I am here and totally deserving. I am bra-less in my room the windows open and wind from the rain and the fan gently brushing my loose skin. I am here, my body finally becoming a regular stranger to me, my memories an old friend. I am here, alone but with friends, in love with this girl I met recently named Rebecca, or Becca, depending on her mood. I am here, noticing that when my skin peels off because of my expired mosquito repellent that it is *gasp* pink! And not the dirty ugly pieces that used to fall off me. I am (quick grab your map of Asia) the purple ink blot slowly spreading its wings, leaking effervescently like dye in champagne or pens in my dad’s old work shirts. I am making my mark and totally deserving. I am in Mae Sot. I don’t know where it is, either. But I am more comfortable here than I have been in ages, passing through Paleolithic Pattayan Periods where blood and tears were things that martyrs wore on holidays. I have finally decided to not be that, to be this. To follow and lead, to make people laugh, to have people meet me, to want to meet me, to follow me, to come with me, to invite me, to eat with me, to be invited, to be meek and to ask questions, to be at the bottom of the charitable and never-ending intellectual depths of the volunteers who call Mae Sot their home.
Everyone must start at the beginning, and, days or months from now I will recognize this beginning as one of my many. Perhaps one of the most important. Or perhaps, one of less importance as leaving in this case was the thing that carried the greater weight. Gosh, I feel smarter now, as my internet tabs carry headings about Cambodian boys being sold to Thai fisheries for work, children dying for organ harvesting, various (shh) NGOs in Mae Sot, Aung San Suu Kyi, and how to pursue my masters in criminology. Or Human Rights. Or women’s studies. Or how to stay here to look at precious powdered (or are they painted?) faces of Burmese migrant children (or are they orphans? Orphaned by their own country, orphaned by the country in which they now live, orphaned by systems that give them no rights but the right to linger, to constantly pursue but to never have) blowing me kisses on the front steps of the shelter that they live in. I live, lived, will live, for that moment when their faces, and the faces of their caretaker, a woman much younger than me, plucked a baby out of its hammock in the ground floor of the shelter and looked at me with wide eyes… “will you work here?”. “I hope so”. I knelt down and made a little boy smile, which in turn made all the little ones smile, which in turn made the caretaker smile; their smiles bursting through what in any other situation would be a stone façade but here is a silent and hard fight carried in their eyes. The fight across the border for the right to speak in the country they have always wanted to live in. Burma…I have never thought about you. I never knew. Now, it seems to be seeping into my eyelids at night. The abuse, the prisoners, the action, the uncanny strength in every single Burmese person I have met who has suffered greatly at the hands of the government and left to Mae Sot only to continue to fight in a dangerous way. Museums highlighting the torture and violence that political prisoners endure are created behind laundromats and hand-drawn maps with the vows of silence that lead me there. I am quiet, volunteers and NGOs speak out about the human rights violations but are quiet about specific other endeavors that could hinder the ability of their Burmese counterparts to live in peace in Thailand (where they are not officially recognized as refugees and so are mostly migrants, undocumented, floating). I don’t feel danger or even tension here, simply a profound sense of injustice and the fight to get respect and a liberation that has not been seen in Burma in decades.
Mae Sot is a border town about five kilometers away from Burma (the border crossing is now closed). It is relatively small and comprised of factories, NGOs, Burmese migrants, Thai business owners, and foreign volunteers. The refugee camps are close as well, although I am still not exactly sure where they are and am unable to see them without proper documentation. The situation in Burma is more dire than I initially thought when I came here and since my arrival I have met numerous ex-political prisoners working for the rights of the current political prisoners (some doing so by going undercover into Burma to communicate with them), teenagers who have crossed the border with their spouses, children, or by themselves, some as few as four days ago and heard stories from my friends who work in the medical clinics of botched abortions , women crossing the border and risking their lives for a medical check-up, and babies with combinations of Dengue Fever and mental disability. I have only been here for four or five days, long enough to celebrate Aung San Suu Kyi’s birthday at a bar and listen to ex-prisoners speak about their experiences with her, and hear one current prisoners’ recently written letter to the Burmese government regarding their recent claim that there are no political prisoners in Burma, and learn about the silence involved in living here (the Underground).
I don’t know how I got here, but the thought of coming here has been swirling around my mind for some time now. I remember hearing someone talk about Mae Sot about two months ago when I was in Malaysia but by then it had already seemed familiar to me. I wanted to see the refugee camps and when I realized I couldn’t I was already on my way here and decided to come regardless. Now that I’m here I want to stay. There are two or three organizations here that I have contacted for volunteering; mostly dealing with women and children. I don’t know how long I will stay, but I already have made some friends and find myself happy. The town is beautiful; set in the mountains with a cooler climate and delicious food, trivia nights, plenty of interesting people to meet, hiking, waterfalls, and the amount of excitement that I find satisfying.
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