Amongst Refugees

I've never written about my time with the refugees, I never felt like I could do the experience justice. I'm going to give it a try now, but I'm sure it won't live up to the true experience itself.
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It had been a long two days of traveling through a part of Thailand rarely seen by foreigners. I left Chiang Mai at 8am the previous morning by train. It was a painfully long journey to the town of Pitsanulok, where I disembarked the train to hop on a bus to the town of Tak. The bus dropped me off at the Tak station at 6pm, too late to catch a bus into Mae Sot, so I stayed at what I believe was the only guest house in town. The next morning, I took a 2 hour bus ride into the heart of Mae Sot, a town the likes of which I had never experienced before. I sat waiting for my contacts to arrive at a bus station that was also a food market. Stray dogs wandered all over the place, trucks circled blaring political slogans for the upcoming elections, motorbikes whined up and down the road. Muslims, Chinese, Thai, and Burmese walked the streets. It felt like I had left Thailand altogether. This was nothing like Chiang Mai or Bangkok or even the Thai-Laos border town of Nong Khai. This was the wild west. The tension in the air so thick it could've been cut with a knife. Police sit at checkpoints looking to catch any Burmese refugees walking in places they didn't belong. Soldiers on call in case fighting flared up between rebels and government forces on the Burmese side of the border. It isn't uncommon for the fighting to cross over on this side of the world.

My contacts drove up in a truck. Their names were Annie and Klose. Obviously, these weren't their given names, the refugees can't use their birth names for fear they may be found out and thrown in jail or back into the refugee camps. Annie was a striking beautiful girl who spoke impeccable english. A truly brilliant girl. Klose was a very friendly guy, but his english knowledge was basic. Conversations were typically difficult to maintain with Klose at first, but once I began to grow accustomed to his english abilities, he became one of my favorite people to talk to.

The first matter of business after a quick meal was to drive me to my schools. Most people only taught at one school, but they didn't have anyone else besides me, so they needed me to work double duty. I was going to be a good soldier so I agreed, I would do whatever they asked of me. That led to me taking over the study group as well. They were going to make use of me. The first stop was the primary school Ray Khaw Htoo. To reach this school, we had to pass through a military checkpoint, which would serve as a constant reminder of the instability of the region every day I went to teach. The school was located amongst large rice paddies, hidden in the back of a farming village. These people lived off the land. The school had it's own rice paddy that the female teachers maintained. Chickens wandered around, their eggs used as protein. Rice and egg was the usual meal for the students at the school. Even though the classrooms were all open air, they were damn hot. They consisted of communal desks facing a small green chalkboard or whiteboard.

After greeting the other teachers at the school, we were off to my middle school called Rocky Mountain 2. This school was about 10 kilometers down a bumpy country road. It was hidden in a patch of trees right off the road and right across from the Thai-Burma border. One could literally cross the border without much effort, but a pale white man (actually after this long in Thailand I had developed some color, mostly red) crossing the border could mean imprisonment by the Burmese government who would've seen it as a great prize to be able to torture an "American Imperialist." If that didn't happen, there was always the risk of just getting shot on sight. Either way, crossing the border illegally was not high on my list of "to-do" activities. This school was very basic as well, open-air classrooms with white boards in front. I was surprised to see that the 7th and 8th graders I would be teaching were actually only a few years from my own age. The youngest were around 16 years old and the oldest were 21. This is just the reality of refugee schools, many students don't get the opportunity to advance grades because they have to return to the refugee camps or cross back into Burma to deal with family emergencies. Some never returned, and others might disappear for a year or two. In all of my classes, I had students leave back home, never to return because of issues back home. This understandably leads to a prolonged 1st-8th grade process. These classes were also much bigger than the primary school ranging from 28-35 students, depending on who was present each day. These students were also much more cynical. They were older and more experienced than their primary school counterparts. They knew that the best they could do in their lives was to avoid being thrown back into the refugee camps, avoid getting killed back in Burma, and maybe the men could escape to Bangkok or Chiang Mai work horribly long hours of back breaking labor for meager wages, or the women could do the same as prostitutes. Hope did not spring eternal for these students.

After walking around and seeing the campus, it was time for Annie, Klose, and I to head to the village of Mae Pa, a place where Burmese refugees could live away from the watchful eye of the Royal Thai Police. This was where I would stay for large portions of my time and where I would teach my study group. The refugees lived in the homes of French and British expats who bought property in the area for vacations. The homes were very simple. They had a small kitchen, two bedrooms, and squat toilets with water troughs to bathe from. To these people, this was luxury living. Much better than the malaria infested camps they would otherwise occupy. It was here where I would eat my homemade Karen dinners during the week with Annie, moments I will never forget.

Annie is one of the most remarkable people I have ever met. She was my boss, my coordinator, but she was much more than that. She had eyes that could pierce your soul, a smile that could melt a glacier, flawless skin, and an amazing physique. She was brilliantly smart, possessed a wisdom that one could only gain by experiencing what she had during her life. On the surface, she was the eternal optimist, hoping that one day she could return to her home to live in peace. Hoping that she could escape the reality she lived in to go become something that her people could be proud of. She dreamed that she would meet the man who could rescue her from the prison she occupied in Western Thailand. I once told a friend that I never experienced love at first sight, that was a lie. I just didn't want to tell this story at the time. Maybe I didn't love Annie at the exact first sight, but I did after one day of being around her and I know she fell in love with me. I will never forget the way she would look at me when I would walk into the room, the way she would gaze into my eyes when we would talk, and the way she would nestle my neck as we would ride down a road on my motorbike. She hoped I could be her hero. She told me that I was unlike any person she had met before, she told me that I was capable of more than most people. She revealed to me things that she never revealed to a teacher before. Unfortunately, it was something that the world was never going to let happen. Governments made it an impossibility. I could never be her hero, I was not who she thought I was. I couldn't rescue her from her life, no matter how badly I wanted to. It's a crushing reality that I won't ever forget. After I left, we talked once via email. She agreed to write a story that I could use to try and help raise awareness of the refugee situation here in America. I haven't heard from her since. I've tried to reach her multiple times, all to no avail. I hope to find out what happened to her one day, but I fear I never will. She could be in Mae Pa still, or she could've been arrested and thrown back in a refugee camp. She could've been in Burma and got caught up in one of the many battles that have taken place since the elections last November. I just wish I could say hi and see how she's been. That's why I wrote this. It's something I've never told anyone, not even my closest of friends, before. It was time to get it off my back somehow.