The Children I Don't See

It’s the children that make the most impact. When you hear stories from people that have been in similar places, they all say the same thing. So it sounds like a cliché, but the children really are the ones that affect me the most. Their innocence is still, to some extent, intact; at least it is for the babies. They just have no idea that this world they have been born into is one that will force them into the same inescapable cycle of oppression and poverty that has plagued the generations before them. At this stage, they are still content to just sit there, sucking on a scrap of food given to them by their parents. They don’t know where Burma is, or that if they are lucky enough to grow up, they will probably watch a least one of their own children die. Or that, for some reason, I was born in a developed nation where my parents were able to provide me with healthcare, nurture my curiosities, and give me a good education. The babies are still truly innocent.

The older children affect me in a different way. The things that some of them have seen are horrific. The trials they have had to overcome in their short lives are impossible to relate to. And the children that I see are considered the lucky ones. Because they have gotten out. They are here getting medical treatment. Or an education. The ones I don’t see are the ones that are destined to follow their parents as they run through the jungle, fleeing their villages in fear of an army set on destroying their lives. The ones that are forced to go with only the smallest amounts of food, and the ones that are destined to die in the jungle, without any medical care, before their fifth birthday. 

The children I see are the ones that managed to get help after the landmine blew their legs off. Here they will receive appropriate amputations, and in time, artificial legs. The ones I don’t see are those that died of infections caused by their maimed, untreated stumps. The children I see are the ones whose parents managed to get them to the clinic in order to receive treatment for complications caused by chronic malnutrition. The ones I don’t see are those that suffer severely for want of a few nutritious meals. The meals that I complained about as a child, and refused to eat because I didn’t like one of the ingredients, or because we had it last week.

The children I see don’t live very nice lives. And they are the lucky ones. I can’t even articulate how I feel for the children I don’t see.

Have you ever seen the rain?

Fishing in the flooded fields!

Well, it’s rained more or less solidly since Friday night. It’s now Monday night. For those of you that have never been to a tropical country in the rainy season, the kind of rain I am talking about is not your average shower. It is big fat rain drops that fall from the sky at an alarming rate. In mere seconds you are totally saturated. And there are no joy arches, or 'rainbows', where this rain is concerned. In most instances, when it rains like this (usually for about 15 minutes a couple of times a day), you simply take shelter inside. But when it’s been going on for three days, well, you have to leave the house at some point. And when you do, it’s a pretty soggy experience. On Saturday when I went to get dinner, there was surface flooding everywhere. People were sandbagging, and bailing water out of their stores and homes. I had to wade through the market, which was under a foot of water, black water. I was really hoping I didn’t have any cuts on my feet. The chain came off my bike, so I had to push it. I also didn’t really have a jacket, just a shitty, cheap plastic poncho and a broken umbrella. Once again, I have you conjuring up images of how stupid I looked. There really is just no way to keep clean and dry in this country. 

Anyway, I got a better, bright blue poncho yesterday, so things are looking up. The rain is apparently meant to keep going like this for a couple more days, I’ve heard that the road out of town is currently blocked as there has been a landslide. I really hope it’s sorted by Thursday, as I am taking the night bus to Bangkok, and going to Burma on Saturday with my friend Pip. It’s all very exciting. We’re flying into Yangon, and are in the country for a week. So next time you hear from me (in two weeks) I’m sure I’ll have some much more interesting things to talk about than the weather. Right now I’m off to the (black) market to sort some stuff for the trip.

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

Down at the border

Me in Thailand, Myawaddy, Burma behind me

The weekend was great. We went to the Myanmar/Thai border; it’s just down from the clinic, about 4 kms away, so right there really. What a crazy place. The actual border, The Thai/Myanmar Friendship Bridge, has been closed since July last year. But that doesn’t stop people crossing the river on inner tubes to get to Thailand, in plain sight of both countries’ border security. The security was a bit scary. As a New Zealander, I’m not used to seeing people carrying guns in plain sight, and the Thai army at the border have enormous automatic rifles. It’s very unsettling as they are just roaming around with the

Thai border control

people (including us) that are down at the border. The part of Burma I can see from said border is the town of Myawaddy. It’s where the majority of our patients at the clinic come from. And it looks terribly run down and impoverished. I need to do some asking around, as I am not sure why they army – on both sides – turns such a blind eye to the people crossing. It could be due to bribery, it could be because it’s too hard to stop so many of them, it could be that this is the safest place to ‘let’ them do it. I’m not sure. 

Crossing from Burma on an inner tube

 Whatever the reason, the border was a particularly interesting place to go. It was very unusual for me to just look across the river to a different country. In NZ (for those of you that don’t know) we don’t have any border countries, and neither does out nearest neighbour, Australia. So borders are a bit of a novelty, especially heavily armed, illegal ones. Random fact: 70% of the 2000km Thai/Burma border is landmined.

On Sunday we went for a bike ride to an apparently amazing temple that is quite high up and overlooks Burma. Obviously, the word apparently gives away the fact that we didn’t actually make it there. We ended up going in completely the wrong direction and after 30kms of biking, in which I doubled my friend on the back of my bike for 10kms because she got a flat tyre (no, you didn’t read that wrong, I really biked 30kms), we ended up at some hot springs. Not exactly what we wanted after the hottest, sweatiest bike ride of my life. But they were still fairly impressive. We managed to wrangle ourselves a ride back to Mae Sot in the back of someone’s ute. A shout out has to go to Jo for giving me her Thai phrase book before I left, otherwise I think we would have died trying to bike the 30kms back home.

The Burma Children Medical Fund team in action at the Clinic

This little boy has congenital heart disease

Speaking of phrases, I’m slowly but surely picking up language here and there. The problem is that I’m picking up Thai, Karen and Burmese, and it’s not always obvious when to use what language. Mae Sot is such a cultural, religious and ethnic melting pot, and the different ethnicities are not necessarily easy to distinguish on first glance. I suppose the default is to use Thai, then try Burmese, then Karen, but by the time you’ve used all three, things are getting very confusing. 

Finally, here are the answers to a few commonly asked questions I’m getting from home:

Am I enjoying myself – YES! It’s great here, and so far, I love it.

Where am I living – at this stage in a kind of guest house with three English medical students. I’m going to look at a house with two other westerners tomorrow, it’s in the Muslim quarter, so should be interesting.

What kind of work am I doing – I am currently responsible for the final editing of the Annual Report, my main task, aside from proof-reading and  fixing English, is to cut it down a lot, but people keep giving me more content to add, so it’s a bit difficult. I’m also writing a general six-month report for some donors and a six-month month progress report for the donors that pay for this amazing initiative that we run on comprehensive reproductive training for people inside Burma. It also supports the training of Traditional Birth Attendants, and provides resources for TBA’s and new mothers inside Burma. I’ve been helping Dr Cynthia with a few things, I’ve been writing up her answers to questions she’s being asked for a major award she is nominated for; she also wants me to start working on CPPCR – Committee for the Protection and Promotion of Child Rights. I’m also teaching English to staff after work each day, which is a lot of fun. These are just snippets of what I’m doing – it’s a busy place and there is a lot to get done.

Where do the patients come from – we primarily look after displaced people from Burma. They cross the Moei River on the inner tubes each day, some of them are also living in Thailand illegally. There are a few that have legal permits to live here, but the vast majority do not. The refugee camps have medical facilities for those living inside the camps, so the people we get are largely illegal’s.

Thai and Burmese dinner

What am I eating – Thai and Burmese food of course! Though sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between what ethnicity’s food I’m eating at what time, because things are not usually called Burmese Soup or Thai noodles etc, so it’s just guess work really. Now a question for you: how much meat is too much meat to be eating and still thinking that you are a vegetarian? This is a question I am faced with daily...

The Prosthetics Workshop

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

To haggle or not to haggle? Seriously, that is the question.

I’ve realised that I’m not a very good tourist. Perhaps this is because I’ve never really been a tourist before. Or perhaps it’s because I’m just itching to get to Mae Sot so haven’t put much thought into Chiang Mai. I’m not sure. But I do think that waking up at 5.30am and not being able to get back to sleep may play a part in it. I woke up, ate my complimentary breakfast and was ready to hit the mean streets of Chiang Mai by 7am. Unfortunately, the mean streets weren’t ready for me yet. So all I could do was wander about feeling warm. By about 8.30 I headed back to my hotel as nothing was going to open until 10.30am. So after a swim (in which I discovered my amazing 1970s homemade one piece that I got from a garage sale, is actually see-through), I went for another walk. This time things were open which was nice. But I think my haggling skills need some work. When is it appropriate to haggle? What kind of price is silly to ask? How the hell do I know if I’ve scored a ‘deal’? Because the bag that I got for 120 Baht this morning, about $4.20, would be sold for around $25 in NZ. Sounds like a deal to me. But I’m sure one of you will be thinking that I got jipped. Should I have tried to get it even cheaper? And what’s the deal with haggling in shops? Do you do it? Do you just haggle everywhere? These are serious questions, I know. Example: I bought two books for my bus ride to Mae Sot on Tuesday, they were both brand new, and were ‘classics’. I got George Orwell’s Burmese Days and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient (I know, I know.  But I couldn’t stop thinking of that episode of Seinfeld). Anyways, together they were about 350 Baht. As I was in a bonafide shop and not some kind of market/stall, I didn’t know if it was appropriate to haggle, both books together only cost me about $12NZ, and just as with the bag, still a good price I recon.  Long boring story short, I don’t know how to haggle. And I don’t know how to be a tourist either. I’ve looked around the city, I’ve seen some very beautiful temples, and I’ve attempted to buy things. Oh, and of course I’ve eaten lots of delicious treats. What do I do now? Another question, do you tip in Thailand? I sure hope you don’t, because if you do, I’m being an asshole.

In other news, I’ve managed to give myself a ridiculous sunburn on day one, consisting of two halter singlet lines, two different necklaces in the middle, and then the aforementioned one-piece line thrown in for good measure. And have gigantic blisters between my toes and on the ball of one foot. Now, I don’t want you to think I am complaining. Because I am most certainly not. I am merely letting you know how ridiculous I look at the moment. Next time I venture out of this nice cool room it will be to buy some more delectable food, but I will also hunt down some sunblock and band aids while I'm at it. I’m meeting with my new work people tomorrow (hence why I’m in this city in the first place), and I’m going to look like an idiot. Ah well, that’s what you get eh.

PS. Chiang Mai is exponentially better than Bangkok (after all, the 16 hours I spent in Bangkok do qualify me as an expert in the place).

I'm here

Ok, after several hours of travel, I've made it to Bangkok. It's hot. But not too hot. Yet. And it's very muggy. But you knew that already. I arrived about 1am last night, which was about 6am my time, and I couldn't sleep on the plane at all, so getting to bed was pretty exciting stuff. Now I'm awake and listening to the noises of Bangkok on the street below. Speaking of which, I was awoken this morning by the some of the loudest thunder I've ever heard. It was very confusing, I had no idea where I was, but once the rain started I remembered...Bangkok!

The idea of going out there right now is making me feel tired, and I have to be back at the airport in 4 hours to fly to Chiang Mai, so as lame and completely unadventuous as it is, I think I might just hide in my room until it's time to go. Well, at least for the next two hours until check-out...I wish I hadn't finished my book on the plane...

It seems that all the info on how to edit this is written in Thai, let's see how this goes then.