MS Kanok-tip is President and Pioneer/Founder of the Klong Toey Slum Chapter of the Physically Handicapped (the Chapter), that is, the Five Kiosk Workforce. At 38 years of age, she's tough in many ways but very fragile in others. Never went to school. One leg gone from bone cancer years ago. Just recently her husband, while working as an assistant bartender, began a relationship with a short time girl from a remote province who hires herself out of the bar and he left Kanok-tip. One other thing: Tip is four months pregnant.

The cook found them at the side entrance just before dawn, when you could still make out the stars: Six-year-old Fon, her mum and our ferocious, slum-born, street-wise guard dog, all curled up asleep together.

The triplets skip along footpaths, giggle, chirp, chatter. They have signals - really a special world all their own - especially at secret-telling time, which is pretty much all the time, writes FR JOE MAIER.

Up until two months ago, a few mornings each week, just before his kindergarten class, Master Note, a nine-year-old boy in our care, rode his imaginary broomstick horse around our Mercy Centre compound...