Monday April 24th:
I arrive at the office at 6:30am, which is a sick time to be arriving anywhere. I walk to work from my house along the canal. They are doing construction work on the canal so the section near my house is drained. You can see the thick mud and trash stuck into it and pools of nuclear-green water. I pass one of the “factories” in my neighbourhood and the people inside have been up and working for hours now, if they ever stopped. Most of them live right there in the cement block buildings. I see them sometimes in the evening, dressed nicely and flirting with each other by the canal, but I never see them coming and going. My guess is they are exactly where they come from and also where they are ever going to go.
It’s 6:30am and the sun is just rising but already, it’s just as hot as it ever gets in Canada. I pull the heavy metal gate aside and unlock the first of the bulky padlocks at the office.
Today is Day 1 of the 2006 EIP Recruitment Campaign. I am in the office early to write notes, emails and finalize arrangements for the week. The time rushes by and suddenly it’s 7am and the driver has the car ready, so I shut everything down, turn the lights off, lock everything up and jump into the truck.
In Umphium, we start at 9am and finish at 3pm. Students fill in a three page application form, write two short essays and then sit for individual interviews with the panel of EIP staff. When it’s all finished, we have a few more piles of paper to carry around and we head off in the car, winding our way once more through the mad mountains, down south towards Umphang.
In the car is Cho Cho Aung, former EIP student, who has spent the last year working in the office helping me with the administration of the program. She was born and raised in a refugee camp and has very hazy citizenship status anywhere in this world. She’s come a long way this year but tonight is her first night in a hotel. We are transporting another EIP graduate to her home refugee camp and it’s her first time in a hotel too. Our room has two huge flat mattresses on the floor piled with pillows and blankets and cable TV. It’s raining outside but inside there are just the three of us girls, giggling, eating ice cream and having what feels like my first slumber party in years.
Tuesday April 25th
The hotel is utterly empty but for the two rooms occupied by ourselves and our driver. In the morning, the mountains enclosing the town of Umphang are covered in mist and the sun has not yet risen. I go out onto the marble balcony where there is hot water and instant coffee and soak myself in the silence. There is something very peaceful and comforting about the small town in the middle of the hills and jungle. I could close my eyes and open them on the balcony of the cabin in B.C.
The road from Umphang to NuPo, the refugee camp where we will work today, is rutted and dusty. The camp is flat and crowded. This time last year they built houses for some 500 people who got shipped out of their everyday lives in town into the camp for processing before getting resettled to third countries. They are building again, to prepare for a new campaign to warehouse people.
The day passes in a blurr of people. We eat lunch briefly, a delicious red egg curry over rice and a cup of instant coffee to keep us going. We stop briefly at someone’s house for a visit, then we are on our way.
At a gas station just outside of Umphang, it starts to rain. The sky is a dangerous dark grey and the wind is strong and cool. It’s the kind of weather that makes me break out laughing and want to dance. We left Umphang at 2:30pm. Thinking that we were in no particular rush and with the bad weather pouring sheets of rain upon the winding road, I closed my eyes and slipped off into sleep, thinking that I would enjoy taking it easy on the road.
I woke up gasping because the car was sliding across the road in a spin, completely out of control. The driver was silent and didn’t seem deterred. We were speeding along the slick turns as if it were dry and sunny. In fact, we went around one corner completely blind, the spray from a puddle obscuring the windshield. The rain at times made the windshield a gray haze of indistinct shapes. We didn’t slow down. I was terrified and sat in the back trying to go to sleep again and ignore the madness outside my window and the possibility of a cabbage truck hurling towards us the next time we fishtailed.
Was my driver crazy? Was he angry at me? Did he have a suicidal death wish? I contemplated all these possibilities but didn’t learn the truth until we stopped at his house on the way into Mae Sot.
The man had a soccer practice to get to.
I wanted to kill him.
Instead, I said nothing and went home for a hot shower and a long sleep.
April 26th
I am at the office and it is 6:30am again, and I am pulling the heavy gate open. Today we are staying in Mae Sot, but the exam starts at 9am and I have a million things to do before that and I know the moment people arrive in the office at 8am, I will be swamped. Check the emails, return phone calls, write notes for people to confirm arrangements for the rest of the week. Jump on a motorcycle and head out to the school where we will hold the exam. Cho Cho jumps in a truck and starts to make pick ups for the students.
At the testing location, there seems to have been some miscommunication. We have a room, but it is empty, so I grab some students and we start hauling tables and chairs up to the room. It is 8:30am and I am covered in sweat.
We manage to start the exam at 9:30 and interview over 20 candidates, working straight through until 2:30pm. I promise myself lunch when we get back to the office, but in the mess that waits for me (no arrangements have been made for the rest of our traveling that week), I forget. Instead, a cup of coffee hits my empty stomach and the caffeine rockets into my brain.
I am sitting at my desk doing about four separate things with two separate people and I suddenly notice how high strung I am. I look at the clock and it has suddenly become 5pm. My Country Director comes in, asks me about something, then gives me a funny look when he leaves. I think I may have scared him. I am flying, buzzing buzzing away….
April 27th:
There is no time for the email check. I arrive at the office just before 6am, grab the box with our exams in it and jump in the truck. I’ve never been further north than Mae La camp, an hour up the road, so despite my sleepiness, I am wired awake, watching the scenery pass.
At one point, the road is almost next to the river that divides Burma from Thailand. I look across the water towards the misty hills and think, “There is is.” There are so many differences between life on this side and life on the other side and all there is is a strip of water in between.
We leave the main highway five hours later and head up into the hills. The road to Mae Ra Moe camp is a narrow, steep, dirt track. In the rainy season, it is completely impassable. Supplies come up the river to the camp. Unfortunately, the other side of the river is held by a military group who isn’t particularly keen on refugees. It isn’t safe for foreigners to be on the river, for the most part. Today, the sun is brilliant on the green mountains and winding our way along the dirt road, I feel like we could be going on a fishing trip along a logging road in the Rockies. Some of the inclines are almost 45 degrees they are so steep.
The camp itself has a kind of pastoral beauty to it. More than any other camp I have visited, it most resembles a village. There is a stream running through the middle, with bamboo bridges spanning the water. We pass people bathing and children playing. As we step out into the heat, exhausted from the early morning and the long ride, I want only three things:
a) to jump in the cool water
b) to swing in a hammock between the trees in the shade by the stream
c) to drink a cool beverage.
Instead, we install ourselves in a musty school house and begin the day’s procedures. Standing idle in the shade, I have rivlets of sweat running down my back and I’m having trouble suppressing yawns as I survey the 56 young people who have turned out for the exam. Even doing speed interviews, it’s a long day.
We get into the truck in the afternoon at 4pm, ready for a cold shower and a soft bed in the guesthouse by the river. But as we wind our way home, there is all kinds of drama. Between my mistakes, general misunderstandings and other people’s mishaps, things have gotten quite complicated. There is almost an hour of terse conversation between myself and the driver, with Cho Cho stuck in the middle providing translation. The driver is suggesting he drop me off at a bus station for the rest of my trip so he can go home.
In the end, we get cell phone reception high on a hill looking down on the river valley and put in a few calls to our administrative coordinator. There are a few cows wandering around and the day is getting dark.
Suddenly we are on the road to Mae Hong Son, a town several hours away. I have no idea what is going on. The driver won’t talk to me. We pull into the town around 11pm in the dark. No mention of what time we are meeting tomorrow or what the plan is. I think we are just glad to get rid of each other and go to bed. I fall into a deep sleep the minute my head hits the pillow.
April 28th.
The driver is knocking on our door at 7am. I can’t figure out why, but he’s still not talking to me so I go along with it. I need to pick up permission from Thai officials to visit the camp in this area, but the District Office where I will pick it up isn’t open until 8:30am. The driver seems surprised to find the building closed at 7:30am. There is more drama.
Eventually my driver ditches me, after all kinds of arguing and hassling. I catch a ride with another NGO after working in their office all morning.
Up until now, I have only worked in the Karen refugee camps near Mae Sot, but further north are other ethnic groups who are also being targeted by the Burmese military regime. The camp I am about to visit for the first time today is predominately Karenni people.
The camp isn’t too far away from the city, but the road is terrible. The camp is very inaccessible and the security is very strict. I wear identification around my neck the whole time I am there. The camp is less crowded than most of the other camps, with many rivers and streams running through it and plenty of trees. Unlike Umphium, with all its high hills, there are plenty of roads and the car can drive almost anywhere in the camp.
I spent the morning in the Camp Education office, speaking with the coordinator there, a brilliant and friendly man with a hook instead of a hand. He has been coordinating the educational activities in the Karenni camp for the past 12 years. I curl up in the office and wait for my ride to go back to town. It starts raining and I love the sound of the rain on the thatch.
An hour later, the rain has turned all the roads to rivers of mud. I am in a car with four strangers having a lively conversation while the truck fords rivers and splashes through the mud. There are bamboo bridges for pedestrians but the road for cars just goes right through the water. The sky is dark and we are crammed together in the car laughing. Suddenly, I find that I have rediscovered my sense of adventure in this whole business.
I’ve been bogged down in work, buried in the details and it’s all become routine and normal. It happens to the best of us, no matter where you are in the world. The sneaking insidious creep of complacency. Then somehow, you go around a curve in the road, the skies open up, you find yourself drenched to the skin and confronted with the rawness of being out there in this crazy, unpredictable world and it’s suddenly all new and wonderful and exciting again.
I had dinner with a former student in the offices of her organization. She asks me for advice on a presentation she is giving to European Union delegates and we talk business for awhile. Then, one of the girls there starts braiding my hair and I am sitting in this little house tucked away safely in the middle of nowhere, and we are all giggling, watching TV, and laughing at jokes I don’t understand. The rain is coming down outside and it’s dark, but I am warm and among friends.
My old student drops me late at night at the bus station. The bus is red and rickety. I know right away that it is going to be a long night. Sure enough, only half an hour after I sit down, my ass has already started to hurt. The bus makes so many stops it is impossible to sleep. I occasionally fall off into slumber but waking is painful. My eyes don’t want to open, my body doesn’t want to move, my ass is in pain, someone in the unfortunate position of standing is on my toe.
The Weekend
I have made it to Chiang Mai and more importantly, I have made it to the weekend.
Sunday I am wandering through the streets and I run into my Country Director, heading, like me, for a morning coffee. We spend a few hours in a diner called Jo Jo’s. I feast myself on whole grain breads and a diner style breakfast, drinking far too many cups of coffee and getting myself into super-buzzed-chat mode. Suddenly we are talking about books, movies, philosophy, near death experiences and the meaning of life.
Parting ways on the street, I decide the day is too beautiful to be spent on the bus heading back to Mae Sot. I check into an absolutely beautiful guest house for an extra night and go out into the day, wandering. My feet take me almost immediately to a couple of second hand bookstores. I haven’t been book shopping in about a year and suddenly I am plunged into this two story book packed paradise. I also run into a few friends from Mae Sot and make plans for dinner.
I spend the rest of the day just walking. I walked for hours. I found yet another café, with yet more fabulous cozy décor, and curl up between a fountain and the window, alternating between checking out the passing pedestrians and dipping into the fabulous writing of Henry Miller.
My room has a springy mattress and a tall window with trees outside, letting in golden sunlight in the early evening. It feels wonderful to be clean and cool and comfortable with nowhere to go and nothing to do.
I meet my friends near one of the gates to the old city. On Sunday evening the streets are closed and become a market. Every Buddhist temple along the way is a haven for food. People wander the streets, then slip inside for a quick bite to eat amidst the trees and statues. It feels like a summer festival, anywhere. Everyone is smiling and walking slowly, enjoying themselves with drinks in hand, or little plates of bite-sized food. We stop for a glass of wine and watch the street go by, ending up at an Indian stall in the night market for samosas and curry.
The next day I catch the bus back to Mae Sot: an air conditioned luxury line. I watch the scenery go by with a smile. I’m refreshed and ready for another week.
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