Another trip to the "field"

It's interesting to talk about travelling into the field, because that's is basically anywhere but Mae Sot. I left town Monday afternoon on a 2 hour, thirty mile trip by public transit. It's basically a Toyota Tacoma (Hi-Lux to the rest of the world) with a tall camper-shell and bench seats. There were just a couple people in it, so the driver drove around Mae Sot for quite a while trying to find more passengers. Once he finally gave up, it was a pretty quick trip. We went through several checkpoints, and when we arrived in the farming area (ie lots of illegal burmese people) the checks were every few kilomteres. I think my presence sped things up a bit. The Thai are very hospitable people and I think would rather just pass the truck through than put a western guest through the process of pulling everyone off, checking their papers, and the possible arrests etc that would follow.

I arrived and went to a school where we were giving the survey. I then went into a small town actually on the Moei River. Standing on this bank, Thailand. On the other, Burma. In the rainy season, the river is a bit of an obstacle, but people cross regularly on boats. During the dry season it sounds like you can walk across without much trouble. In that town, many people work farms and other jobs in Burma. They might travel across and work for a week or two, then come back for a while. The Thai police are mostly concerned with keeping the people from getting beyond the town and entering Thai Thailand.



We went to a Thai school that takes people living in the town who have proper papers. The space-to-student ratio was vast compared to the migrant (illegal) schools. It looked like the kids hang out there most of the evenings also playing soccer, volleyball, and badminton. There was an interesting looking area to one side -- I jokingly asked if it was a BMX track of some sort. Turns out, the Thai government had brough in the 4-foot concrete culverts and covered them with dirt (leaving one end open, with a dirt pile a couple feet in front) so that the students would have a place to go in case of artillery attack.

Initially I was supposed to stay at the house of a co-worker in that town, but the community leader (they still have an unofficial village-style governance) said he didn't think it would be a good idea due to recent clashes between the KNU and another Karen group allied with the Burmese SPDC. These don't cross the river, but are pretty close by. Over the last couple weeks they have been able to hear mortars, and the residents of a nearby Karen village have all moved to this small town.

With this going on, it was apparently safer for me to stay at a boarding school for illegal students...about a quarter mile further from the river. I think about half of the 300 students live in nearby settlements, while half live at the school. Some have families in Burma that they might be able to visit once a year, others are orphans (often related to the war). The staff is just a handful of teachers, and I think only one or two teachers stay at the school at night. The kids go to bed at sunset and are up at 4:30, doing various chores or studying.

I was taken off-site to the staff house, where I was introduced to Karen Whiskey, a sort of rice moonshine. It is illegal, but the Thai police have an accepting attitude towards it --one guy said he even drank some with the police once and they thought highly of the stuff. It is something they have used in ceremonies of all sorts (weddings, funerals etc) forever and aren't willing to give it up. It's not hard to find, but it is a back-room sort of deal. Not bad stuff, kind of harsh but not as strong as normal liquor you would get in the US.

We got back late and I slept in the dorm. It's strange -- the buildings were all nice and in good repair, but definitely of the local architecture. The dorm was had a leaf roof and down the middle there was a bamboo walkway, a few feet off the ground. It was maybe 8 larger pieces of bamboo running parallel down the middle. A bit tricky to balance on. On each side was a platform another foot up with "joists" of smaller bamboo and split bamboo on top of that. It's a solid but still flexible surface. Everyone slept under mosquito nets on mats (not with any sort of padding) on that surface. The weather was great, comfortably cool and misty.

The ground outside was slippery and sloppy, but that's the way things are this time of year. The water is from a manual-pump well. The kids are in charge of most things, including taking turns cooking breakfast and all the other things that allow the school to function. From what I saw, it worked smoothly.

I returned in the back of a pickup truck that has some sort of permission to carry whomever through the checkpoints unstopped. It was a tiring trip, but I felt like I was getting to know people and the community in ways I hadn't before.

At dinner tonight we discussed that over the last few weeks the boarding schools have been swamped and the clinic has been much busier than usual. It sounds like the fighting they were worried about where I was may be the root of all this. It's hard for me to say though because things in the border area are kept quiet.