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