A day in the life

Most photos courtesy of my friend Jo Olney

Who says you're the normal one?

I don’t really know what I want to write about this week. Life has just been plodding along and is rapidly becoming very uninteresting to me. I know that my mundane is probably very different from your mundane. But everything here has become normal. For example, a staff member died suddenly and without warning last night. So today, there is a funeral happening at the clinic. Now, his tragic and untimely death is not “normal” at all, and there are a lot of people around that are understandably upset, especially as he was only 32 and his wife also works here. Although, many people are not that surprised by his death, as death is so common here. The part about it that is “normal” to me, is that I don’t really feel like it’s weird that there is a funeral going on about 50m from where I am sitting now. Or that I can hear one of the men that lives here, a one armed, one eyed ex-Karen National Union General, who has severe PTSD and lives in a world of his own, walking around yelling at nothing. Sometimes he sings songs – Amazing Grace and Take Me Home, Country Roads are two of his favourites. Another woman that lives here walks around rambling to herself all day.

It doesn’t seem strange anymore that there is a family of chickens living in the doorway to the Medical Inpatients department, or that there are very small children wandering around with tiny babies. Or that these small children and tiny babies often pee on the ground right next to my bare feet, instead of in a toilet. Or that as I type this, a dad is advising his three little kids on peeing on my friends bike, right outside my office window: other than at my screen, there is nowhere else for me to look but at them. It smells bad

Before I came here, the newest baby I’d ever seen was my cousin’s daughter, born in March, who was one day old when I met her. Now I see brand-spanking new babies on a daily basis. I am no longer surprised to see people of all ages getting around with only one leg, one arm or often, no legs at all. The dark red betel spit all over the ground doesn’t faze me; neither does the beautiful, creamy white of the Thanaka that the women and children apply to their faces each morning. This is all normal to me now. And that, in itself, feels like it is not normal. 

Before I came here, my normal was working as little as possible at a job I hated so that I would have money to travel around the country in the weekends getting drunk, eating shit food and watching bands play. And I loved it. My normal was wearing black jeans and hoodies. And I loved them. But I haven’t worn a pair of long pants or a long sleeved top in three months, let alone a pair of jeans or a hoodie. I also haven’t worn closed shoes in this time. Only jandals (and I have a pretty sweet jandal tan on the go). So which life is more normal? For the people that live here, my life at home would be incomprehensible. For some of you at home, my life here may be incomprehensible. “Normal” is a subjective term. Life is a subjective journey. I definitely miss my life at home, but for now, my weird life here has become very normal to me. I’m happy with that.

Just like the butterfly, we too will awaken in our own time

I’ve just gotten home from Cambodia. I had to go there to get a new Thai visa. It was a strange 10 days for me, and I feel like I kind of need to just sneeze my brain out onto my keyboard and hit send. So sorry if this is a long one for you, but there's some things on my mind. Firstly, a few weeks back, Al Jazeera were at the Clinic getting footage for a feature on Burma, here you can see Mae Sot, the town that I live in, and some of my colleagues, not to mention the general population I work with daily and the plight of the Burmese people:

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/101east/2011/08/201181073919760492.html

When I first got to Kampuchea I went to Battambang to stay with my friend Marnie. It was just great to see a friendly face from home. It was also great to see the work that she is doing with her organisation, Cambodia Children’s Trust (CCT). They are so much more than an orphanage, and I really commend them for the work that they do to improve the lives of their community. In just one day while I was there they were able to alleviate one poverty-stricken family of their crippling debt ($50USD), and begin to look at sustainable ways to help the woman, her two boys and her husband, who is disabled by polio. In the afternoon we took a donor out to visit his sponsor family at the site of the home he has funded to be built for them, it’ll be furnished and the family will be set up with a sustainable business to take them out of the cycle of poverty. Next door to the new house live the most incredible couple I have ever seen. In Cambodia, for obvious reasons, it is very rare to see elderly people, and when you do, they seem particularly special and worthy of your attention. As for this couple, they were about 78 and 83 – ancient by current Cambodian standards. Would you just look at their faces. Are these not some of the most incredible faces you have ever seen? There is so much history in that skin, how much have they seen in their long lives. They do not have children of their own, and the parents of the family having the house built are orphans themselves, so just like that, a three-generational family has been set up, and from the looks of things, it is going to work out very well.

It’s amazing in Cambodia that there are so many organisations available and able to help a problem that seems never-ending – approximately 60% of the population is children. The current generation was born of parents whose own parents were suffering from pretty serious post-traumatic-stress-disorder. Many of them therefore have no parenting skills themselves, so the likes of CCT are helping to raise children that can stop this cycle, and successfully raise their own children. They are genuinely helping in the development of Cambodia.

But being there and seeing all the wonderful development made me really sad for the people of Burma. Burma is not even remotely close to reaching anything resembling rebuilding or development. We can’t even go in to help the people – they have to come to us. There are some organisations that operate cross-border, in fact, Mae Tao is one of them, we have five satellite clinics inside the Karen State. But still, they are only a drop in an incredibly vast ocean of need.

After Battambang I went to Phnom Penh, where I had to get my visa. I was there for nearly five days, and it took me until my third day to decide that I would go and visit Tuol Sleng, otherwise known as Secret Prison 21 (S-21), Cambodia’s main Genocide museum. I was really torn as to whether I needed to see such a hideous place or not. In the end I decided that I did. It was horrible, a place of nightmares, for obvious reasons. But something that really got to me was the masses of tourists taking photos, and videoing (with commentary) the entire place. But what for? Who is to see these photos of images of disfigured bodies tortured to the point of being unrecognisable as a person? And why? What good does taking photos do? Are these people going to have a slide show when they get home for all their friends? Or send out a big group email about their amazing trip to Cambodia, including photos of Angkor Wat, them drinking cheap cocktails, and naked, headless, tortured corpses? Needless to say, I didn’t take any pictures; instead I spent my time there silently contemplating the horrors of humanity. 

So it was with a very heavy heart that I decided that yes, I would visit the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh as well. All the while keeping in mind that all of Cambodia is one big killing field. I kind of wished that I had had a friend here to hold hands with, but being alone meant I didn’t have to say anything. For one of only a very few times in my life, there was nothing I wanted to say. My mind was racing uncontrollably, but there were no words. I took no photos here either, as there is no need for me to show you the ragged clothing that is still coming up from the mass graves during each heavy rain. Or the teeth that scatter the paths, or the shards of bone that have been collected by passersby and piled neatly at the base of a flowering tamarind tree. I didn’t feel compelled to take photos of the excavated graves as the other tourists did, or of the pagoda of skulls that entomb hundreds of souls. It was enough for me to see it, to feel it, and just to know what had happened and to take the time to pay my respects and shed my silent tears.

Something that I spend lot of time thinking about, not just recently, but over the past ten years or so, is, at what point does a despotic ruler decide, ok, you know what? Let's just do it. Let's just kill as many of these people as we can as quickly and effectively as possible. To hell with the consequences. At what exact moment did Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, Robert Kajuga, and countless others in history, just say “fuck it, let's just do it”. And with that order, hundreds of thousands of millions of people are killed in the most brutal and inhumane ways. And really, there are no repercussions. There is no justice or sentence that can be carried out that can ever make up for any of the heinous crimes committed by these men and their regimes. 

What I cannot and will not ever understand is how someone, a leader, a “revolutionary” can know that those beneath them are carrying out the systematic torture, rape, and slaughter of their people who, in general, are punished simply for being born, and be ok with it. I mean, I know how it works. I’ve studied moral and political philosophy. I understand the arguments. I have read Hobbes’ Leviathan, I get it. But I cannot accept it.

Every time it happens, after The Nazi’s and the Shoah, after the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide, after the Interahamwe in Rwanda, the world says “We will not forget the victims. We will never let this happen again”.

Well, you know what? It’s happening right now in Burma. Sure, it may not be classified as genocide, yet. But did you know that Burma spends at least 25% of its annual budget on its military, and that figure is just what they officially declare? And did you also know that Burma is not at war with any external enemies? Did you know that Burma is currently experiencing the longest running civil war in history? Did you know that Burma is one of the highest ranking countries for using child soldiers? Or that there are now more Burmese landmine victims per year than Cambodian?

Cambodia is rebuilding itself, slowly but surely. Germany has become a strong and powerful nation, so too has Israel, out of the ashes of the Shoah – but that is a rant that will have to wait for another day. Rwanda is rebuilding itself extremely well and is rapidly becoming a highly desirable tourist destination. If the distance Burma has to go before it can be classed among these places as even remotely safe, stable and democratic, wasn’t so devastating, it would almost be laughable.

The crimes against humanity that have been committed by the Khmer Rouge, the Nazi regime, and the Iterahamwe have at least been attempted to be tried in international courts. But those responsible for the decimation, oppression, torture, slaughter, repression, rape and all kinds of other human rights abuses in Burma have never been held accountable. I’m pretty sure no one has ever even tried. Why would they bother? Most people don’t even know where Burma is. 

These are the kinds of things that weigh on my mind. I wish that I was some kind of tortured artist like so many of my talented loved ones, because then I could make something beautiful out of the way that I feel. I could write a song, or a poem (but I hate poems so I would never do that) or paint a painting. But I can’t create those things, so instead I will just keep sending these words to you in the hope that you care and that maybe one day you can help, in your own special way. 

The one thing that made me smile at the Killing Fields was that, amongst the bones, teeth and scraps of clothing that litter the grass, flowers were growing, and there were butterflies everywhere. Nature will always create beauty, even if the world around it won’t stop creating pain.

A town so close but yet so far

Here's a great article in the Irawaddy about what life is like here in Mae Sot. The musician at the end is a personal favorite of mine, he's a great guy. We like to call him Mae Sot's John Lennon. Amongst other things, he sings all kinds of Cat Stevens and Bob Dylan songs, it's pretty sweet.

http://www.issuu.com/irrawaddy/docs/irr_vol.19no2_june2011_issuu/20?viewMode=magazine&mode=embedv