Mae Sot: Day One

Ok. I’m in Mae Sot. Where to begin this entry? (By the way, I hate the word blog so when I figure out something else to call this I’ll let you know). Well, perhaps with the bus ride here, it was uneventful for the most part, but as we neared Mae Sot we started climbing up big hills through the jungle. Pretty cool. Then we pulled over and a bunch of immigration police came aboard and started checking all our ID’s. One girl apparently didn’t have the right kind, because she was led off the bus looking absolutely terrified. I felt so sorry for her, she can’t have been older than 17. She had that awful look on her face that says “Who me? No I am innocent...but I am definitely guilty”. It was horrible. Reality hit pretty quick then: I’m entering an area in which a huge portion of the population are living here illegally. 

I get to my house; it’s so hot I think I might die. And this is at 6.30pm. How will I survive the day? There is no air con at my house. Just an old, sad looking fan. The guy that runs the house helps me set up my gigantic mosquito net. I find some food. I collapse into bed (onto bed? It’s just a squab on the floor after al). I can’t sleep for hours. It’s far too hot.

I wake to the sound of roosters and dogs barking. Today is my first day at work. I get up and eat a slice of bread and some pineapple with the two other girls that live here (they are also working at Mae Tao doing a medical elective for a month or so). We all down our malaria pills and off we go. 

 

You would all be so proud of me, I biked all the way to work! I didn’t even fall off! Hard to believe I know, but true.

I arrive and am shown around. This place is amazing. There are posters of Aung San Suu Kyi everywhere.  It’s all so basic and seems so chaotic, but somehow it all works. It’s just as you’d expect a clinic in a border town in more or less a third world country to be: dirty, desperately lacking in supplies, outdated everything, hot, smelly, people everywhere. The buildings are sprawled in a rather small area and the ‘office’ is tiny. One of my favourite parts of the clinic so far is the maternity ward, there are about 8 babies born here every day. There are babies all over the place. Sadly, a set of twin boys were abandoned here today. This is not uncommon. It was estimated they were only 4-5 weeks old, but turns out they were actually born on Valentine’s day.  My other favourite place so far is the prosthetics workshop. This is where they make all the artificial limbs for the clinic’s amputees. The case load board shows why each person needs their prosthetic – all but two are because of land mines. 

I find a space in the finance room and start going through the email’s I’ve been sent about work. It’s so hot and it’s only 9.30am. People come and go, I am introduced to more of them than I can possibly remember.

At 2pm I meet with Dr Cynthia. What an amazing woman. She is the director of the clinic; she founded it in 1988 after fleeing Burma during the student uprisings. I’m helping her figure out the answers to some pretty tricky questions she’s being asked in order to win a prize for her humanitarian work, this one comes with a significant grant too. She’s won heaps of prizes for all kinds of things; in 2005 she was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. I think that’s something pretty special. And I think it’s pretty special that I get to help her.

After this meeting I am way too hot and sweaty and tired and thirsty to be able to concentrate anymore so I get back on my bike and head home. But I get lost. Of course. I also have several near-misses with cars. Of course. I finally figure out how to get home, by this time I am sweatier than I think I have ever been, and am about to die of thirst and heat exhaustion. But at least I have a gigantic pineapple in my basket. That’s right, my bike has a basket. 

That basically brings me to now: sitting on my squab in front of my fan wearing very little, guzzling water and pineapple. I don’t think I’m going to be a normal heat or, for that matter, a normal level of clean for several months.... 

Here's the Mae Tao website

http://maetaoclinic.com/

Or you can join the facebook page for updates

https://www.facebook.com/MaeTaoClinic