I visited a refugee camp today. It was my first. Not sure if this is mathematically possible, but the learning curve since I have come to the border has been so vertical I feel like I’m hanging from the ceiling by my nails. Processing what I hear, what I see, what I read is almost too much right now. And on top of that, do I learn Thai? Burmese? Karen? I can’t even order noodle soup in any of them, but right now that’s sort of the last thing on my mind.
Mae La refugee camp has about 55,000 Burmese refugees primarily from the Karen hill tribe, and is growing everyday. It is one of the fastest growing refugee camps on the border because of its easy access from “inside” (Burma) and the limited control the Thai and rebel armies have over the flow of people in and out of the camp. All the people coming to these camps are from many ethnic tribes in Burma: Shan, Karenni, Mon, Chin, to name a few, but they all seek refuge from the oppressive militaristic government of Burma, weather it be in the form of safety in the camp, illegally migrating into Mae Sot in Thailand, or the possibility of resettlement in a third country (the US, Norway, Ireland, etc). You can read about this situation much more extensively and accurately in books and possibly the news, but what you may not read about is what surprised me most.
Our purpose in visiting the camp today was to look at a new model of education being implemented in the Mae La camp and four other surrounding camps. Before arriving to the camp, I got a brief summary of the dynamic border situation from my boss and its ever-changing role in the lives of the people of Burma and in Thai politics. I heard about the various rebel armies from each ethnic tribe and their role in smuggling drugs across the border and human trafficking, the symbiotic relationship between the Thai and rebel armies, the illegal Burmese migrant workers living in Mae Sot, and the NGOs that have rooted them selves there in response and all their contributions to Thai economy. Corruption and fear run rampantly through all these facets of border reality, and is evident on a daily basis. But we don’t talk about these things. We can’t because these relationships are so delicate and interdependent that the shift of one has a butterfly effect on all the others. But this is not what’s surprising. As I listen to my boss give me the brief, watered-down version of the situation here, I have this picture in my head of the school as a small bamboo hut, possibly with a tin roof if they're lucky, and a large group of children from every age, with a range of prior education, and various tribes and language backgrounds learning from the one teacher in the camp who may speak one of these tribal languages (most likely Karen) and possibly a little Burmese. The picture in my mind was well… rather depressing. But upon arrival, and after a muddy hike up to the school, I met the director of the high school and the hopeless situation pictured in my head dissolved. She was a young Karen woman, fluent in English, Burmese and Karen (true of all the teachers in the camps), and took the time out of her unbelievably busy work to explain to me the new model of education they had created for the five camps. She had been educated in India and was replicating a credit-based system of high school education used there, here in the camps. The first two years of school, students would receive general education in various courses: math, science, social sciences, history, Karen, and English. Once completed, they would specialize in one of five areas (i.e. community management, business, political science), each specialty located at one of the five camps. The educators within the camps and Mae Sot had created an Institute of Higher Education to oversee the program, train teachers, and develop a curriculum that would have merit once the students and their families returned to Burma. She was extremely hopeful of this, and the aforementioned “elephant” of corruption and conflict did not seem to deter her. In fact, one issue the camp faces is Thai locals from nearby villages, entering the camps just to be educated. It was known that the education in the camps was superior to most education received in rural Thailand, and legal Thai residents were trying to get in to the camps to have a piece of this rare learning opportunity.
My preconceptions about camp life were rather droll and dreary. And this is not to say that everything is mangoes and mathematics, but really good things are happening and they’re not coming from the UN, or even entirely from NGOs….they’re coming from within. But if the metaphorical elephant has not been clearly communicated, let me end with the literal interpretation. As some colleagues from the organization and myself were feasting on cashew chicken, cat fish salad, and coconut soup at a small restaurant in the local night market, I stopped mid-slurp to stare at the gigantic elephant passing two meters from our table. But I was obviously the “newbie” in the group because no one else wanted to talk about it.
