Even with mr;p seated besides me, I was in fact, very nervous when I conducted the interview with Khun Mechai last December. There I was, seated across a renowned anti-AIDS/HIV activist who has been named as one of Time’s 60 Asia Heroes and his organisation – Population and Community Development Assoication recently bagged the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Gates Award. I had read his biography in the NUS library when I was too lazy to prepare for exams, and never for once imagined I would have the chance to meet him in person. And because he speaks impeccable Thai and English, I have no excuse of not conducting the interview well because I can’t express myself well enough in Thai.Anyway, since the story is already published in the latest issue of JetAway (Jetstar Asia), I figure that I should be able to re-publish it here. Here’s the original and unedited version:
The Legend of the Condom Hero
As one of Time’s Asian Heroes with a published biography, I would imagine Mechai Viravaidya to be larger than life. Yet when I finally met Mechai in his famous Cabbages & Condoms (C & C) Restaurant in Bangkok, he cut an amiable figure with his tall but slightly portly frame, spectacled and greying look.
Affectionately nicknamed “Mr Condom” for popularising the use of condoms in Thailand, Mechai is a renowned family planning and anti-AIDS activist. It is thus no coincidence that “mechai” is also the slang for condoms in Thai, an association that this man took good-naturedly.
Exuding charming wit and humour, our conversation was peppered with his wisecrack quips. “A condom is a girl’s best friend, though in Singapore, it might be the diamond,” said Mechai as he poked fun at the Singaporean girl’s materialistic psyche.
Mechai loves to give people a good laugh, and regards laughter as his best ammunition to erase stigma surrounding sex talk among his countrymen. Most Thais would recall Mechai’s wacky and unconventional ways of disseminating anti-AIDS/HIV messages, such as condom-blowing competitions, seeing Mechai personally distributing condoms along the streets and engaging policemen on the “Cops and Rubbers” programme to hand out the rubbery sheets.
This man values action over talk and is never afraid to challenge the status quo. As the Minister of Tourism in the early 90s, he boldly criticised the bureaucracy for dragging its feet in tackling the AIDS issue for fear of damaging the tourist dollars and swiftly implemented anti-AIDS campaigns and made condoms available countrywide. As the main architect behind the AIDS prevention efforts, Mechai has been widely credited for making Thailand a success story which prevented an estimated 7.7 million from being infected.
In recent years, however, the AIDS crisis is threatening to make a comeback in Thailand. Not one to mince his words, Mechai chastised the ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra for sitting on the AIDS issue when he was in power. “Thaksin never once attended the AIDS meeting which he was chairing. Public education and information went down to zero.”
He is especially concerned that youngsters are getting complacent about AIDS and wants to prevent them from dying by empowering parents and their kids with the necessary knowledge. “I’d ask the parents, both paths lead to an end with flowers, but do they want to attend the funeral or university graduation ceremony of their children?”
Considered a luuk khreung (child of mixed descendent), Mechai is born to a Thai father and a Scottish mother, both of whom were doctors and strong influences that instilled in Mechai a strong sense of social empathy from young. At 66, Mechai does not see retirement in the cards anytime soon. “I’m addicted to it like a banker is to money, but I don’t get as much money.”
Conversing flawlessly in English and Thai, Mechai enthusiastically showed me the various smiling mannequins and Christmas trees adorned with condoms and birth control pills amidst the tropical courtyard setting of the condom-themed restaurant. With C&C outlets established in Kyoto and Tokyo, Mechai beamed proudly, “Overtime, we’re going to beat McDonalds, you’ll never know. Our profits go towards a good cause and we don’t make people fat!”
Including a host of other businesses, the C & C restaurants located across Thailand constitute the business-for-social-progress arm of Population and Community Development Association (PDA), a non-governmental organisation established and headed by Mechai. For its pioneering work in family planning and AIDS/HIV prevention, PDA was awarded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Gates Award in 2007.
Having garnered countless awards for himself and PDA, who then is the personal hero of this visionary leader? “I don’t have a hero, but the poor gives me inspiration.”
1 Comment
March 9, 2008 at 12:11 am
that’s an excellent article!