Teaching OT in faraway places

Here’s an article from this month’s NZ Baptist magazine.

Jasmine at work in the kitchen that supplied the visitors with delicious Karen food

A refugee camp seems an odd place for a spiritual retreat. Is a place where food is scarce, people are forbidden jobs, banned from travel, suffering the physical and mental scars of decades of strife against a brutal and unrestrained military dictatorship somewhere to refresh the soul?

It may not seem obvious, but that is what we did. We must admit, some aspects of life in Mae La are not conducive to spiritual renewal: The toilets double as “shower” rooms but have mud floors. We are not used to sleeping through noise, so band practice starting at 5AM, with choir finishing at 9:30PM, followed by chatting and even mobile phones till late into the night just through the partition next to our sleeping mat, left us tired!

Yet our four weeks in the Mae La camp were part of Tim’s sabbatical from teaching at Carey, and “leave of absence” from work as a family therapist for Barbara, and a Big(ger than usual) OE for Sarah (a University student). It is not as daft as it sounds, we learned in Africa that often people who have the least can teach the most about relating to God - Kiwi Christians often look embarrassed giving thanks for a restaurant meal, African Christians will naturally pray over a glass of cool clear water.

Pastor Dr Simon Htoo principal of KKBBSC at the Jubilee. Pastor Simon was the second ever winner of the BWA Human Rights Award after President Jimmy Carter.

Karen refugees certainly don’t have much: a roof over their heads - usually made of leaves since “permanent” materials like corrugated iron are forbidden, some food - because refugees can’t work officially, rice and some fish-paste is provided for each registered refugee family (naturally it’s shared with those who are not yet registered), and safety in Thailand - the army of the Myanmar Government won’t burn their homes down or “recruit” their young men as porters and work them to death here… but they do have faith, hope and love.

Many Karen are Baptists, and have been for nearly 200 years, Christianity is deep-rooted here. We visited a village of IDPs (Internally Displaced People) whose village was burned following an army raid. They had rebuilt not only homes, and a temporary church, but a school that attracts children from villages in Burma and from the refugee camps - all with no help from any government, and only a bit of help from NGOs: one charity gave materials for permanent classrooms another feeds the children with rice everyday, vegetables and fish-paste twice weekly, and meat once a month. We were at the village to celebrate their new permanent church building, with tiles and a bright blue roof. The singing lasted hours, as you can imagine it was a time of great joy.

We went to Mae La to teach (Tim - Old Testament Narratives, Barbara - Human Development, Sarah - English) and to share in the jubilee. The Kawthoolei Karen Baptist Bible School & College was founded 25 years ago in Burma, but 18 years ago moved to Mae La, when the army burned down the school and the village around it. Today, some students were born as refugees, but others have crossed the border recently and do not know the fate of the rest of their family.

The refugees we met are Christian and their faith is in Jesus (who else can a refugee trust?), their hope is in God (humans have tormented them and let them down - they used to hope that Westerners would help against the military dictators, but after years of waiting that hope is less strong now) and their love comes, not only from Karen tradition, but also from the Holy Spirit working in them.

After all, maybe a refugee camp is a good place for spiritual renewal! There’s a popular quote about tourists leaving only footprints and taking only photos. It makes some sense, but it misses the real point of travel. When you go elsewhere and live among a different people you are changed. If you are not then you have failed to really be there no matter how long you stayed!

So, when we visited the refugee camp at Mae La though we went as teachers it was inevitable we’d learn more than we could teach.

For more information:

Karen Konnection an American Baptist site,

Christians Concerned for Burma [warning some pictures are gruesome],

It seems a funny question to ask, and doubtless every camp is different, certainly the two we have seen were not the same as each other! Doubtless too among readers of this blog there will be some who’s ideas of a “refugee camp” may be as unrealistic as ours were before we went to Mae La. I can’t describe “refugee camps”, but I can describe our experience of one corner of one camp.

Many people arrive at Mae La on the main highway from Mae Sot the nearest town about 40 minutes to the south. The first time hopefully a contact will pick you up from the bus station, after that it is easy (except on the behind) to catch a “line bus” (a ute with bench seats for passengers either side of the luggage). At first the highway goes through farms, then as it climbs into the hills there are less and less people, and lovely forest on either side. Pleasant country, though not spectacular.

After a Thai Army checkpoint you start to pass the camp. The main purpose of the check points seems to be to “catch” Burmese citizens moving freely around Thailand without proper papers (i.e. to restrict the movement of refugees and illegals - there are checkpoints on many roads in the border area, not just near the camp). KKBBSC and its associated Baptist centres (like the home for landmine victims and the children’s “orphanage”) are at the far end, almost were the camp stops and the hill rises to Prayer Mountain.

Mae La is the largest in a chain of seven camps inhabited mainly by Karen refugees fleeing the Myanmar Military Government. The chain stretches along much of the length of the Thai border with Burma from the extreme north down to one east of Bangkok. The official figures are certainly an underestimate of their populations, since there are many reasons why some inhabitants of the camps do not want their presence officially known. The UNHCR figures cover only those people who have been granted official “refugee” status, something that sometimes takes years to achieve. According to the figures used by The Thailand Burma Border Consortium as a basis for the food and other resources they supply there were 38,923 refugees in the Mae La camp during March. All one can really say is that between 40 and 80 thousand people inhabit this camp.

It does not look like a town though, because the houses are not built of permanent materials (officially all buildings are of wood, bamboo and leaves). The line bus will stop several times along the camp, the longest stops will be the checkpoints, and outside the market. Officially there can be no market in the camp, since no one has any job or money. However, humans being what they are if you do have money you can buy almost anything you need in the market that isn’t there. A student managed to find me some blank DVDs to backup these videos, and others have got medicines they needed there too…

Driving past the camp in a private car takes about 6-7 minutes at 80KPH with a couple of places where one has to slow for checkpoints, which gives an idea of its size. It is long and fairly thin, squeezed between the road and the steep cliff that rises on the other side of the river. The camp is formally divided into “sections”, KKBBSC is in Section C. I can’t show you photos of the market or of the other sections, since our presence was unofficial we were asked to keep within the college area.

So, this refugee camp is like a huge village. But one where no one may have a “proper job”, though many weave cloth, or sell items from large windows in their houses, or teach or study… One where a minimum “ration” of food is provided and only a supplement can be grown, since there is little space for fields.

This ration is maintained only with difficulty, rising prices have lead the TBBC to announce on April 1st:

Update about TBBC rations.
Due to further budget restrictions, TBBC will have to make additional adjustments to the original ration reductions made in December 2007.

And then on the 10th:

Food prices threaten refugee’s right to food
The current global increase in food prices is striking hard against people who are dependent on aid programs for their survival. Rice prices have risen by over 100% this year. To read more click here.

On food in the camp this section of the TBBC website is very informative, and gives a good idea of what is going on.

Lest anything I have said above give the wrong impression, and despite terrible suffering imposed by a brutal military dictatorship, seen most obviously in the bodies of the landmine victims, but glimpsed also in the fleeting mentions of not knowing “where my family is, we were separated when the army burned the village” and the like, or in the horrific pictures printed out from the Free Burma Rangers website of the treatment of “porters” (civilians conscripted as slaves and worked often to death by the Myanmar Army), the people in Mae La are cheerful, gentle, hopeful and kind. And, at least in Section C they have a deep and enduring faith in God - who else can they trust?

The first change is unsurprising, I need to use less complex English. The students are Karen speakers, most of them know either Thai or Burmese or both, and they use English almost only for their studies - remember that they watch no television or films, they read no magazines, most of the usual ways in which people around the world practice and improve their English are not available to students here. So, I need to choose simpler ways of saying things. Actually, like most teachers, I have loved reading since childhood, enjoy words and wordplay, and so even when I am teaching a University class of native-born English speakers I need to simplify the language I use. All classes need technical terms explained - that’s part of what teaching is about, not a new skill.

The paragraph above already introduced one of the changes that we had not really expected - at least not at the level deeper than “thoughts”. These students have far less experience of world than most. Quite a few of the class were born in the camps, even more first entered a camp while they were of primary school age. Few radios, almost no TVs, and very few print publications enter the camp. Most people here do not get holidays, but may unofficially visit a Thai-Karen village (along the border strip, but inhabited by Karen who have Thai nationality and so are free to move). There are two PCs which share the Internet connection that I am using, but few students get time enough to use these for long enough to really learn how to discover the world electronically. Those who can, print out pages with news from the Free Burma Rangers, and other Karen/Burma related news items, and post them up on the school notice board. Shopping means either a visit to one of the little “shops” that several of the neighbouring families run - tea, coffee, washing powder, water in bottles, even luxuries like banana chips, or Fanta. For larger or more complex shopping - like when we needed pens to write on the whiteboards - there is the small unofficial market nearer the middle of the camp. Their experience is limited to the few thousand people in this part of the camp, with occasional glimpses of the wider world beyond the wire.

A third change is again no surprise, though it might have the biggest impact on teaching. Students here have a greater and deeper spirituality than “Western” students. The Bible lives for them, and it governs their lives to an extent that few Western Fundamentalists can really imagine, yet they are not Fundamentalists. They are quite ready to read the Bible flexibly, and are open to notions that the people whose lives are recorded in the Bible grew and developed in their understanding of God. They are even open to the idea that different parts of the Bible can express God, and God’s purposes for humanity, more or less well, fully and clearly… nevertheless (or precisely because of this?) they read, pray and meditate on the Bible from morning to night, to an extent that even my uncle (a longstanding Brethren Elder, who tried to be as “biblical” as he could in every aspect of his life) could not manage in a “normal” Western context.

How this difference can/should modify my teaching I am very unsure at present, to some extent it was similar in Africa, but it was also very different. Congo celebrated the centenary of the first Protestant missionaries just before our arrival there, and the Old Testament was only translated into even the main trade languages as recently as the 1970s. Christian faith and the Bible both had shallow roots in Congo. Karen contact with the gospel and the Bible goes back to William Carey, and then the American Baptist missionaries Adoniram and Ann Judson in 1812. There has been a Sgaw Karen translation of the Bible available since 1853. This means that Christian spirituality and the Bible are far more deeply integrated into Karen life and people, so a simplistic approach that merely teaches about the contents of the Bible is less appropriate.

Then there is the specialist knowledge that teachers always hope students will bring to the class, and which we assume has grown from year to year as a student progresses. With this class, while knowledge of the contents of the Bible and of basic theology are really good, their understanding of scholarship is low or even non-existent. Basic skills like analysing - breaking a problem down into simpler parts, imaginative reconstruction of the way things “must have been”, looking things up in a reference works (except the universal Karen-English dictionaries for unknown English words), organising thought to lead towards a conclusion… such skills that in a Western context we assume were learned (or at least first begun) in school, here seem strange.

A basic study-skills course, and an improved library with a small stock of good Bible dictionaries, concordance, commentaries etc. could make real changes. But that is to look at things from a Western Academic perspective, the sort of things that spring to mind as necessary changes are conditioned by my usual setting. One of my frustrations is that a combination of Karen introversion (and this must rate as a highly introverted culture by any standards!); cultural respect for teachers, foreigners and elders and the busyness of the coming jubilee - which is literally the biggest event in decades, all make it difficult to meet, talk with and learn from the Karen teachers who are probably the people with the best chance of telling me how my teaching should change to be appropriate here. Maybe next time?

I am writing this at 6am, after a better night’s sleep. Already when I came out on the deck where I work, a group of young women were reading their Bibles together. Before I started typing, others have joined them, and they are holding their morning service, with singing, prayer and communal Bible reading. When we are ready for bed, the children are holding a service. What with college chapel in the middle of the day, and various other prayer meetings, choir practices etc., and since everyone at the college from children to principal eats and even drinks communally, living here is like being part of a big monastery. Yet, this monastery is thoroughly “open” to the world around, on its edge are the landmine victims and the children at the school, various “others” - including us - arrive and are included temporarily. This “monastery” includes single men and women, and families too. It builds - at the moment with the jubilee coming, how it builds! It repairs - yesterday the water pump (we were glad when that came on just before bed time). Above all it survives - as a place of peace, hope and faith, for a people oppressed by 60 years of civil conflict.

This is one way in which living here challenges me. Living (even as a theological college teacher) in the West, we hardly pray. Compare college chapel twice a week, church once, plus personal prayer-times, homegroups etc. with the Karen daily pattern! We are so busy (even “busy doing God’s work”), despite our computers (that we once feared would put large numbers of us out of work), washing machines and dozens of other gadgets that clutter our lives, we are “too busy” to really pray. Much of my private prayer time in recent years has been in the spa, the only time life in the West goes still Yet here, they manage to pray, praise and even worship regularly and long.

Then there is the context, this camp: its official UNHCR population is 38,693 people, or the 40,897 the Thai authorities fed last month. Housing and other buildings, and toilet and rubbish systems are village style - nothing here is officially allowed to be “permanent” - yet the population is large town size. What’s more the figure is way too small, add on all the people who are here, but for some reason, (and there are many reasons!) do not want the authorities to know…

The official figures list about 150,000 refugees on this border. Not one of these can have an official “job” that pays wages. Nor can the unofficial migrants who work “under the counter” for less than minimum wages across Thailand, like the rubbish dump people I mentioned the other day.

Sometimes if the security situation is fragile, as it was after the Karen National Union’s previous General Secretary was assassinated in Mae Sot in February, camp security will ask for a blackout and curfew. Some students here recently had their cell phones and light bulb (the light bulb students were in a dorm near the main college building so had power) confiscated just before their exams for studying under a blanket.

Yet, in all this, these people remain happy, hopeful, and trusting in God. Surely that’s a reason for us to pray for them. Give thanks for the resiliency of the Karen spirit, for their faith, for their adaptability and ingenuity. And beg the God who loves all his creatures that the torment of their land may end, in peace.

Please excuse the poor sound and slow frame rate (which exaggerates how shaky my camera-work was what it does mean is that this should download OK for most of you!

The children from the “orphanage” attached to the Bible School (some orphans in the usual sense, some children sent here for safety and schooling, by parents who are IDPs or live in less organised camps) singing at the thanksgiving for graduation make it seem as if Karen children are all “little angels”:

These guys, watching from the sidelines as the Bible students’ mass choir sings (a choir leader is in the foreground) suggest they are much like all children (and indeed adults anywhere - a bewildering mix of angel and something else, which is both more and less than angelic!

Our first Sunday at the camp was an eventful day. It began well with a quieter night, Saturday night the choir does not practice as long We woke once during the night to the sound of distant shots, but it sounded more like someone hunting than anything more serious!

At 8am Dr Simon asked me to preach at church (the main service is at 10:30, with earlier and evening services for younger people), it was the Global Day of Prayer for Burma. Imagine being asked as an ignorant foreigner, newly arrived to preach on such a day! I decided that all I could do was preach on prayer, and Jesus response to the request “Teach us to pray” (Luke 11) seemed a good start. But as I began I realized that before we can pray we need to remember to whom we address our prayers, and was led to Isaiah 40.

There a preacher is called to proclaim “Comfort!” to an exiled, depressed and discouraged people vv.1-2. They live in Babylon, remembering the defeat and destruction of Jerusalem, and watching the triumphant processions of the conquering forces.

Then the prophet hears a vision of another and greater procession vv.3-4 that of God, who will return to Jerusalem across a highway in the desert. The preacher is called again, by a voice that says “Cry out!“

The preacher resists (6b-8). Life is so short, return to Jerusalem may be generations away, what can I cry? Verses 9-11 repeat the promise, God will restore his people.

The prophet needed to be reminded of the God who called him. We need to be reminded of the God to whom we pray:

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand

and marked off the heavens with a span,

enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure,

and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?

He is the maker and sustainer of all. Such a God cannot be controlled, or even advised, not even by prayer! Vv.13-14. Most certainly we cannot persuade him with a present. Vv. 15-17.

But we keep forgetting, we keep trying to tell God what to do, as if we knew better how our prayers should be answered! We keep trying to persuade God, or make bargains with him, as if he were the seller at a market stall, or as if he were a mere god! (Vv.18-20)

How silly! (Vv.21-24)

God really is not like the powers of this world, nor like the gods and spirits, to be advised, or persuaded, or bribed, or bargained with (vv.25-26).

So this was God’s message to his people long ago: vv.27-31.

If Isaiah 40 warns us how not to pray, how should we pray? Jesus tells us in Luke 11.

“Father“: God is not distant, or uncaring, but closer and more loving than a human mother or father.

“Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come“: not our honour, but yours - not what we want, but your rule!

“Give us day by day the bread we need“: ask for what you need here and now.

“Forgive us our sins, as we forgive…” we all need forgiveness, but must first forgive others who have wronged us.

Then the prayer as we say it regularly ends:

“Do not lead us into temptation,

but rescue us from evil

for the kingdom, power and glory are yours!“

and we must never forget!

We are creatures. Like the rocks, trees and birds, but creatures who are loved and can call God “Father” when we pray!

So even preaching from the Bible, I cannot tell you what to pray for on this Global Day of Prayer for Burma. But I can tell you how!

And I can ask readers of this blog - even if Sunday 9th March has passed where you are - please join your prayers with others who pray for Burma and for the Karen people, they need your prayer! (See “The Story in a Nutshell” or the Wikipedia article Karen, People for a more dispassionate account.)

Building a dining area for the Jubilee

I have not yet written much about the school or the camp. The reasons are complex, I have not seen much of the camp, indeed until yesterday afternoon had only seen the guest accommodation and the classrooms of the Bible School. Since the assassination in February there was a curfew in the camp after 9pm, which was lifted only around the time we arrived, and locals are still nervous of foreigners wandering around casually. People seem glad of the presence of visitors, and certainly we are fed very well. Rice with delicious vegetables and fish is the commonest meal, though yesterday pork was added, and earlier chicken. I’m greatly enjoying the variety of fish, from quite large ones cut into steaks to minnows that are dried and salty. We also worry that if we are eating well someone else is eating less! A place like this risks being the world in a microcosm.

The children’s playground is a much appreciated addition to the school area!

The camp houses some people who have been here for many years, including youths born here, and also new arrivals either from across the border, or from other camps. For example, many of the students at the Bible School have come here to study from other camps or from within Burma/Myanmar. There are also children in dormitories here for schooling whose families still live in Burma. Some of the children in the home are orphans.

The KKBBSC (Kawthoolei Karen Baptist Bible School & College)^*1 is in Zone C of the camp, in a mainly Christian area. Nearby are teachers’ houses, dormitories for students, the church, primary and middle schools, as well as a boarding house for children and a home for handicapped landmine victims. All of this is on a small piece of land between the stream and the main road, with the steep rocky cliff of the hills marking a third side.

Dr Simon Htoo supervising the building

The Bible School has a preparatory class, followed by three years leading to their BTheol. Programmes are taught in both Karen and English. There is a strong emphasis on learning English with much singing in both languages. There is a lack of trained and qualified teachers. The principal Saw Simon Htoo has a doctorate in Practical Theology, coming in from supervising the building work - a task he obviously enjoys and takes pride in, he commented: “My theology is very practical!” But the others have been locally trained, two (Saw Tee Toh and Saw Waddo) are working to upgrade their qualifications at the college in Bangkok. This, however, makes them less available for teaching at KKBBSC.

Although it is after the usual term-time Barbara is teaching the second-year class and I have the third-years each morning. The students are delightful,and with care the typical Karen reserve and shyness can be overcome so that most of the class will participate and make their contribution. We do wonder how those Karen resettled to noisy extrovert cultures cope, perhaps in their own way they have as much difficulty as those learning to deal with cold climates (many from this camp are going to the USA & Australia or to Scandinavia & Canada - you can work out for yourself which are noisy extrovert places and which are cold

View from the hill over teachers’ houses

We are experiencing our own version of one of the frustrations of life in the camp, not being free to wander we are beginning to get fed up with seeing always the same few rooms and the same (lovely) views. We are also feeling the lack of physical exercise. The students’ enthusiasm for building work, and cane ball, is less surprising after a few days feeling cooped up!

There is one other Western luxury we are really missing: quiet! We think of modern Western city life as noisy and full of bustle, however between pre-dawn sweeping and other duties, dawn brass band practice, all-day building work, occasional choir practices, services, and evening prayer,^*2 followed by conversations that continue late into the night (and in a building with only partition-type walls these carry even when they are not in the cubicle next to ours!) we have headaches that are only partly caused by the heat, and think wistfully of the peace and quiet of the average Western day!

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1. NB. Spelling of Karen (or Thai) names in Latin script inevitably varies, and often there is no standardised equivalent, since these languages use a different range of sounds from those in English (or other Western languages). E.g. the Thai city of Mae Sot is also often written Maesod. Kawthoolei - the name of the Karen homeland - is particularly subject to variation, with each syllable presenting possible Western variants in an attempt to get a pronunciation closer to the original. [_RETURN]
2. If it does fall quiet during the day we can always rely on the generator or the water pump to fill the momentary lapse! (Though we do really appreciate the facilities they supply us with…) [_RETURN]

I taught the first class in the Old Testament Narrative course today, to third year students. We are still very tired, we did not allow enough jet-lag recovery time into our schedule, nor did we remember clearly enough how tiring it is to live and work somewhere where you are like a new born in your understanding of how things work - well not quite, wash places with a water scoop we had encountered in Congo, so some things are not quite new!

However, perhaps because Narrative is a really good choice for intercultural teaching, the class seemed to go well despite my tiredness and headache, and the huge gap in culture and my ignorance of Karen life, thought and ways. It also went well despite our rather different English accents and their having to work in a foreign tongue!

I hope they learned some ideas about narrative:

• narration implies a narrator
• narrative is more than chronicle
  • it links the facts or events it describes
  • and so gives them meaning
• narrative is widespread in the Bible - which contains little “instruction manual” material but lots of stories!

We also talked about stories, they told me several Karen stories. (One of which the Rabbit [Hare?] and the Tortoise I had already met! Some stories are surprisingly international.)

Another was told with an interesting variation, the famous (at least in Baptist circles) story of the Golden Book the telling went (allowing for simplification and memory lapse due to tiredness) like this:

A father once had three sons, Karen the oldest, Burmese and English (the youngest brother). One day he gave each son a book. To Karen he gave a golden book, to Burmese a leather book, and I can’t [That is the teller could not.] remember what the book he gave to the youngest son was made from. The youngest son stole the golden book, and the Karen who was left with the other book ignored it and it was walked on by chickens. The Karen to this day use writing that looks like chicken scratches, but one day the youngest brother will return the stolen Golden Book.

The version I had heard before was much like this from Keyes, Charles F. The Golden Peninsula: Culture and Adaptation in Mainland Southeast Asia. University of HawaiiPress, 1995, 52.

In a related myth, Y’wa is said to have given books to his various children, sometimes said to number seven, who are the ancestors of the major ethnic groups in the world known to the Karen. This gift of a book was, of course, the gift of literacy. The Karen, however, are negligent with the book given to them and it is eaten by animals or, in some versions, consumed in the fires built by the Karen in the course of tilling their fields. Y’wa offers the Karen the consolation that at some future date, “foreign brothers” will bring the gift of literacy—in the form of a golden book—back to them.

Interesting differences! I wonder what readers of this blog make of them!!?

[Quotation thanks to Google Books, the library here is not rich enough for that sort of research!]