What I’ve Been Up to...

For the past month I’ve been thinking up great blogs to share with you. There is just so much to say and I am not even sure I can do justice to the complicated issues on the Thai-Burma border. Besides that, life here is just so…unexpected in many ways. It took me a bit to fully embrace it but now I am there. In the next few posts I will attempt to explain things here from my perspective/understanding. But I encourage you to check out the resources I mention. 

Things have gotten pretty interesting since I stepped off that bus at 6:30am into the border town of Mae Sot. While MaeSot can be described as a sleepy border town, just below the surface there is a cast of unique characters, organizations, and businesses with various agendas who speak a multitude of languages and make you question whether or not you are still in Thailand. MaeSot is a melting pot of culture, language, politics, religion and…well to repeat myself…characters! Living here sucks you in, as it is hard to remain untouched by the issues going on around you.

Since living here I’ve occupied 2 guesthouses, and one actual house (where I was lucky enough to score a house sitting gig for 3 weeks- thanks  Maggie!). Most of my friends here were once random strangers who happened to be sitting next to me in a restaurant or tea shop…or should I say lucky enough to be sitting next to me?:) This experience has probably allowed me the most opportunity to practice my people skills, because not knowing anyone the first week (thus hanging out a lot by myself) was not so much fun. I arrived here hoping to find an apartment and volunteer position in the first week. I did get the volunteer position but the house part was a little more complicated. However, everywhere I have lived has been safe, secure, and social (the 3 S’s?).

Tea Shop where  I hang out a lot (there right now!)

Another view of tea shop.

A friend recommended that I try to volunteer with Social Action for Women (SAW) so I spent the first few days trying to get in touch with them. I was hoping that, just as the main drag is loaded with guesthouses and hostels, it would be just as packed with NGOs and easy to locate SAW. This is not the case and for good reason. The legal status of the population served by said NGOs is precarious. Some NGOs are also not registered by the Thai government so risk being shut down if found. As long as beneficiaries can access the services they need in a relatively confidential manner, it is in the interest of these organizations to remain a bit elusive to passersby. By Wednesday I did finally make contact with SAW and started teaching English to elementary kids the next week (3-4 classes per day). 

SAW serves the Burmese migrant population (Burmese meaning from Burma but not necessarily of Burmese ethnicity) in Mae Sot and surrounding communities. Many migrants are here illegally, and even if they do have a work permit have limited mobility and cannot leave Mae Sot. These two issues present problems in terms of getting access to medical care and education in Thailand. Thus, SAW’s programs target the most vulnerable migrants (women at-risk or victims of trafficking, abuse, and the sex trade as well as single mothers, orphans, and women fired from their jobs at the factories who have nowhere else to go.) Check out their website (www.sawburma.org) for more details.  The English courses were for the children of the migrant workers.

I taught English for about a week and a half before I got pulled into writing a grant to fund some activities for the Women’s Crisis Center. I have taken a million classes and workshops on grant writing but have never done it, so was pretty psyched to be involved. The process lasted about a week and was a combo of writing the grant and developing the project- very intense but extremely fulfilling! Between developing and writing we ate lots of Burmese food at the local tea shop…more about the food in a later post…

I have now been in MaeSot for a month and just returned from a short trip to Chiang Mai…stay tuned for more soon!