Coups are you?

What to do on a typical morning when you roll from your sleeping mat and lift yourself free of your mosquito net to be greeted with news of a coup d’etat in place of the normal rooster crowing?

At first, it was very little. A week ago on Wednesday (the coup occurred Tuesday night here) my class and I continued on with things as normal, pounding in vocab and when to use spatial prepositions. The only true way the coup affected our lives that day was the closure of the post office and an excessive amount of rugrats wandering the street and popping their head into our classroom as their own school was closed.

Since then, life has gone on mostly normally. There is a myriad of subtle differences in my daily life—many of which I am sure I don’t even notice—such as more policemen out, more arrests of illegal immigrants (possibly the majority of the inhabitants of my town), no one selling lotto tickets, and a quieter scene around town (again, due to the illegal immigrants feeling unsettled and passing the time karaoke VCD by karaoke VCD at home). Apart from these subtle differences, there is one change that is neither subtle nor drastic: the lockdown of my acquaintances.

Ahem. What? Lockdown?

Yes, lockdown. It so happens that, like many people in this town, many of my good friends’ fate in working and living here rests on the whims of some authorities who have an agreement with some other authorities and those authorities are talking to some other authorities, somewhere, in some authoritative heaven where the god of authority perches with a lightning bolt labeled “the rules.” Therefore, with the tenuous situation of a military coup in Thailand, most people have been keeping on the safe side and sticking around the house, office, apartment, or what have you. For many of my acquaintances this means confinement to a space consisting of a small house and, if lucky, a front or back yard.

This change is not drastic because many of my friends take serious precautions already, even when a military coup doesn’t happen upon their daily schedule, such as not wandering about town in large groups, limiting leaving their place of residence to one day a week, staying inside when they hear there are a lot of officers around town, etc. This adjustment is not subtle, either, because this is one of the longer periods of time where people are sticking around inside, rubbing salt into the wound that no, not only do they not have rights and freedoms in Burma, but they also lack those things outside of Burma, in a place that is a sometimes democracy (Thailand).

I feel doubly pained by all of this right now when I compare the “lockdown” situation of those I am close to with my own life, needs, and freedoms as a white “farang” (foreigner) here in Thailand. A few weeks ago six of my students left Sangkhla, five to temporarily attend university in Burma (they will likely return here at the end of November), and one to attend a very cool 9-month school in Chiang Mai focusing on human rights and the environment. It has been hard for me to say goodbye to them, all of whom hold a special place in my heart, and accept the new, shrunken class which remains (this is not to say that each member of the remaining class isn’t incredible). What’s more, it seems to me that I am hitting the natural slump after the initial euphoria that accompanies all transitions. In working through this post-honeymoon period, I have found my savior in life outside my house and office with new and old friends on all sides of town, solitary walks, runs, and bike rides, and general wanderings around unbeaten paths of red dust and hopping snakes. I am finding that in these escapes from my house/office (next door to each other) I unearth my patience and energy. And then I think about what my life would be like if I were faced with the situation of most of my good friends here and could not do any of these things that allow me to reach a point of sanity and happiness again.

It’s like a punch in the gut—to hear of the oppression all my friends face in Burma—the forced labor, the whimsical desires of the military junta and the necessity to follow them, the alarmingly low level of education, the theft of property, the poverty that rips them of time to even think about things greater than the next meal—and then learn that they can come here to Thailand where they are away from the junta yet live like caged birds. The pain I feel when a friend compares herself to our scrappy kitten only to say that the kitten has more rights than she does makes me choke back hot ugly tears of sadness and anger.

This pain manifests itself in me as a deep rage and desire to take out this anger somewhere. Maybe I can yell at the person who is telling everyone to stay in. Maybe I can yell at my own friends and tell them to just use the rights they SHOULD be granted by virtue of being a human. But the sharp reality is that neither of these outlets are the true culprits; no, the one to blame is the military regime, a malleable beast that is dispersed in the veins of Burma, staining its teeth blood-red as it chews beetle nuts stolen from rural farmers, and sitting in a building created through the forced labor of numerous citizens.

So I sit here now, back at home, Billie Holiday playing on the ipod and a big beetle buzzing around and occasionally smacking me in the head. And I write to you to communicate the pain and grit and shit that exist here, musing on what I can do to make this inequity inch its way towards equality… it feels like a battle of David and Goliath.

I guess I should keep in mind that David did eventually win that battle, however.