Won't someone please think of the children?

One of Nam's kids with Burma in the bckground

I went to Umphang in the weekend. It’s about three hours drive south of Mae Sot, on the Death Highway, in a very remote area. It’s called the Death Highway due to the intense guerrilla warfare that it used to see, and the many consequential deaths. But this activity stopped in the late 1980s, so now, it’s referred to as the Death Highway due to its frequent mud slides and 1291 corners. A very treacherous drive, needless to say, there was a fair amount of nausea.

  

Umpiem Refugee Camp

Along the way I saw my first refugee camp – Umpiem. I’d seen photos before, but it was still a pretty amazing thing to see for myself. There are security checkpoints about 500m in each direction from the main entrance. The refugees are not allowed out, and we are not allowed in. We didn’t get checked as we were all white. It’s all a bit depressing.

Nam's kids in their dorm/house/school

Nam's kids

On this trip was a girl with whom I live, a guy who is volunteering at MTC for a few weeks and two women from the Burma Children Medical Fund, who needed to interview a patient that they will help get vital surgery for, hence the purpose of the trip.

We arrived at Nam’s house, what an incredible woman. She runs a children’s home for Karen kids whose parents send them to her in Thailand for a chance at a better life and an education. It began with 5 children about 6 years ago, and now she has about 56 children in her care, ranging from about 4 – 10 years old. The kids that can speak Thai live in her house and go to a local Thai school, and the remainder, that can only speak Burmese and Karen, stay on the farm and are taught by three teachers that can’t have even been 20 years old. These were hands down some of the most beautiful children I’ve ever seen. They introduced themselves to us individually – some in English! – and sang us songs. It was pretty funny when we introduced ourselves to them – it took a lot of practice getting “Elizabeth” right. And they understood England, Australia and America, but New Zealand left them looking very puzzled.

Gachor will hve surgery to fix his nose

The kids were happy, well looked after, and very much loved; but it was still incredibly emotional seeing how they live. They only had the bare essentials, they slept, cooked, ate, played and learned in the same big room, and all were wearing very tired looking clothes. The fact that they are sent here for a chance at a better life really puts into perspective how bad it must be back home. The resources they have are incredibly minimal.  

 
It worked out quite well that the child needing surgery was at Nam’s house, as the kids that live here are part of the Mae Tao Clinic dry food programme, and I needed photos of some of the beneficiaries for the annual report, so here’s some happy, healthy kids sitting on some of the rice provided by Mae Tao (which is, in turn, provided by donations to MTC).

Agape kids

Today (June 20) is World Refugee Day, and to start my day, I went to visit another migrant school supported by the Clinic, Agape Orphanage and Learning Centre. Again, these kids are all Burmese children who either live in Thailand illegally, or whose parents have sent them here for a better life. What beautiful kids! I was instantly swamped with little hands, cuddles, prods and questions. They wanted to know why the top of my forearms were brown like them (i.e. tanned) but the underside was white. They wanted to know where NZ was. They wanted to know how I got such a big hole in my ear (stretcher). God they were cute. They all demanded to have their photos taken with every possible arrangement of themselves and each other. After the initial excitement of me and Michelle’s arrival died down, it was business as usual – meaning it was time to start the day off with a hearty round of songs. The kids singing here are just so glorious, they are all so proud, and strangely good.

Agape is an example of an extremely well run school, the kids are clean, well fed and get good educations from 11 teachers that have pledged their commitment to Agape for the rest of their lives. Most of them were only about 21. But they too are desperately short of resources. They have just built a library, but it only has a handful of books. And the kids only have one notebook each, but they take at least 3 subjects each.

It is amazing over here; there is just so much good stuff going on, and so many worthwhile causes. The flipside of that is that the reason there is so much good going on is because there is actually so much bad going on to necessitate it. But if I spend my time here thinking about the bad, I am going to come home broken, so for now, I’m concentrating on the good – these incredible babies are making me smile today. 

Some of the kids from Agape