Brain to the Drain

Omega 3 fatty acids:

Please enjoy this blurb from another blog to which I belong (aka: I'm a blog player)...

Hello and greetings from the land of chili and fried rice for breakfast, a place of red, cracked earth, showing the wear and tear an unforgiving sun can wreak if given blind authority, a land of refugees, lack of human rights, and rice paddy.

Welcome to the Thai-Burma border.

Are these things familiar to you all, too? Indeed life here in my remote town of Sangkhlaburi, Thailand is a far cry from the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. Probably like most of you, I squat to pee, hop on a motorbike or bicycle if I need to get somewhere quickly, and sweat a ton more than I thought was possible.

My name is Laura and I have been living here through the gracious assistance of AJWS for the past six months. I am working with an organization focusing on women’s rights inside of Burma, a highly political cause to commit ones life to under such a repressive military regime as that which sits atop a high thrown in Burma. I teach English, social studies, geography, computers, current events and other topics (sex ed… awesome!) to a group of 13 students from Burma in an office that doubles as our one-room schoolhouse.

It has been a fascinating, rewarding and overwhelming experience to find myself leading a group of inquisitive and intelligent minds as they study for the first time with access to information that is not censored by their government. When I face questions like, “do people live on other planets,” I dually want to yelp out with laughter and burrow into a corner to cry for days. What a world, eh?

And so, to quit my meandering babble and address the question of this blog, I would like to call your attention to a catchy little phrase I had prior given little thought to: the brain drain.

I work with an ethnic group called the Mon, who were granted refugee status in Thailand a while back. Despite having reached a shaky 1995 ceasefire agreement with the State Peace and Development Council (the name of the regime in charge of Burma—sounds friendly, no?) the refugees keep streaming in day in and day out, running from a fear of political imprisonment, death, forced labor, rape, a painfully archaic health care system, etc. It’s not every day that you ask your friend how she is doing and she replies, “oh, okay. I took in a child soldier last week who was wandering around the market,” or that instead of asking how the dental appointment was you instead question, “how did your UN interview go? Will they grant you refugee status?”

For many in these parts, the prospect of going back to Burma in the near future is dim. Yet the alternative—life on the border for a person lacking papers—is equally bleak. One could hope for a magical Thai card that may lead to citizenship after many years (one friend just became a citizen after 17 years), but what is more likely is that you will spend your days experiencing an undercurrent of fear, worried that each time you head to the market you may be arrested, or fearing going out of the house for something as simple as exercise. To exit one cage is only to enter a different one.

The majority of the immigrants who do choose life on the border instead of “inside” (inside Burma) are educated people. They have learned about human rights and were part of the fight against the regime and this is why they fled Burma. They know, in theory, what rights they should have. To know this and to suffer inside Burma or as an illegal person on the border is often unbearable. Typically, the best solution is to interview with the UN and get placed in a refugee camp, where they will spend around two years living on rations and lacking many of the few pleasures they enjoy even as an illegal immigrant in my small town. After their due time has passed and they have met the strict criteria to be admitted into another country, they will pack their bags, board a plane for the first time in their lives, and cross their fingers that they will indeed find the freedom they have dreamed of.

And this is not the end of my sob story, for what I really want to tell you about is the holes that these people leave behind. Aside from families and friends being torn apart, as stated above, those leaving for third countries are often the people with the most education and training. Educated people are crucial to the NGO community working both inside (clandestinely) and outside (also mostly clandestinely) Burma.

Aside from the issues you can imagine that riddle the Burmese NGO community, each organization I meet with and talk to cite loss of staff as a serious set-back to their work. Just as staff member A became an expert in women’s rights trainings she was whisked off to the camp. Just as staff member B learned to protect the office computers from viruses he packed his things to go.

And thus the meat and potatoes of my words: the brain drain is a stifling, painful reality.

How interesting to read so much about a subject from my distant suburb on my cozy little couch in Boston to be flung into it head on, cursing the worm that no one can eliminate from my computer because all the experts have moved off to the camp or distant locations such as Norway, Sweden, Canada, Australia, or the U.S.

And who can blame them? This choice is not about the color of the wallpaper or the menu for tonight’s dinner. It’s about deciding between a life of peace and freedom haunted by the guilt of the community you left behind, or remaining under oppression and to struggle each day, clinging to that thin wire of hope that you will one day see true change.

Laura

A little footage for ya

Please check out this video about Burma from The Washington Post, brought to my attention by the U.S. Campaign for Burma. It's awesome for a visual and brief description about what's going on. And it's about 7 minutes long.

For those of you wanting to know what my life here looks like, this provides a great visual regarding the people, the clothes, the thanaka-caked faces, the jungle, the houses, the dirt roads...

click away my dear ones!

http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?key=230193308&url_num=3&url=
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2006/11/10/VI2006111000901.
html?referrer=emaillink

ps. having some issues with posting this giNORMOUS link, so please copy and paste line by line (yes, a pain) as necessary into your local grocer's web-browser

On the border line

A-wandering we go...

And so I'm back, surrounded with the delicious aromas of pad thai, the welcoming massage signs, the gruesomely honest men who wander Thailand for sex with no qualms about who they are and what they do. Yes this pale child is home in Thailand and back from Burma with a pocket-full of stories to tell.

Unfortunately compadres, these tales must wait for a less expensive internet cafe and a time when my bladder isn't near to burst from excessive ice-tea consumption.

To tempt you of what's to come, however, below you will see two images, both taken from the same spot on a bridge connecting the town of Mae Sot, Thailand, to Myawadi, Burma. On the left you see Thailand and on the right is Burma. Note the difference? Ah hah! This will be the subject of a bloggo coming to your cyber-doorstep in a just a few days now...

Merrily I roll along to find my place in squat-toilet paradise...

LA!

Hello Burma

Dear day-dreamers, horseback-riders, leprechaun-hunters, and turtle doves:

ALLO.

Long time no write write. I will make this a quickie as I am running off to meet a woman working with a women's organization in the border town of Mae Sot, where I arrived just hours ago (see also: VIP night buses= a slice of Thai heaven).

A few headlines from my life:

OVERPROTECTIVE TEACHER-MOTHER IS ECSTATIC WHEN 2 STUDENTS RETURN TO HER LIMBS
Indeed, an elation has filled my heart the last few days as two of my students who buggered off to a few months of their "distant education program" at the University of Mawlamyine have returned, their skin marked by blazes of sunlight, their lips pouring with tales of hostel stays, spending money, drinking beer and serenading students of the opposite gender. I couldn't be happier to see my babies (who are also the same age as me) back for good, eating fish paste like pros.

SUMPTUOUS WESTERN LEG PROVIDES DISTRACTION/ NOURISHMENT TO LOCAL POOCH
That's right. It's my sumptuous western leg we're talking about. Apparently my technique of "making guttural noises" was very successful at keeping away the highly-diseased and mouth-frothing local street dogs, however, I made the naive mistake of letting down my dog guard when entering my friends premises, only to be greeted by a wee nip from a pooch named Frybean. It was really a puppy nip, yes, and therefore was more a bruise than anything else, but a small break in the skin did send me to the hospital for a series of rabies shots, pumping my body full of the luxurious anti-mouth-froth-viruses. Ah Lassie!

PARIS HILTON DECLARED "POOR" BY LOCAL BURMESE MIGRANTS
Well, Paris, it seems your reputation is not limited by the walls of the western world. Instead your blond locks and come-hither stare have reached even the censored fortress that is Burma. Instead of being recognized as the second-rate actress/model and first rate millionaire heiress as in most places, in Burma, Paris is seen as quite the opposite, as brought to my attention by a student who held up her picture from the Bangkok Post and announced her sincere pity for this woman who lacks the money to properly dress herself. We are looking into creating a "clothe Paris fund" for the portion of class where we learn about international aid.

DREAMS OF BURMA BECOME A REALITY IN T-MINUS TWO...
My life for the past month, in actions, thoughts, languages, foods, dreams, tears and laughter has revolved around Burma. It's what I think about when I wake up and fall asleep. It's what I talk about with my students and friends. It's what I read about, research, advocate for. It's been everything. And yet, despite how close Burma is, so close that I can smell it, I have never been there, never treaded my feet on true Burmese soil.

Today I will break this trend, coaxed to give money to a brutal military regime for the purposes of extending my visa here in Thailand. Despite the necessity of this trip in order to legally remain in Thailand, I really am quiet anxious and excited to take this step into the unchartered territory of Burma in just a few hours. I will cross the border and have the ability to stay in one area (so enforced by the military regime) up until 4:30 pm, at which point I must return to Thailand. It seems a bit of a dream, and the desire to stall this actual encounter with Burma is great. What if I cross that literal and figurative bridge and feel so overcome with emotion that I am paralyzed? What if I see something that will make me intense pain, intense sadness? What if I find that the conditions there are far better than I expect? Or, worst of all, what if I cross that bridge and feel nothing...

Finally, I will leave you with the first installment of a new series entitled, "you know you've been in a developing country for a long time when..."

• Your tuk-tuk (motorbike with cart attached to the back) loses a wheel in transit, jerks you and the driver uncomfortably to one side thus inducing whip-lash, and you step out of the tuk-tuk to merely shrug off the driver's profuse apologies, shocked to find yourself reacting not with surprise, fear or anger, but merely continuing to munch on your cookies left over from your slice-of-heaven VIP overnight bus.
• You don't notice the following noises until someone less accustomed to them points them out to you: roosters crowing at ALL TIMES OF THE DAY, people clearing the phlegm from their throats anywhere and everywhere, the howling of dogs every midnight during mating season, the general quiet due to lack of planes and cars.
• The first thing you say after placing an order at a restaurant is "please withhold the MSG."
• You have created your own lyrics to all the local Thai/ Mon/ Burmese songs, that sound similar to the words in these songs, but, when placed together, create a nonsensical blabber (i.e. my fave song, which I have fondly titled "My Cow Joy")
• You do not notice the ants. Everywhere. In your room, wandering the curves of your laptop, in your tea, peppering your fried eggs.
• You crave rice. Even in the morning.
  

And with that I leave you.

I'm off to meet change-makers, eat tea-leaf salad, and see that which has occupied the crevices of my mind for the past six months. To the land of the silent and the oppressed I trek. Burma, Burma, here I come.

Lady Lora