From Rice Paddies to Refugees

I've got a bad case of writer's block going on right now. There is so much to say, so much to express about what I've been experiencing since my last post that it almost seems useless to try, but in two days I leave for India and I have a strong feeling that from then on out my mind will be too overwhelmed to recall details about the time I've spent in Thailand, so I'm sorry if this post isn't as exhaustive and descriptive as it should be. And it should be. Just a few miles to the west of me is Burma, a country that I'd bet a lot of people don't know much about. I only became aware of the situation a few months before I left for my trip, but for the past week I've been living either in Mae Sot, a border city, or in a small orphanage for Burmese Refugee children, and I've talked face to face with victims of the crimes occuring across the river. The Burmese government is a military dictatorship. For years, it targeted ethnic groups around the country, trying to gain control of all of them. Eventually, a cease-fire was signed between the army and the ethnic groups, all except the largest one. The Karen people are now the main target of the government. They are exploited to extremes; taken as slaves, killed, their villages burned, their crops stolen. They are treated like second-class citizens and many aren't allowed to get passports, making it impossible to leave the country. Thousands have fled to Thailand and the majority are living in the refugee camp outside of Mae Sot. 41,000 refugees crammed into one village. At the orphanage, a group of students who fled Burma 4 years ago stayed with us. It was their first time out of the camp since they arrived, and very few students get the liberty to do that, even though they only went a few miles up the road, and I've never seen so many beautiful, beautiful smiles in my life. As we bitched and moaned about blisters and sunburns and bug bites, the Karen students worked harder and longer than everyone else in their flip flops and long sleeves and loved it. It was incredibly inspiring. The people we were working for have been doing so much to support the refugees. We were working to build a vocational skills center because refugees around the area generally aren't allowed to go to University (as they aren't allowed out of the camp). Ole, the Norwegian man who ran the orphange, is 24. He has two orphanges already up and running and is working to build a third. Makes you wonder what in the hell you're doing with your life. It was one of the most amazing places I've ever been, visually as well. The river we swam in after work every day was the border between Thailand and Burma. We floated on our backs down the current staring up into the high forested mountains of one of the most controversial countries in the world. It was hard to imagine, as we watched the village children run and scream and splash, what their lives were like before they crossed over that river. I've never seen such beautiful people in my life.
Before we came to Mae Sot and got smacked in the face with the reality of what's been happening in Burma, we were quietly lounging out in MaeJo. After the hot shot of tourism we got in Chiang Mai, a city whose signs were spelled out in English instead of Thai, MaeJo was like a cool fruit smoothie. Perhaps like the pinaepple one I just drank. Pure, simple, and all local. We stayed in homestays. I was lucky that the daughter of the couple whose house I lived in spoke a tiny bit of English, so it wasn't all just nods and smiles and gestures. I was even luckier that her daughter was the most adorable 2-year-old ever. It's so easy to get along with people without language when there is a cute kid around. While there, we worked in the gardens, carried bricks, helped with some earthen building, swam in the resevoir, hiked to a monk's home by a jungle waterfall, and learned a bit about farming in the area. Our leader, Alex, who was with us earlier in the trip, speaks fluent Thai so on our last night there, we were finally able to communicate with the people who had been hosting us for the past three days. Their story is pretty telling, and it's an essential piece of my research project. The villagers in MaeJo farm for their main source of income. When they were children, their parents were farming in the old ways without any Western influence. One day, they said, a white person came to their village and told them that he could help them make a lot more money with their farming. He bought their oxen and sold them machines, took their hoes and gave them pesticides, and took their seeds and gave them "better" ones. Because the village is so small, they only had one teacher and that teacher could only teach up to the fourth grade level, so these farmers had almost no education. When we asked them why they believed this person so readily, they responded that they had never known not to trust a person like that. In Thailand, villages are like families. Everyone supports everyone else, and the idea of someone from the outside coming in and hurting them like that was foreign. And it did hurt. The pesticides are making the villagers sick. The oxen created fertilizer for them and reproduced to give them new "machines" when they got too old, but the machines are breaking down and they can't afford new ones and oxen have suddenly become commercialized as well, so they can't afford to buy their oxen back. The seeds don't create new seeds, so every year they have to go back and buy brand new seeds whereas before they got their seeds from the previous years harvest. Now, the village is in debt, the health of the people is slipping, and the crops they are producing aren't as good as they were before. But the amazing part of this story is that the villagers have long sinced realized the faulty ways of Western agriculture. The reason we could stay in the village is because they started a homestay program to bring in travellers who want to experience village life and share what their lives are like at home. That way, income from the travellers can help the village buy back their oxen and start farming like they used to. Because the pesticides and machines allowed them to grow more, but shabbier, crops, they started selling to large companies like Lay's potato chips to make money back (another suggestion from a Westerner), but they don't want to support large companies like that anymore and they just want to be able to farm sustainably to feed themselves and maybe sell to some surrounding villages. These uneducated villagers in Thailand have realized how bad Western agriculture is and are working to change it, and yet we continue to farm unsustainably in America after decades of screwing up.
So I know I didn't get to talk much about my actual experiences, but I wanted to share these stories while they are still fresh in my mind. If anyone wants to learn more about the plight of the Karen or do something to help, try http://uscampaignforburma.org/. I hope my words have been able to convey, at least a little, the passion and love behind these stories of pain and exploitation, because more than anything what I've seen in Thailand is a people whose will power to overcome adversity is breathtaking, and their smiles are contagious. This is a beatiful country.
Next time, from India!