests are expensive. And we try to reach as many as possible with our outreach programme, give medicine to folks and help keep the people with HIV working. We're supporting 46 families or individuals in the Nong Khai, Udon area."

Father Mike has four parishes in and around Nong Khai. "Each place I go, I sleep the night." He performs mass three times each Saturday and three times each Sunday.

Some of the people in the area are third to fourth-generation Catholics. He gets good turnouts, he said. But he keeps the services short.

Living for so long in a country that is 95 per cent Buddhist, he seems to have acquired some of the tolerance for which Thailand is well known.

"We've got kids here who are Buddhist. We have lots of mixed marriages. I'm not going to tell a husband how it should be - they can work it out themselves."

He's got too many other worries to deal with. There are girls becoming teenagers who need to be segregated from boys - in their own dormitories - and, occasionally, protected from unscrupulous relatives who suddenly realise the girls could be put to work in bars to earn money for their families, even if they have the dreaded disease.

"We're official guardians of these kids," Father Mike said. "Yet people come and try to get the girls when they get older - sell them, or get them to work in the bars. One man was given five minutes to get out, or else."

Children with HIV are vulnerable to getting tuberculosis and viruses that attack the liver. He had "no idea" about their futures, he said. "Maybe they'll live five to 10 years. In some of them, the virus is mutating. They might have to go on experimental drugs.

"Every year is an adventure."

Outside is an area he calls the "little hall of heroes" - with memorials for the children who have come and gone. Each November they have a service to remember those who've died, but it's four years now since a new grave was added here.

Jim Pollard

The Nation