So it's
been quite an action packed week...I went to Um Phang for the weekend with 4
other volunteers, which is a four hour Songtaew ride South from here (along
what used to be called the Death Road apparently, but it's not that bad any
more!) Songtaew literally translates as 'two benches' in Thai, and it's
basically just a smallish truck with benches stapled to either side. They're
very cheap, and have no capacity limit as far as I can tell. We had 28 on ours
at one point, and I think they're built to fit about 8 Westerners comfortably,
so it was pretty rammed!
Um Phang
was cool, the place is really just a jumping off point for trekking in the
jungle and rafting down the Maeklong, both of which we did. The river bit was
awesome, we all just lay in the boat being paddled along by Thai guys for 5
hours, there was absolutely no effort involved at all! Then we trekked through
the jungle to a campsite, sat around drinking Hong Thong whiskey, and got up
early the next morning to see Tee Lor Soo Waterfall, which was gorgeous.
Then I
was taken into Mae La Refugee Camp for a couple of days. It's about an hour
from Mae Sot, and is the biggest camp on the border, with about 40,000 people.
And it is huge, it's like it's own village, except that absolutely everything
is made out of bamboo. It was Karen New Year on 16th December, so I went in to
see the celebrations and take photos for Burma Issues. It was kinda awesome,
they had lots of speeches and dances and a volleyball match and a concert, and
everybody was dressed up in traditional Karen clothing. The people all seemed
fairly happy, and very interested in me, as one of only about 5 white people in
the whole camp. However I went into the camp with The Wah (from BI) at his
Uncle’s, who’s quite an important guard in one of the Camp Zone’s, and is very
friendly with the Zone Leader, which is kind of a big deal here, so I know that
what I saw wasn’t representative of how all the refugees live. But I spoke to
quite a few people in the camp, one of whom could speak good English, and he
told me that the wealth disparity in the camp is large. There aren’t that many
jobs, and getting one depends on knowing someone and being able to speak Karen,
which is the language of most of the refugees. The rations given to each
refugee aren’t really enough to live on, it’s just rice, fish paste and spices,
so they need to earn money to buy veggies and meat, and more blankets etc. If
they can work as a guard or had enough money to start a stall or cafe when they
arrived then they can do okay, and maybe have some electricity in their home
and eat well, but if not then they can earn a bit by litter picking and selling
recyclable rubbish on, or by cutting bamboo and flattening it, but it’s never
really enough to live comfortably.
It was
great to stay in the camp though and really experience it, and hopefully I’ll
go back and do a couple more stories. I visited the Karen Handicapped Welfare
Association which works with refugees who were the victim of landmines in
Burma, and they do an amazing job with hardly any resources, so I’d like to do
an interview with them and look into getting them more support.
All in
all it’s been a really interesting week, and I’ll put some photos up when I
can. I’ve been the victim of my own technological sabotage AGAIN and my laptop
says ‘unrecognized usb device’ when I plug my camera in so I don’t know what
that’s about but I’ll try and sort it when I can.
Byeeeeeee
xx
