Behind the Gates

We jumped off the pickup truck an hour outside of Mae Sot, after the police checkpoint and in front of the gates of Mae La Refugee Camp.

With a mouth full of betel nut, Pathi, my guide and passport into the camp, looked both ways before crossing the street. An ex-spy for the Karen rebel army, Pathi knew how to be quiet. He motioned me to follow, quickening his pace to duck into the gate, turn some corners, and enter the jungle. We stopped. He slapped me on the back and said, “There. Now we’re safe.”

With over 40,000 refugees, Mae La is the biggest camp in Thailand for refugees from Burma. Accessing it legally as a foreigner costs time, money and a lot of bureaucratic wrangling. Pathi told me he could take me through the back door.

Mae La is a sprawling camp, with over 8,000 bamboo and leaf-thatch houses scattered over a hillside. Its road front stretches three kilometers. While some refugees are being resettled in third countries, even more are coming from Burma each year. There are 154,000 spread across nine camps along the border. For two years now, Thailand has declared a ban on new refugees. They still come. Only now they don’t have the benefit of registration cards and the NGO food rations that come with them.

Saw Lu Hu, his wife Naw Ko Weh and their two young twins are one such invisible family. Five months ago they fled Burma’s eastern Karen state, where a war between an ethnic army and the Burmese military has raged for 50 years, because their village was about to be destroyed. Now in the refugee camp, they sit in the bamboo hut Lu Hu built. They have no refugee cards. They have no food rations. Their bone-thin twins are squirming in their laps.

“We had no place to live,” Lu Hu says. “We had to pay many taxes to the [military]. The troops called us to be porters, and if we couldn’t go, we had to pay. I was a porter three times.”

Lu Hu fled through the jungle with seven other families, finally crossing the border to seek refuge in Thailand. But the problems didn’t end there. Now his family has a roof over their heads, but food is scarce. For that, Lu Hu and his wife Ko Weh sneak out of the camp to work in the fields of a neighboring farm. The Thai farmer pays them 60 baht ($1.70) for a 10-hour shift. It pays for rice, fish paste and yellow beans, but little else.

“No, it’s not enough. But it’s better here than there,” Lu Hu says, nodding towards Burma.

I gave one of his sons half a pack of biscuits. He took them quickly, blankly. I smiled and reached down to squeeze his arm. It was more bone than flesh. He turned into his mother and curled the biscuits into his chest.

Some of the refugees are given UNHCR refugee status and resettled in third countries. Saw Pu Keh, 44, is preparing to take his family of four to Australia. He doesn’t know what to expect, but is happy that his daughters will get an education.

“I’m afraid of the plane,” he told me. “And I’m afraid of arriving in Australia without knowing any English.”

I asked him what work he would like to do. His answer was quick.

“I would like to prepare a field to plant rice and vegetables. Can you do that there?”

Pu Keh and his family have lived in the camp for eight years. It hasn’t been much of a life.

“It has been very difficult here. We can’t go outside. But we can’t work in the camp either, there are no jobs,” he said. “I think it will be better in Australia.”

Pu Keh has supplemented the NGO-donated rations of rice, fish paste and yellow beans by buying fish at a shop on one end of the camp, and walking it to the other end to sell for a small profit. He too makes about 60 baht a day. He is sad to have had to leave his home in Burma, but is happy his daughters will have a future.

“I want my daughters to be educated, he said. Our hopes are for our children.”

Down the dirt path is a shop selling outdated tins of food, betel nut and braziers for 30 baht a bag. Beyond it, Manday Tu, 50, steps out of her hut with a basket to collect edible leaves from the jungle to put in a soup for her family.

Her smile shines in the squalor, and belies the struggle of her 22 years as a refugee.

Manday Tu left her village when she was 28. The military had come, demanding rice and money. Unhappy with their spoils, they took a group of 15 villagers captive. Manday watched 3 have their ears cut off with a knife. They were tortured further, and later she saw them hanging from a tree. She took her family and ran.

She lived for 12 years in jungle camps with other displaced villagers, under the protection of the rebel army. When the camps were attacked, she would flee again. Eventually she arrived at the Salween River separating Burma and Thailand. With nowhere else to go, she crossed the border. She has lived with her family in three refugee camps before coming to Mae La.

“I am sad to think of my home,” Manday Tu says. Her hair is tied neatly in buns and there is grace in her eyes. “In our village we had to go to the fields and take care of the animals, we were very busy. Here we can’t go anywhere. Here we have no work.”

Manday Tu is looking after her ailing parents. When they pass away she says she wants to apply for resettlement in the United States. She, too, wants a future for her children. And, despite the pain, she’s come to terms with her exile.

“When I think about the military and what they did to our village, I get sad,” she says. “But we have no power. Everything the military does they do with a gun and no one can do anything.”

And then the shadow in her face passes. She looks at me and smiles generously. Even after everything has been taken from her, Manday Tu can’t stop giving.

“If I get to America, you must visit me,” she says. “You must come to stay with me.”

Through the Lens

Have a look at my Flickr account to see what I've been photographing recently. I have three sets of photographs posted...

A Night in Bangkok... I was out one evening and before I knew it was caught up in the climax of a 10-day Chinese festival. http://www.flickr.com/photos/14504395@N07/sets/72157602728225390/

Mae Sot, Thailand... The town I am in now is on the border with Burma. These are some shots of the bridge, the army and the unrelated but delicious snacks. http://www.flickr.com/photos/14504395@N07/sets/72157602728272070/

Mae La Refugee Camp... This is the largest camp for Burmese refugees in Thailand. It has 45,000 inhabitants who have fled the scorched earth offensives of the Burmese military. It's a place of squalour and smiles. http://www.flickr.com/photos/14504395@N07/sets/72157602731294077/

When you're at the sites, click on the link at the top right-hand corner of the page to view them as a slideshow. Click the photograph to display its description. I hope you enjoy them.

Thawno's Love

Like many stories, Thawno’s started with a hello.

I was walking out of an important interview in the dusty, dog-ruled streets of Mae Sot, running the quotes over in my head and imagining the article to come, when Thawno stepped out into the street, all baggy pants and broad-smiled swagger, and stuck out his hand.

“Hello!”

He motioned me into the storefront church where he worked, whirled out two plastic chairs, and we sat.

He told me a little about his life. He was 35, from the Chin state of western Burma, once taught martial arts in Mandalay and was convinced he was in love with Jenna Bush, George W.’s daughter.

“I saw her first in Rangoon,” he said. “She was using a Swedish passport, but it was probably fake, because she didn’t speak Swedish very well.”

“Are you sure it was her?” I asked Thawno. “Many foreigners have faces that look alike.”

“I knew her face from the pictures on MSN and NBC. She was wearing the same dress as the picture of her dancing with her father. It was her.”

It sounded like a case of mistaken-identity-celebrity-infatuation. I doubted Thawno would have known good Swedish from bad Swedish, but he was convinced and I was intrigued. Even more so when I learned that his love for Miss Bush would later be the cause of his arrest, torture and nine months of forced labor in a Burmese prison.

“I saw her first in Rangoon in April, 2003. She was smiling, sitting on a car, very lovely. I couldn’t talk to her, but I saw her again in Mandalay, in November, 2004. We walked to the top of Mandalay Hill together, she was beautiful and lovely. Too much I was loving her. That time she was using a Belgian passport and speaking French. ‘Why does she lie to me, and use a different passport every time?’ I asked her friend. She told me it was probably for security.

“I got her e-mail address and wrote to her, when I was living in Rangoon. I didn’t have an address to give her, but I told her to come anyway. Fortunately, I met her on the street one day. She told me, ‘I’m not Jenna Bush,’ but she laughed, and asked me what I thought of George Bush. She probably lied because of security. And if she wasn’t his daughter, why would she ask me about George Bush? I asked her to marry me. She told me maybe, if I come to her country.

“When she left I wrote her e-mails asking her to come back to marry me. It is not so difficult for her to come back to Burma to marry me, but for me to go to America, it is very difficult! I asked her to come back to be my wife. She was angry sometimes, she wrote back and called me a “wacko” – you know what is “wacko?” – and said I didn’t know about the world.

“I wrote letters to her father, to George Bush, asking for her hand in marriage. I thought maybe it is difficult for her to come back to Burma, so I decided to meet her in Thailand. I was getting on the bridge to cross over when the military police stopped me. They looked in my bag, and found copies of my letters to George Bush.

‘Why are you writing to George Bush?’ they asked me.

“They arrested me and took me to jail. They tied me up in a chair and beat me.

‘Why are you sending letters to George Bush?’ they asked.

‘“Because I am in love with his daughter,’ I told them.

‘“You are a fool,’ they said. ‘She is the highest of the high, and you are the lowest of the low, how can you think you could be together?”

‘“I love her because it is my right!’ I told them.

‘“What are your rights!’ they shouted, and beat me more.

“For nine months I was in prison. My hair and my beard turned white. The food was bad. I lived like an animal, because of the wicked government. The top generals, they did not beat me, but it was because of them that I was beaten. It was like they were behind the door.”

After nine months, Thawno escaped, and fled to Thailand, where a pastor took pity on him and gave him a job in the church. He still wrote e-mails to Jenna Bush, the real or imagined, but her replies were few. He sent his biography to the White House and the UN, hoping to get refugee status, but the e-mails didn’t go through. He suspected an intelligence agency blocked it. Thawno was tired of being toyed with.

Just recently he saw something on the news that had him disturbed.

“Tell me, I saw the White House press release that said she is engaged, do you think it’s true? It’s not good to lie to the world like that. I saw on an NBC interview, she said she was engaged, but then she laughed, and said she hasn’t set a date yet. So I think maybe it’s not true. I think maybe someone knew about us and got jealous. Do you think it’s true that she's engaged?”

I couldn’t lie to him. It was clear that he was delusional in his obsession with Jenna Bush, but I saw no reason to disbelieve his 9 months in prison. People had been imprisoned in Burma for less. Thawno was earnest in his questions. I told him, yes, I did think her engagement was true, but that there were plenty of other girls out there. Thawno looked away and didn’t speak for a while.

“Maybe it’s better for her,” he said, finally. “It’s hard to live in Burma. The government is very wicked. But I would like to hear from her personally, honestly. I love the truth. I love pure, hard and good character. I love freedom.”

I left Thawno to his reverie. A doctor I talked to later told me his celebrity obsession was a classic symptom of bipolar disorder.

Thawno had fled a country where dreams were beaten from people before they could even take seed. But you couldn’t beat a dream from Thawno. His had taken root, and Jenna Bush, the real or imagined, was in his heart for good.

Snapshot of a Life: Bangkok

I met Pon yesterday morning when I was wandering the maze of streets around my guest house, looking for food. I was hungry, and she was grilling chicken and mashing up green papaya with roasted garlic and chilies and lime. I stopped for a chat and some sticky rice and salad at her corner stall:

Pon is from Laos. She came to Bangkok two years ago because she could earn more money here. She likes to joke. She exaggerates figures when she speaks, then hastily backtracks when called out. Hers is not the most remarkable of lives. But it’s a life. One of Bangkok’s 10 million. And, as far as lives go, it’s a consistent one. You can find her on the same street corner in Bangkok’s grimy automotive repair district every morning of the week except Sunday, when she rests. She’s there at six and she’s gone by two.

This is Pon:

She’s in her twenties, has two children and a boyfriend. She comes from the countryside of southern Laos, where she planted rice with her family. She came to Bangkok looking for opportunity. She misses her family and country, but is able to go back to visit five times every year.

“It’s better in Laos,” she said, “it’s peaceful, and the living is comfortable. But it’s hard to find money.”

Her family of nine is still in Laos, keeping goats, cows and buffaloes, and planting just enough rice to eat.

“It’s not like Thailand,” she said, “where they harvest two to three times a year and sell what they don’t eat. In Laos you harvest once and you eat what you grow.”

Here in Bangkok, she says, she makes 1,000 baht (US$30) on a good day, selling food like this:

Some days she only makes 300 baht, about US$10. Those numbers went up and down as we talked. Whatever the case, it’s not a lot, and she sends much of it back to her mother in Laos, who is looking after her son.

Pon wants a house to live in, (she’s renting a room in Bangkok) and a stable income. She wants enough money to take care of her children well. And she wants some rest. She doesn’t have much time for that now. She’s up at three every morning, preparing food, on the street by six, and at two she’s off to the market to buy the next day’s supplies. After that she goes home, makes food for her boyfriend and daughter, and is asleep by eight.

“I have a lot of difficulties,” she said. “I want a life with less difficulty.”

As for now, she’ll be on the same nameless street corner eking out a living. Across the street from her, old axles and engines and suspension springs are coaxed back to life by a group of laconic young men sitting beneath two six-foot mountains of bolts. In other parts of the world, these auto parts would already be rusting in a scrap heap. Here they will be reincarnated.

The air between Pon’s stand and the auto shop smells alternately of tangy grease and grilled chicken, depending on which way the wind is blowing.

This is Pon’s view, from six to two, every day of the week except Sunday, when she rests.

Loving Hong Kong's Unwanted

HONG KONG – Jackie Pullinger doesn’t look like your typical Christian missionary. Popping out of a car in the traffic-choked streets of Hong Kong, she wears stylish sunglasses and long strings of pink beads over a shirt that sparkles.

She’s in her sixties. Her cheeks are rouged and her hair is dyed gold. Unorthodox is an understatement.

And Pullinger isn’t your typical missionary. In fact, she doesn’t even like the word. She tires of "professional Christians" and their vocab. She’s spent the past 41 years picking gang members, prostitutes and heroin junkies off of Hong Kong’s streets, but she’ll glare if you refer to it as her "work."

"I never thought of this as work. It’s a journey," she says instead. "It’s a can’t-lose journey."

Nor will she bear to hear pastors or church groups talk about her "anointing" or "ministry" or people being "saved."

Pullinger’s is a simpler lexicon, filled with words like "poor," "hurt" and "love." In a city with 40,000 known heroin addicts sharing the streets with rampant gang violence and forced prostitution, Pullinger has no time for religious dogma.

What remains is the raw reality of an unshakable woman who might be this city’s Mother Teresa. But she wouldn’t let you say that either.

In 1966, when she was in her early twenties, Pullinger got on a boat in her native England with the intention of going to another country to help people. She won’t talk about it as a "calling" or a "burden" or any of that nonsense.

"It was more, Jesus is coming back, whenever, and when he comes, I’d like to answer well," she says.

But she didn’t know exactly where she was going. The boat called in at eight different ports before it got to Hong Kong, where Pullinger felt it was the right place to step off.

"I walked around Hong Kong and saw people dying, kids in the street, old people with begging bowls," she says. "I thought maybe I could manage one street."

She started talking to people. She gave them food and took them to the hospital when they needed a doctor. She stepped into the middle of alleyway gang-fights alone, pleading for them to stop.

One street turned into one slum, which turned into one district and then, as her projects grew, the whole city. Now she organizes weekly meetings in one of the roughest parts of Hong Kong and invites the junkies, the whores, the street kids, and anyone else that might be hurting. There are always more people needing help than her facilities have space for.

But she never turns anyone away. When her complexes of buildings in various parts of the city are all filled up, she rents out brothels to house the newcomers. She once helped a woman get off heroin in a cupboard.

Getting people off drugs is a specialty of Pullinger’s. Over the years, she’s developed a technique for bunking a heroin addiction. She doesn’t use medication, or phased withdrawal. Instead she finds a room for the addict and puts them in pajamas. For 10 days there is someone beside them constantly, whether they are awake, asleep or going to the bathroom. They are prayed for and surrounded by a supportive community of ex-junkies. When the 10 days are up, most are no longer addicts. After that, they are trained for a job and can stay in the community as long as they like.

"We treat them like newborn babies," Pullinger says. "There’s always someone with them. They can eat what they want, when they want. There’s absolutely no advice or counseling. They’re the center of the world."

It’s worked so far for Chi Kong, a 51-year-old father of three, and heroin addict for 30 years.
Chi was once in the Triads, Hong Kong’s notorious gang responsible for most of the city’s drug-running and organized crime. There are whispers of it in his face, and a stamp of membership crawling up his arm in the form of a dragon tattoo that ends in a snarling head just above his heart. Chi was a fighter. He once broke his right arm in a street fight. But five months ago, he changed all that.

"It was very hard," he says. "I wanted to run away in the beginning. I was very temperamental. I wanted to fight the others."

But he was soon off the drugs and into a family of ex-addicts.

"My character has changed," he says. "I’m not as angry."

Chi said he’d stay another year or so recovering at the center. Then he’ll leave and find his children again. And if he runs into his old friends, he says with a smile, he’ll tell them he knows of a place they should visit.

Pullinger says the response is always positive at the weekly addicts meetings. It’s one of her favorite parts of what she does.

"They all know Jesus within a few minutes," she says. "They speak in tongues in five."

Tim Berringer, a young Briton volunteering at the home for addicts, says Pullinger has been an inspiration to him.

"Jackie’s one of those people who does what they believe," he says. "I’m not really into empty religion, but there’s something happening here."

Sai Kit would agree. Sai was a father at 15, and a heroin addict and Triad member by 19. He spent most of the salary he earned working at a hotel on drugs. Three slash scars on his forearm are a reminder of his days of fighting.

"I always wanted to change," he says, "but I was bound up by heroin."

Sai’s been off the drug for one month now, and says coming to live with his new "brothers" was the best decision he’s ever made.

"I found my father," he says, pointing to the sky. "I found my family. I found some self confidence. And I found my smile again."

These days Pullinger travels a lot. In the past three weeks she’s been in America twice and the U.K. once. She’s developed a celebrity status amongst Christians in the West, and many churches ask her to speak to their congregations. She hates it. She’d much rather give a three-day seminar on how to alleviate poverty than an hour-long speech. She’s after inspiration, not admiration.

"You’ll find the world around that people who help the poor are happily pushed to the side and admired," she says. "You have a whole bunch of Christians with houses and money enjoying a great feast and the poor remain elsewhere."

Instead, Pullinger tries to model her life on Christ-like love.

"If you’ve got an orange, and someone’s hungry, you give them half," she says.

It’s what she calls the "normal gospel."

"Living in a world where one-third of the population is destitute," she says, "most Christians don’t do normal gospel."