Farrah, a fellow AJWS volunteer, refers to Mae Sot as her little "Burma Bubble" and I understand what she means. There are Burmese signs are everywhere, an expansive Burmese market in the center of town and a majority of the women you see on the street are wearing traditional Burmese longyis (skirts) and ta na kah (a gold powder for the face). Most striking to me is the amount of political activism that exists, despite the clear security risks. Businesses have "Free Burma" signs and posters of Aung San Suu Kyi on their walls. I even read one menu at a very popular restaurant that vehemently denounced the Thai Police for their harsh treatment of migrant workers. I was struck by this because in Chiang Mai, these attitudes are a little more behind the scenes.
On Friday afternoon, Jessie, myself and two new AJWS Volunteers, Alea and Emma, took the six hour bus ride from Chiang Mai to Mae Sot, arriving just as the sun was setting. We managed to secure a ride to our guest house with a representative from Alea's partner NGO, a woman from Karen State in Burma. Immediately upon arrival Jessie and I had so many questions - how many Burmese migrants and refugees live in Mae Sot? Where are the refugee camps located? Who runs the refugee camps?
The woman explained to us that about half the people we would see around Mae Sot were from Burma. Many people live in the camps, run by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and are either registered with refugee status after going through an extensive interview process or simply live there, unregistered. In the camps, the Thai Burma Border Consortium (TBBC) assists UNHCR in providing food, work, school and medical care for the inhabitants and collecting data about population of the camps. This chart shows the large discrepancies in what the UNHCR reports and the actual numbers of people living in the camps - almost one third of the total population of the camps are unaccounted for by UNHCR reports. Camps are located all along the Thai-Burma, India-Burma, Bangladesh-Burma and China-Burma borders and migrant communities exist in close proximity to these camps, as well as in larger cities, such as Chiang Mai. The NGO I work for operates along the Thai-, India- and China-Burma borders. In the various camps my NGO holds trainings and discussions to educate women about their rights, reproductive health and politics. Quite simply, their mission is to increase the capacity of the women from Burma to become active political participants within Burmese society.
On Saturday, Jessie and I got the chance to tour the Women's Empowerment & Resource Center, a drop-in center and library run by my NGO in Mae Sot. I've spent the last few months helping to write funding proposals, edit reports and develop a social media presence for this amazing organization and so seeing the facilities and meeting more staff members was a much-appreciated opportunity.
Unsure of what to expect, we arrived at the Center to a welcoming and excited group of women. We sat around a table, eleven of us in total, including two of the leaders of the organization who helped found it 16 years ago. We took turns saying where we were from and what we did and although I was nervous at first, because of the language barrier and because I had so many questions for them, my nerves immediately subsided. Before I knew it, jokes and teasing comments were interspersed with serious questions about fundraising, strategic goals of the organization and daily goings on of the Center.
After talking for a while, two of the younger women (mid-twenties and clearly future leaders in the organization and the movement) took Jessie and I on a tour of the Center. We saw the library where men and women can check out books, watch informational films, read newspapers published in different ethnic languages and receive handouts about reproductive health and migrant rights. In the next room over we saw the sewing center where women can come to learn practical skills so they can be hired at one of the factories in the area. We met two of the migrant women and were told that they had been arrested at their factory by Thai authorities and sent back to Burma earlier that week. They had just come back to Thailand and were now working to improve their sewing skills so they could be hired somewhere because, as they explained to us, the factories are very competitive. People are desperate for work and women find it nearly impossible to take sick days or even maternity leave because someone else will be eager to fill their shoes. Needless to say, getting arrested and deported leaves one unemployed. Despite the extremely low pay, harsh treatment and meager living conditions, so many people show up every day looking for work and so migrant workers are expendable to factory managers.
We also saw the clinic where women can come to be treated for ailments resulting from common colds or infections, domestic violence and where they can receive prenatal care and advice. We sat down in the clinic for a while and looked at pictures of patients that they had taken to document the abuses. I should note that my NGO does not deal with any legal matters (they do provide counseling), but opens its doors as a safe haven and helps women connect with other groups that focus specifically on the legal system.
We got to talking and Jessie and I began asking them about their individual experiences. They shared with us about the corrupt education system in Burma, the horrible conditions of the factories and what it takes to break out of the gender stereotypes that exist in the patriarchal society of Burma. Now, I've grown up with everyone telling me that I can be anything I want in the world, that I can travel anywhere, attend any school if I study hard enough, make and control my own finances, date and marry whoever I want and choose whether or not I have children one day. In traditional Burmese society, women are given close to none of these options. Accepted gender roles dictate that women are child-bearers, homemakers and should be obedient to their husbands. Men are favored for educational opportunities within a family and are in charge of household economics. I cannot imagine the courage it takes to challenge that structure.
As soon as I learned where I'd be working and what I'd be doing here in Thailand I began reading reports, websites and paying attention to all things Burma. Every single book sitting on my shelf right now is about Burma, feminism and development (no one ever wants to borrow them...?). However, nothing has been as powerful as listening to the women I work with talk about what it's like to be a woman in a society like Burma. They talked about what it feels like to question and challenge the way women are treated throughout your community. To leave your home and live for months in a dark room, packed floor to ceiling with bunk beds and laundry baskets, each one holding one woman's belongings. To work more than twelve hours each day, just scraping by and always fearing Thai authorities and the inevitable costly bribe that you'll have to pay to get out of jail or a sticky situation. Granted, I am constantly analyzing gender roles/stereotypes of the West and how my own actions and beliefs fit into them, but I've been encouraged to think this way from Day 1.
Feeling we needed a little closing ceremony to pull the day full circle, Jessie and I rode our rented bikes to the Friendship Bridge at the border to watch the sunset over Burma. I'll admit, it wasn't the most picturesque of sunsets. The dire circumstances were all too evident as we watched people tread illegally through the tall bushes from Burma into Thailand. There was trash everywhere, morally questionable items for sale at a border market...we almost got attacked by a vicious dog and as we were walking Jessie swore some guy was following us (he was). As we sat on a cement bench next to some boys playing with kites and watched the sun set, we reflected on what we had discussed in the past 24 hours - that half the people in this Thai town are from Burma, that although it's an incredibly difficult life (an understatement), thousands come each year to work in Thailand rather than starve in Burma.
I have a lot of respect for the Burmese people. They've been struggling so long for peace and democracy and I think now more than ever is an amazing time to be involved in this movement. People are inspired by the events in Egypt and I find myself bogged down with emails from my Google Alert listing endless articles comparing Egypt to Burma. The women of Burma are special because they are at the forefront of this movement and as one of the founders of my NGO pointed out, "We will reach democracy and peace one day and once that happens, we will continue to work for gender equality."
