Hoe-Uh Oh-Uh

Fine Feathered Felines:

It’s been a while since I’ve poured my feelings to you from my wobbly desk, mosquitos whirring by my head and pomelo digesting in my stomach. Hello again friend.

My introspective writing has been put on hold for many a reason. First of all, I have, of late, taken on responsibilities above and beyond what my fellowship description outlines. These include: thinking about and doing things for my future (such as procuring employment beyond my AJWS fellowship and securing sub-continent flights), Burmese lessons, exploring ideas to fundraise for a variety of worthwhile causes here, playing Thailand travel agent for an upcoming visit from the brother, mommer and popper (shweet), waking at 6 am once a week to partake in “cooking duty” with my students (see also: Laura acts inept with firewoodà Laura creates a dehydrating heap of salty fried eggsà Laura nags students not to add MSG to everythingà Laura is relegated to the mortar and pestle and forms a nice right bicep), relearning all the math I forgot during a six year hibernation period so that I can teach it to my students, relating soccer balls and their patchwork to Earth and it’s tectonic plates, developing fleeting thoughts about bringing art to borders here, there and everywhere, and shaking the roseapple tree in front of the office to harvest it’s luscious fruit. Utter deliciousness.

Secondly, after seven months here in Thailand, Burma, the border, or whatever one could call this complex town, my life here no longer comprises of a “stint.” Those goats making noises like old dying men no longer shock me. They are the Starbucks around the corner. The gorgeous and wrinkled woman smoking her morning cigar at the market is to me that stoplight you pause at before turning right in your daily commute to work. The barefooted monks and their 6:30 am chant is now just a backdrop; dissolved into the ether of sensations, smells, charms and vices of the East.

These formerly exotic items have become my life. And inspiration to write about the normal is, at times, quite difficult to come by.

And this, I then realized, was enough in and of itself to write about. After a seven month adventure on a peaceful, painful, and utterly stupefying border, I have arrived at the fact that I am no longer an outsider looking in. I am a local, a resident, that white girl who runs to the pagoda in the morning.

It’s funny how these things happen. It’s not clear if it’s the visa-run leaving and coming back, the impending family visit, the Laura-izing of my house (Mr T sticker above the bathroom light-switch), or the fact that the water bill man knows my name, but suddenly, two days ago, for the first time ever, I told my friend not that I was going to “my house,” but rather that I was going “home.” It was this same day that I combined a few words from my limited Mon vocabulary into this same phrase to answer my students when they asked me, perched in the office doorway and scrambling for my sandals, where I was going.

“Howa owa,” I replied.

:) Laura

ps. Those near future plans mentioned above are the following: Directly after my teaching is complete here in sleepy Sangkhla I will head up north to spend half my week in a refugee camp teaching and the other half in a bustling border town called Mae Sot, a home of delicious coconut-milk noodle shops and NGOers doing brilliant and unconventional work to counter the abuses so easily dolled out by the Burmese military regime. I will be working with a large NGO focusing on education and my scant pocket money will be supplied by both your and my tax money, dear U.S. citizens (thanks to funding from an org known as USAID). This stint will be short, with the possibility of extension in the future if all goes well, and I then have a plane ticket booked home on May 17^th, exactly one long, sweaty, bug-bite laden and eye-opening year after I arrived here.

These vagabond shoes...

Sticky rice balls:

Please find my student's words below. These are excerpts of their journal entries after a human rights/ women's rights training a few weeks ago.

Happy holidays to all and here's to enjoying your snow/cold/wind/sun/heat/rain/waves wherever you vagabond shoes take you...

:) Laura

From HJ:

Some interesting thing I learned in the third day is the 30 point of human rights. I do not know before every human has 30 point of human rights, because we do not live in a democratic country. I want to feel all of rights just like different countries in my life. I felt sad during training because although we are human we have no rights as other people.

This part is very important for me because we should know our rights. If we know about human rights more and more we can defeat the military government.

From KS:

I learned about the women's rights. Because human beings include just men and women, the people who against women must be men. Therefore men should understand women.Most men ask why we need to establish special rights for women. Actually, they ignore discrimination between men and women. Women should have the same rights as men, such as the rights to vote in an election and to be assigned to a committee of lawmakers, the power to dissolve the governing responsibilities, full independence in deciding all court cases, and no discrimination on account of sex. Women also have equal rights to work and receive the same salary.Women should have a chance to find education and economic benefits.
I felt interested and excited to learn all these things.
This is very important not only for me but also for women all over the world. All women should know women's rights and so should men. Then all women must try hard to gain our rights and what we really need.

Hear their voices

Chinese dumplings:

I'll have you know that this week consisted of tons of the following things: mosquito bites, sticky rice consumption, watching shooting stars from my friend's houseboat (neither a house nor a boat... discuss), and scratching the aforementioned mosquito bites. All's well here.

More words from my students re women's and human rights.

From G:

On the fourth day we learned about women rights. There are sixteen women's rights. The most interesting things are women's rights and the history of women's rights . I think we should know the sixteen women rights. Thus, we know our rights and we can protect ourselves from the bad guys and the bad governments. Burma signed the "Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women on July 22, 1997. I didn't know before that Burma signed it.

During the training I felt bad for life of women. I felt sad and also I know they had led rough and poor lives to get women's rights. After I knew about women's rights and the history of women's rights I have very surprised. They were trying many kinds of ways to get it; they are trying to eliminate violence against women. Also we knew about the strength of CEDAW, the weakness of CEDAW and present improving to me and I am interested so much.

On fifth day we learned about the situation of women in the world. Just a few women hold high positions in the world. I am very interested about this because I thought we should know about it, and if we know that issue we can try to get a high position later.

During the training I felt very surprised because they don't give a chance woman to be in high level positions. Burma has already signed CEDAW and the government doesn't respect that contract. Now we know and in my mind we should act against our government. I really want to work against our government and I want to try to get freedom. I want to share what I know about women's rights with other people. So this training is important to me and I am very interested.

From H:
I learned about women rights today. Some things i have learned from this day are" the situation of women in the world ", and the role play about War War. I felt so sorry for women and I felt so happy of the game during the training.
This training was very important for me. After I learn about women, I wanted to share it to all men. I gained knowledge about women during this training so much.

From LH:
There are two important things, They are Communsim, Socialsim, Democracy and the thirty Points of Human Rights. The system of Communism is one party, everybody should feel the same, the party can decide all, nobody needs to worry about their education and health. The system of Socialism is that the government has to take care of citizens who have to pay taxes to the government and nationalize businesses . There are two systems of Democracy; Direct and indirect democracy. During the training , i felt interested. It is really important to know about this because we want to get Democracy in Burma,so we should know what Democracy is. We just know the word Democracy, but not the meaning. Most people in Burma say Democracy, but only a few people know the meaning. Now we can tell others as much as we can.

This is my opinion

Hello wise owls:

While I was wandering off the last few weeks perusing T-shirts in street markets, downing turkey on thanksgiving, and extending my visa in the north of Thailand, my students were opening their eyes in ways they had never done before.

They received a human rights and women's rights training from one of the MWO staffers, and indeed came away reeling with incredible thoughts and what bill nye the science guy refers to as "ah-hah" moments. I asked them to keep a journal. For security purposes, their names have been replaced with letters or pseudonyms. The next few postings will be excerpts from the writing of ten students...

From student Eye Chan:

I have learned about the basics of human rights. There are many things which are interesting to me. Human rights and dignity are critical and connected with each other. All people already have dignity and human rights equally from the beginning of their lives. We can’t buy, sell or change human rights. Human rights are universal. Everybody owns their rights. As we learn about our rights, we should not ignore other people’s rights. We also should have a law for human rights in every country. If we lose one of our rights, other rights will be lost as well.

During this training, I really loathed the military junta because they break many people’s rights in Burma. I also feel bad for the people who live in Burma and also me. Most people don’t know what human rights are. This training is important to me because I should know about human rights, and share it with people who don’t know it yet, especially people who live in Burma. I didn’t even know about human rights before I came here.

From Cho Win:

I was interested in learning about the situation of women in the world. There are about 876 million people who can’t read and write. Among them 2\3 are women who can’t read and write. I felt bad for women who can’t read and write during the training. Women were in a much worse situation then men for everything. It is important to know the current situation of women in the world like how many women are illiterate.

I felt that this training was very important for me. Although I have heard of CEDAW, women’s rights and human rights, I didn’t exactly know the meaning of these words. Now I am aware of them.

From A:

I am impressed by the amazing women who tried to make (CEDAW). One thing that I learned from the training was that even though there are human rights for the entire society, women have to make a law for women's rights. Since long long ago, people have always undervalued women. They didn't want accept women as the same as men in anyway.
I was interested in the position of women internationally. There are a lot of women who lack education, lack property, died from complications of abortion. Most women are in low positions in many different situations. Even though men and women have different genders they can do anything they want. On the other hand, women also have to give birth. This is a big adventure. Unfortunately, they can die easily from giving birth. For a family, women have to manage the whole family. For example women have to manage their children's education, their housework, their husband, etc.
Therefore, we should have the same rights as men. This is my opinion.

From S:
I am interested in the game we played because it has a deep meaning. This game involves crossing under the electric wire. If we touch that wire, we have to do it again and we are all together. It's like in Burma, the citizens have to live under the military junta. We can't move to do something and have no chance for movement and activities.
It is important for us because if we try together, we can reach our goal. We all have a chance to be the same and have equality. We also have to understand and bear each other.
I felt happy, worry, and excited when we played this game. If I think deeply , I feel sad because of how we are oppressed by the military government.

Umm... delicious, no? Just hold onto your subway seat for the stuff to come.

:) Laura