March 2007-- Continuing our efforts to listen and document the stories of its refugee members, the BRP social workers have been conducting extended interviews with the refugees’ parents as well as eliciting essays from the children. Recently, Mo-eh and Sway-Mud’s mother Tuay told us her story about how she, her husband, and her daughters moved to Thailand from Burma.

Tuay lived in Ban-haad village in Lankur district in Shan State. This village had approximately 100 families, with dramatic inequalities between rich and poor. Although Tuay said that life in Burma was “okay,” and that there were “no problems” with the military junta in her village, she did mention that the soldiers sometimes abducted villagers and forced them to act as assistants and porters during battles in the jungle. The soldiers did not fight with the villagers themselves, however. It was also known that soldiers were more likely to set fires

or commit mass rape in Shan villages closer to the border.

Relaxing a bit during the interview, she confessed that life in Burma had been hard for Tuay’s family. Ten years ago, she left her mother and her severely mentally ill elder sister to move to Thailand. (Because her father is deceased, her mother takes care of her sister, despite her own frail health.)

Tuay and her husband walked through the jungle for 5 days, taking turns carrying 2-year-old Mo-eh. They had heard that life in Thailand was easier, and that there were plenty of jobs to be had.

They arrived in Thailand and settled in a refugee village. Two months later, the local Thai authorities arrested everyone in the village for working without a permit.

Tuay and 2-year-old Mo-eh spent a week in jail. Her husband had run away and escaped, but there was little he could do out of captivity; Tuay was fined 750 baht and deported.

In Burma, her family had some land, on which they grew rice and sesame seeds. In a regular harvest season, she could sell the harvest for around 1,000 jaht (approximately 30 baht) a day at the market. In a good year with plentiful rain, she could make sesame oil, which sold for 10,000 jaht (about 300 baht) a bucket.

Three years later, when Mo-eh was 6 years old and the second daughter Sway-mud was 3, the family tried to come to Thailand again. This time, Tuay, her husband, and their two children joined 8 other villagers in chartering an entire bus for their journey, so that it would be unlikely that the bus would get stopped. Her ticket to Thailand cost 3,000 baht—Obviously, she saved for a very long time before making her trip, but she also had to borrow money from neighbors (on which she pays high interest rates).

Because the political situation in Burma and here in Thailand is always changing, Tuay is also afraid to return to Burma to visit her mother and sister. She did manage to visit them one time 3 years ago. They knew that if they handed over their legal working permits to immigration officials at the border, the officials did not always give them back. Fortunately, her Thai boss agreed to drive to Maehongson, the provincial capital, held her papers, and attested to her legal status.

For the most part, life in Thailand is as Tuay expected it to be. When villagers had told her stories about Thailand, they had not mentioned their low status and marginalization here. Still, it is easier to eek out a livelihood in Thailand, and there is no military junta. She lives in the “rock village,” where almost all of the refugees make their living by hauling out buckets of rocks from the riverbed and selling these by truckload, at the end of the day. (The refugees in this village are, for the most part, doing better than the

sharecroppers and day laborers who live in the other main BRP cluster, at the other end of town.) Tuay earns enough money to send some remittances to her mother back in Burma, and she calls her family once a year. Since neither Tuay nor her husband can read or write, other messages are sent verbally. These messages are carried by friends who are visiting or returning to Burma and can stop by her village.

Finally, her children would be unlikely to be in school in Burma; they would surely be working, as 10- and 13-year-olds, to support the family. Neither Tuay nor her husband can read or write in any language. Throughout the interview, Tuay asserted that they would stay in Thailand long enough to further Mo-eh and Sway-mud’s education.

At the end of the interview, we were jokingly told that if we wanted to hear the whole story, it would take four or five days. Tuay clearly relished the opportunity to tell her account of her journey here.