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],

“Prayer Mountain” is a small two storey chapel, near the Mae La refugee camp, it is used mainly for private times of quiet, prayer and reflection.

Sorry, I forgot to write and tell you, we are safely home. (Well Sarah is safely in the UK, and has even landed herself a well-paid live-in job tutoring in central London - she travelled to the interview in Somerset straight from the flight, oh to be young again!)

Just outside the wire that surrounds the camp the path leads up a steep hill, through the forest, to the tranquility of “Prayer Mountain”.

Please do not stop looking at this blog though, since I already have plans to post here reflections on what we have seen and done over the last nine weeks. This will include both posts that will contribute to an article or two I plan to write, as well as more photos and video. Many of the posts will be ones I’d intended to write - sometimes even made notes in preparation - while we were there, but did not have time! I also hope that some of you may stay with us for the longer haul, as we look for ways to partner with one Pastor and his village, near the border.

The border between Thailand and Burma is surprisingly porous. We began to be aware of this when we crossed “the bridge” to renew our visas. Our trip to the local church celebration last Sunday underlined just how permeable a frontier drawn on a map can be.

The village itself is comprised mainly of Karen “Internally Displaced People” though it is in Thailand, on land rented cheaply by a sympathetic Thai citizen, and ignored by the Thai authorities. Some of the villagers are Thai citizens, as are their children. (To complicate matters often one parent is an IDP the other a Thai-Karen.)

It is also home to a school, which teaches not only village children, but also children whose parents live inside Burma (they live in dormitories) and some from refugee camps too.

One teacher we talked to a lot gave us a good impression of a school with very few resources indeed, except the people. The children get meals (thanks to Children on the Edge - the Body Shop Foundation): rice everyday, meat at least once a month, and vegetables, yellow beans or fish paste each twice a week. However, there are few or no textbooks, even for the teachers to use. The guy we talked with has studied engineering in Burma (at Mandalay University) before fleeing to China and getting a degree in Computers, Maths and English. I wonder how many NZ schools on making a change to the curriculum get rid of the old textbooks. If you know of one do let us know, maybe we can arrange to get them to people who will really use the “old” books. In some subjects real numbers would be great, in others enough for the teachers to use or to make a small library for the students would help.

As a final illustration of the porous border we went for a bath at the river, and watched motorized bullock carts (powered by rotovator engines) go back and forward across the frontier, or sometimes merely down the border to re-enter Burma a hundred or two meters downstream.

We needed to renew our visas, one does this by leaving the country and then reentering. Since things are fairly calm at present we went in to Mae Sot, to cross the bridge into Burma. The easiest way to organize it was at the weekend, avoiding disrupting teaching, and this weekend was also free of special events. Not like last weekend, and next weekend is Easter. So we had a weekend break in Mae Sot.

Mae Sot is not really a tourist town, though there are national parks nearby. We will be taking a three day trek in one, a bit south of Mae Sot when our time here ends, before we return home, to see waterfalls, wild orchids, and birds; and to go bamboo rafting and elephant riding in the forest. Actually Mae Sot is most famous as Thailand’s “wild west”, in the past a haunt of smugglers, and from time to time dangerously near the fighting between the Myanmar Army and the rebel forces. At least to a tourist on a weekend away, there is little sign of all this in the busy border town today. However, one can hardly cross a street without reminders of the refugee “business”. NGO volunteers are the commonest Westerners, easily outnumbering the tourists. Guesthouses and restaurants hold collections of money and other things to help. Many of the people are not Thai, but Karen - in terms of appearance, most of them will be Thai Karen (people of Karen ethnicity but born in Thailand and of Thai nationality) though who knows how many are “illegals” working for a pittance till the authorities “catch” them and return them across the border.

Mae Sot is a great town for shopping (less sophisticated than Bangkok or Chiang Mai, but with far less crowds and hassle, Sarah was even able to try a couple of tops on before buying). There are bargains, Barbara and Sarah each bought beautiful batik cloths for only 50Bhat (about NZ$2), and I got a couple of packets of delicious locally grown smoky roasted coffee, and the plastic and glass tea pot to make it in cost 40Bhat - the same price as my fine sturdy walking stick. Karen cooking is super, and the food at the camp has been consistently delicious. But after weeks away it was nice to enjoy a meal of frankfurters and bacon with chips (French fries for North American readers) and salad as a change.

Bangkok Tuktuk

As an indication of our commitment to Karen (and Thai cooking) Sarah and I bought a kilo of garlic in the market (another 40Bhat) and hope we can persuade the young women who cook to show us how to make the delicious deep-fried garlic that often garnishes and adds fragrance to the already fragrant dishes. (Garlicophobes beware, if you once try this dish, or the Thai prawn and deep-fried garlic, you may well find yourself converted on the spot!)

This morning, however, we set off for the border. We planned to catch a Songthaew (a ute with seating in the back acting as a local bus, or a lorry - “truck” for NARs - for longer distances) from town to the bridge. There was a small misunderstanding over the price before we could start, a simple cultural difference. There was only one other passenger at the time the run was due to start, we had been told the price should be 10Bhat each. The driver asked 20Bhat each. We demurred. Finally, we got the message, if we paid 20 each the bus could go now, if we insisted on paying 10 we’d have to wait for 6 passengers more to arrive! We paid happily, and our fellow passenger indicated (by International Standard Gestures) how “thick” he thought we were to take so long to understand!

At the bridge, the Thai authorities duly stamped us out, and retrieved their forms from our passports, to show that we had left the country. We walked the 400M over the high bridge across the rather dry river (it is the dry hot season here). We were amused to watch locals crossing below us on small rubber rafts and large inner tubes, with bags of shopping somewhat precariously balanced. At the other side we were ushered into an air-conditioned office and invited to fill out our immigration forms, give our passports to the Burmese officer, along with 500Bhat each, and told helpfully to be sure to be back before 5pm when the border office would close.

Street in Myanmar

We wandered up the main street, and down a little market lane. Burma is either just like Thailand, or totally different, depending on what you look at/for. The brands and products are much the same, the people are not strikingly different, on both sides of the bridge there are many Karen, for example. Both sides of the bridge have a mix of market stalls and small shops, with clothes, cloths and baggage as popular items, and similar small food stalls, with grilled snacks on sticks and baked items. Yet in Myanmar everything is older, more worn, and dirtier. The goods are more basic, with far less luxury items. On the whole too the people look less happy, with only a few exceptions (women at the café we stopped at for a drink and the Karen party in festive clothes on the back of a flag decorated vehicle were two notable exceptions) people simply look less happy, with little of the joy that Karen and Thai alike seem so often to display this side of the border.

Singapore airport provides great facilities for bloggers
We’re on our way, “in transit” for 14.5 hours in Singapore airport, waiting for the connection to Colombo. We arrived here in the middle of the night, so there was no point in trying to see the sights. But Singapore is the best airport in the world (subject only to anyone who can provide evidence of a better one to be in transit. We booked 8 hours in the transit hotel, at about NZ$80 for two of us not a great price for the luxury of several hours good sleep, and then a swim in the airport hotel pool before breakfast. Lovely Asian food at US$5 (or S$6 which is less but we haven’t any S$ cash) for a meal. Now we’re using the free Internet, and the comfortable armchairs and peace and quiet, wile allowing others to enjoy the shopping. This is civilised airtravel.

The next post, probably in a day or two, should contain our first impressions of CTS….

We’ve entered the last phase of getting ready. The check-lists are getting ticked off:

• notes and digital reader/anthology sent to CTS   √
• tickets arranged and bought √
• flight details sent to CTS (BTW we’ll have a cell phone while there and the number will be +94 724210739) √
• arranged with Karen Bible School that they will find us at the Guest House in Mae Sot on 3rd March √
• visas (we have just discovered that to stay more than a month in Thailand we’ll need visas, yesterday the Royal Thai Consulate was still closed for Christmas/summer holidays…)
• vaccinations - we have most of them but need blood tests to check some are still working (they took the blood this morning)
• anti-malarials √ (at least, we have arranged to get the prescriptions)
  
• water treatment (we are wondering if one of the neat new UV pens will do the trick)
• first aid kit

So, we are getting there. It feels a bit like being missionaries again, preparing to go to places very different from home. So far despite our rather disorganised and last minute approach God has been gracious and no major problems.

CTS are constructing a fine new buliding

We have our itinerary for the visits to Colombo Theological Seminary and the Bible School in a refugee camp for anyone who wants to pray for our travel here are the travel dates:

• depart Auckland 4th Feb
• arrive Colombo 5th Feb
• to London 17th Feb
• to Bangkok 27th Feb
• return to Auckland 6th April

The teaching dates at Colombo Theological Seminary are 8th - 16th Feb, so we’ll have a couple of days to get acclimatuised before teaching starts. Our dates for the camp are not yet finalised, even with email getting anything set up definitely is difficult. (A mixtrue of culture and conditions their end make definite plans in the future difficult to organise.)