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Posts tagged ‘Karen people’

Jun 12

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When do I hear my neighbor sing?

Book Cover sizedI have been working on translating my book, Picking Flowers on Dusty Roads, into Norwegian. It is a long, and boring task.

Since I am in the mood of the book, I have decided to share a few paragraphs here. Perhaps you will like it and want to get the whole book. Nothing would please me more!

mother and children

“It’s no secret that we in the West are masters at spending our lives running for the wrong reasons. We’ve entangled ourselves in a net of expectations and commitments that’t harder for us to get out of than it is for a fly to get out of the spider’s web. We all know that we need to stop before the spider eats us alive—sucking all the juices out of us until we’re dead.”

“I was sitting in a Karen village watching life unfold. I was an outsider and was able to observe without really taking part. The challenges of survival were more complex and involved than I probably understood. Only a few kilometers away the Burma Army loomed, carrying with them the threat of death. Minutes earlier I had talked to a villager who had shared the burden of not having enough to eat and not knowing if they’d survive the year with so little rice. The children were poorly dressed, and many had runny noses and coughs. And yet I saw joy and heard laughter. I felt a sense of peace that maybe was divine.

I always heard singing and it came from everywhere. Not exactly Elf-like, but honest and unpretentious songs that I imagined were about love and bravery. Men who were working the fields or walking through the jungle, women who were doing the laundry by the river, or carrying their babies up the hills, and children who were just running about, being kids, sang. I have never heard as much singing as I have in the presence of the Karen. I wondered, When did I last hear my neighbor sing, or my colleagues as they came to work on Monday morning? We have a reason to belt it out. We live in a free country, we have pantries full of food, microwaves, and walk-in closets, but the song coming from us often lack tunes.

On this evening I heard the singing coming from simple huts on the hills while I stood outside watching the myriads of stars dancing on the dark sky. There were no other sounds than the sounds of the jungle and the little piggy-snores coming from three piglets that were huddling together in a ditch in front of one of the houses.”

If you want to read more, you will have to get the book. You can do that here. If you rather buy it on Amazon, it is available there as well. Here is the link.

Aug 28

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Playing it fair, or remaining a bully

Life should be a little more fair for people like her.

Having had kids for a while, I have learned some things. One of them is that you have to play fair. There are rules to all games, and if somebody breaks them, he or she cannot be trusted. And kids don’t want to play with the ones who don’t play by the rules. I think this is pretty straight forward. 

Unless you live in Burma. 

Like so many you too may think that things are moving forward at the pace of success in Burma now. The reports I have been getting the last few days are anything but good. In some ways it is worse now than ever.

Because while villages are starving in Karen State because their rice crops have failed again, nobody knows. (We have received requests to help with food/rice for 3620 starving people)

While thousands of Kachin refugees who had to flee to China due to the heavy fighting in their villages are forced back to their villages where the fighting still continues, nobody seems to take notice. Read more here. (Again, Partners staff is there doing what we can to help. We have been able to provide food and shelter among much more.)

While soldiers are shooting at civilians in Karen and Shan State, although there supposedly is a ceasefire agreement in place, the media is suspiciously quiet.(This has been communicated with us by the Free Burma Rangers, but the report is still not available online)

While young girls are forced into prostitution because their families’ land has been confiscated by big international companies governments just continue their investments to “help develop” Burma.(Again, there are no official news about this, so you just will have to trust me and our staff who have been in the areas and seen the situation for themselves. They have interviewed and documented.)

While thousands are killed and forced to flee in Arakan state, the government of Burma is sadly passive, and the world don’t seem to care about a people who has nowhere to go. Read the report that my friend, Matt, wrote here.

You think I am just making this up? I wish that was the case, but I am not. This is all happening right now, as we speak. While countries are excitedly moving into Burma to get their piece of the cake. Follow the links I have given you, and comment, share and spread the word. 

Also, pray for and give to Partners who is trying to do our best to help in this mess. 

Got to go now. I need to figure out what more I can do…

 

Jun 13

Human rights and the color of your eyes.

Today I took a look at Kristin’s comments about human rights and ethics. She said some things that were plain cute. Not everything was right, but it gave me some insights.

Kristin and dad

“Ethics is when you treat the dark people worse than the light ones (I think she got the words mixed up here and explained discrimination instead.)

We need to think that all people are of equal worth and we need to think before we act.

Socrates, he is helping a little in the UN.

Human Rights means that all should get what they want.

An example is that if one is popular and one is not, they are still of equal value.

The Declaration of Human Rights is: They meet every year and talk about new rules they can put in the book.

To discriminate means that for example somebody has blue eyes and somebody has brown. And then the ones with blue eyes are not allowed to come to Norway.”

So these are Kristin’s thoughts. Certainly they are very simplified, but I thought about this: If one is popular and the other is not should not determine their value. In Burma this is still not true. It still seems like the ethnic minorities are the unpopular ones, and the ones who are not considered of equal value. This is wrong in the mind of a ten-year old, and it is wrong in my mind.

Says I. I have brown eyes and hopefully I can therefore live peacefully in Norway.

 

May 13

Mothers carry the world

As we celebrate Mother’s Day in many parts of the world today, our thoughts and prayers turn to the thousands of moms who have been displaced from their homes in Burma, struggling to care for their babes every day in IDP and refugee camps. We honor these moms and say a special prayer for each one! To help their plight, give at Partners website

 

May 11

Thoughts around scones

Today I got up, made some scones for my family (I had forgotten to buy bread yesterday, and in this country one does not eat breakfast if one has no bread.)

So I made if from flour I had in my shelves, some dark and some white. I put it in my oven when the temperature was right and waited for the timer to go off. We ate them fresh and warm with butter, cheese and marmalade.

There is still more food in my fridge.

I am planning on eating lunch, dinner and probably a snack too.

There is even food in my freezer if I need some more.

And it is likely I will go to the store today because we are out of yogurt and green apples.

Now I am by my desk doing my work (which can be compared to racket ball. My job is the ball, bouncing all over the place, and to many it looks like it is bouncing randomly too. But there is a plan and there is a strategy. Only thing is I may be the only one who knows what it it. Well, enough of that.)

So here at my desk I read about children in Burma being malnourished and sick. I read about charities who have dropped their support to the ethnic areas of Burma, because, presumably, there is peace now. The thing is that just because peace agreements have been signed, it does not mean that people all of a sudden have food. Also, even if  nobody is shooting you in your village, there are still no schools. It may be that the soldiers in the area will not rape the young girls (truth is, though, that in many places they still are), but there are still no medical facilities.

Kachin State. Photo by Leah, Partners Relief & Development

And then, don’t forget: In many places the same violence is still going on. The thing is that it is so far away that the news media and the investment-hungry companies don’t see it. In Kachin State, for example.

So, today, while drinking my coffee and enjoying my life in freedom and abundance, I want to send a note of thanks to my friends at Partners Relief & Development who still work as hard as ever to give food, medicine, education, love, hope and dignity to the people of Burma. And I was wondering: Perhaps you would want to join us? If you still have some food in your fridge you are richer than the kids I read about today. So why not share? Watch this movie and then make up your mind!

Have a happy weekend. :-)

May 9

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When the sarong of perfection falls off

Kristin and I taking a bath in Burma.

Some of  you may have read my latest book, Picking Flowers on Dusty Roads, already. But if you haven’t, I thought I may give you a taste, just to tempt your appetite for more. Here are a few paragraphs from page 103:

“Obviously, we are from different worlds: the Western world with all its trinkets, and the jungle world with all its jungle gadgets. It’s only natural that we behave like clumsy amateurs in a world that is not our own. I can keep wishing that they could see me in my element, with my hair a different style than the mop-look I have been forced to adopt during these weeks. But I can also decide to give up my pride and let go.

I have no problem being totally honest and sincere while I’m just uttering my silent prayers to the only One whom I believe knows me just the way I am while here. Often it goes like this: ‘Help me, help me, help me.’ ‘Please, please.’ ‘Say something, will you?’ My prayers aren’t any more eloquent or impressive than the clumsy climbing moves I’ve had to make as I crawled up steep hills to get here. But they’re all I have. I can’t make them any better. If I did, I’d be a liar. Maybe I have come here to learn not to be too impressed by myself, but instead to see that I am weak and dependent. In the convenience of my own world, I often don’t see this, because I can do so much, and the rest I can fake. It’s a humbling feeling, but also freeing. In a way it is like the sarong has fallen off and here I am in my imperfection. You can take it or leave it, but this really is who I am.”

If you want to read more, then that is possible. You will just have to buy the book! You can get it at Partners or at Amazon.

Apr 13

Hope, the thing you find outside yourself

I have been trying to write an article about hope for a while. Gaiam, a company that we have worked a lot with, asked me to write something for their blog. I was flattered and happy. Now I had an excuse to write something just for fun, during my work hours.

I looked up some quotes on hope. Many of them I had read before. I searched some articles about hope, and learned some. I asked myself what I hope for.

My hopes ranged from: “Time to organize the laundry room” to “Greater influence in the development of the democracy in Burma.” If I am going to be totally honest, I must say that most of the things I hope for are things I hope for my family and myself. To hope for peace on earth sounds noble, but, honestly, I hope for things much more selfish way more often.

I have realized that living in a rich country and being among the rich few in the world (I don’t consider myself rich by any means. I compare me to my neighbors, and they have a lot more than me. The fact, however, is that compared to most of the people on the planet, I am very rich. I don’t live in a cardboard box, for starters) makes it hard to hope for much except that which is pictured in the glossy clothing or home furnishing catalogues. Everything has been given to me already, and what I don’t have isn’t essential for my survival. (I would like a new pair of shoes, but will I die if I don’t get any? I would love it if we could have two cars instead of one, but are our lives in danger with just one car?) Hope is not what keeps us alive.

I don’t think I have a great answer to the Hope question. This is what I ended up writing for Gaiam:

Over the years of working with refugees from Burma I have often wondered what their most important possession is. We have even made lists of the things that they bring with them as they flee the attacks of soldiers: A machete, cooking pot, tarp, a lighter, rice and salt. All those things are essential for survival in the jungle. The same with medicine and warm blankets. These are possessions that give life.

People on the run from their homes try to make sure that all these items are in the baskets on their backs and know that they will depend on them in the days to come. But often the attacks have been so sudden that they have not had the time to gather the basic essentials before fleeing. My organization, Partners Relief & Development, will first and foremost try to get help to people who have fled with nothing.

But there is something more important still: Hope. Over and over I have talked to people who have lost everything many times. They have seen loved ones killed. They have held their sick children in their arms when there was no medicine to even lower the fever. They have lived in the jungle, eating only what they can find. And yet they have smiled. They have not given up. They have made it back to their destroyed villages to rebuild them—again. What makes them do this?

I think that along with a huge portion of resilience and courage, these people are able to continue their lives because they have hope. They hope for peace. They hope for a better future for their children. They hope for a chance to continue to live in their villages again. It is when their hope is taken away that they truly have lost everything. I have met people who have lost this last part of themselves— their hope. These are the people who stop caring about getting out of bed in the morning, who stop taking showers, who stop trying to look nice and make their environment the best it can be. The ones who lose their hope are indeed lost.

But for the ones who can hold on to it have a reason to continue living, no matter how harsh life is.

How easy it is to hope when things are going our way! When all the stars align in our favor and the circumstances are our friends. “I hope for nice weather, “we will say, or: “I hope I can find a nice outfit for the right price.” “I hope I can go on a vacation.” It is easy to hope for a bright future, for good health, and for prosperity in all the areas of life when the circumstances are in our favor.

But how about if you lost everything? How easy would it be to keep the flame of hope burning then?

From the displaced people of Burma I have learned that it is then one needs hope more than ever. Hope becomes the medicine that helps us survive.

I think we all need to hope for something, and that something needs to be outside ourselves.

 

Apr 5

To be brave like chicken droppings

My courage necklace is a rod and a carrot

I have been thinking about what courage is. I want to be a courageous woman, but so often I am not. I am brave, but I am chicken shit, like Alanis Morisette says in her song Hand in my pocket. Around my neck I carry a simple silver necklace that Steve got me for my last birthday. It says: Courage. I like wearing it as a reminder to not give up and to not let fear guide me. Then there are the days when the necklace seems more like a joke. Like: Courage? Ha!

I want to be courageous. I am also fascinated with people who have shown great courage. Then I don’t think of top-level athletes who live in constant climate control, who get a diet planned just for them, who earn millions for their skills, and who have teams dedicated to serving them and making them excel. I think more along the lines of the ones who have all the odds against them, but still don’t give up.

I have met and been inspired by many such people over the years. Most of them I have met in Burma, or in the refugee camps:

  • The many men and women who have fought for their right to live for more than sixty years without giving up. 
  • The handful of women I met in Kachin State, Northern Burma, who is fighting a whole army (the Burma Army) by helping and sustaining the civilians who are on the run. 
  • The people I met in Rangoon recently who had risked their lives and freedom to speak against the regime, and many of them ended up in prison for doing so.

That kind of guts takes courage. None of them would have done what they did without a very solid portion of selfless fearlessness.

I have met courage other places as well. In Mother Teresa and in Nelson Mandela, in my mom and in my friends who are foster parents for a mentally challenged teenager. I have seen it in the dad who takes his adult autistic daughter for a walk in the neighborhood every day, no matter what the weather. I have seen it in cancer patients who let us see their head with no hair. I have seen it in teenagers who dare to be different, and in adults that don’t conform to the establishment, unless the establishment is doing something right.

I feel like a wimp compared to these. I feel like my courage muscles are so small I look like a stick man (woman). I feel like the necklace I wear is indeed a joke. I call it courage when I jump into the cold ocean on a chill summer day. Or when I say no to ice cream when everybody else is having some.

One needs to start somewhere to help the courage muscles grow. (Photo by: http://www.productiveflourishing.com/12-ways-to-practice-courage/)

But I guess one can get a little courage at the time. If one starts by doing small courageous things, then one will work the muscles so that they get a little stronger. And little by little they will be worked up the size of—not exactly Aung San Suu Kyi or Martin Luther King Jr.—but maybe as big as our elementary school teacher whom we adored so much when we were small because she saw a star in each one of us, or as big as a neighbor who reaches out to refugees or single moms.

The biggest hindrance to my courage, I have realized, is my own fear. My fear of not making it, my fear of losing control, my fear of what others may think. Fear has held me back from reaching the potential I have to change the world a little. Fear keeps me from speaking up against injustice. Fear keeps me from taking the side of those who are weak. Fear keeps me from sharing my belongings. Fear keeps me from getting close to somebody who may hurt me.

So as I am contemplating courage, I will also try to say No to the fear that is lurking.

I read this cool quote today, and I thought it was a good inspirational quote in my quest for courage:

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all.  Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle.The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.    (Ayn Rand)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jan 30

5 Comments

Picking Flowers on Dusty Roads

The other day a journalist wrote about me that I had “been pregnant with this book for a couple of years.” I thought it was a good way to describe the birth of my book. Finally, after all this time, my book is born and you are all invited to have a look at it. And not only that, you are invited to read it, and tell others about it and tell me about what you have learned from it.

You can buy it here and here

Tonight we had a small party in honor of my book launch. People called me author and talked about my author dress that I was wearing and wanted me to sign their copy of the book. They clapped and took photos. They shook my hand and said congratulation. It all felt like they were talking to and about another person. Author? Yeah, right. You don’t become an author before you write books. And then I realized: I have written a book.

You can look at these photos. And you can read an excerpt from the introduction here.

Major Lah Muu died fighting for freedom for his people, the Karen of Burma.  His wife is a widow.  When I first met her she lived in the only teak house in Mae Saliit Khee village on the Thai-Burma border. I remember looking at her face and wondering if I had ever seen a more beautiful woman before. She was not young, nor did she look like a photo model from a fashion magazine. She had a serene beauty, like I could have imagined belonging to an Asian Mother Earth.

She was the first Karen person I ever met, her house was the first Karen house I ever entered, and her costumes were the first Karen costumes I ever admired. They were colorful like the lotus flowers around her pond. It looked like she had been created to wear those costumes. She would walk around her property doing her daily chores with a straight back, head lifted high, and steps so soft that the grass hardly bent under her.

All the Karen people of Burma wear colorful and ornate costumes like those of Major Lah Muu’s widow. Each village and area has different colored shirts and patterns. They all look beautiful to me. For years I have been spending time with the Karen and almost without exception I receive a hand-woven bag or shirt as a parting gift when I leave them. I don’t know how many shoulder bags I have. The incredible thing about this is that not one looks the same. They are all unique.

When I first got to know Major Lah Muu’s widow, the Karen and their costumes, I noticed strings hanging from different places on their garments. To me they looked like somebody had been in a hurry and hadn’t taken the time to fasten the threads when the piece was ready. They were annoyingly messy. Then they told me the meaning of those threads, and I learned to love them.

They would hold the threads in their hands and say, “Try pulling one of them apart!” I did, and it was easy. Then they asked me to take a whole bundle of the threads and try pulling them apart. It was impossible.

“This is a symbol of our people,” they explained. “If we stand alone, it’s easy to break us, but together we make one strong bunch.”

Since then I have never been annoyed with the threads that get tangled with each other after a little bit of use. I just say, “It’s the Karen people learning to get along so they cannot be broken.”

This book is a bit like the threads on the Karen costumes. 


Here I am talking about my pregnancy with the book. I did not use those exact words though although I now think I should have.

My good friend, Egil, introduced the evening and said nice things about me. Way too nice actually.

I think I look a bit too intense here, but I am trying to explain to people why writing an international book in Norwegian would not work and that is why I chose English. Chinese would have cramped my style.


Nov 11

8 Comments

The World’s Burmese Daze

Photo by Kris Ryan. This photo was taken in a refugee camp in Burma where the political changes are not noticed.

For the first time in my life, my name has been in the Wall Street Journal. If only my grandmother had been alive to see that!

It was an article that I wrote that was pretty bad to begin with, then my friend Matt fixed it, then I added some more, then he fixed it some more, then the editor of the WSJ also edited it a bit. It was a team effort in the grandest sense of the word! The main thing, however, is not who wrote it, but that the plight of the Kachin and others in Burma can become better known. 

The Wall Street Journal wants people to pay to read their stuff. (Perhaps it has something to do with having to pay their staff) so it seems like most my friends are not able to download the full article for free. You can of course try here If you can’t open it, this is the article: 

Burma is closer than ever to winning its bid to chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this week after supportive comments by Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa. Mr. Natalegawa says Asean members feel “positive” about the bid and many are impressed by the “trajectory of positive developments” in the authoritarian country.

Political liberalization is a positive sign, but Asean must weigh it carefully against credible reports of increasing human rights abuses in ethnic minority areas. Asean sends the wrong message by rewarding Burma while its army engages in widespread rape and murder.

A year ago this week Burma held its first elections in two decades, and recent political developments under President Thein Sein’s new semi-civilian government have been met with robust international praise. While there is an understandable optimism in lowland Burma, something entirely different has been happening in highland ethnic areas. There, civilians in the midst of an ongoing civil war face abuse from the brutal Burma Army , while humanitarian aid is insufficient.

On June 9, just three months after the new government formed, conflict resumed between the Burma Army and the non-state (ethnic) Kachin Independence Army in Northern Burma, ending 17 years of ceasefire. Prior to the conflict, a building tension in the area can be attributed to a controversial, State controlled, hydropower project being built in an area of mixed administration as well as the KIA’s unwillingness to surrender their arms and assimilate into a State controlled Border Guard Force (BGF).

Ethnic Kachin civilians numbering 30,000 are not only getting caught in the crossfire as they flee attacks by the Burmese forces, their rights are also being systematically violated.

The civilian toll from the conflict has been documented by Partners Relief and Development, which has staff operating clandestinely in Kachin State. Witnesses have explained how Burma Army soldiers arrived in their villages, opened fire on civilians, robbed and looted their properties and destroyed medicines. In one report, ethnic villagers from eight locations described how at least 80 local civilians were recently arrested without charges and—having not returned—are feared dead.

Credible reports from Partners document a strong sexual element in the violence. Numerous reports of rape and sexual assault by the Burma Army have emerged from Kachin State since June. Partners witnesses have seen soldiers hanging condoms in the trees surrounding Kachin villages, sending a clear message to local women that there is a sadistic sexual tone to their military domination.

The army has also failed its legal obligation to ensure the health of wounded citizens and prisoners of war. On Oct. 8, a bomb exploded near the home of 15-year-old Lahpai Kai Ra, an ethnic Kachin girl from Shwigu District in Kachin State. She suffered an injury to her leg, but Burma Army soldiers still forced her to walk to a local church along with her grandmother and five other women, where about 50 Burmese soldiers were waiting for them. In total, 33 civilian women and children were held captive under armed guard for three days. Fearing for their lives, they escaped to the jungle. Due to infections stemming from improper treatment, Lahpai Kai Ra’s leg will most likely have to be amputated.

While the Burma Army continues to neglect its duty to protect civilians, it has ramped up its use of popular torture techniques, sparing no one. In one village, soldiers put a plastic bag over a 15-year old boy’s head and waterboarded him in an attempt to find out if his father was affiliated with the KIA.

Instead of responding to these abuses, Burmese authorities are not allowing humanitarian aid to reach the 20,000 internally displaced Kachin who fled their villages to take refuge in remote jungle camps. Despite a shortage of food, water, medicine and proper sanitation in these camps, the United Nations and other relief agencies are not authorized to provide aid. Agencies instead have to resort to clandestine operations.

There is no lack of information about the situation in Kachin. Well-publicized reports from Human Rights Watch and others have steadily emerged since June. In his September report to the U.N. General Assembly, Tomas Ojea Quintana, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Burma, referred to the plight of the displaced Kachin populations as “perilous.”

Yet the international community remains fixated on high-level political changes in the capital. Repeated calls by the U.N. special rapporteur for a U.N.-mandated Commission of Inquiry into crimes against humanity and war crimes in Burma has fallen on deaf ears. Only 16 U.N. member-nations have expressed support for the proposal.

If Asean wants to support the people of Burma, it should acknowledge that any positive political changes in lowland Burma coexist with a rapid increase in severe abuses in Burma’s ethnic areas. Meaningful political and legal reforms in the country deserve support, but they cannot come at the expense of parallel practical efforts to end abuses and hold perpetrators accountable, including a formal commission of inquiry.  Before that happens, the chair of Asean is a reward Burma does not deserve.

Mrs. Gumaer is the International Advocacy Officer and a founder at Partners Relief and Development, a non-governmental organization. Partners works with communities impacted by war in Burma and has staff in the conflict zones in Kachin State.

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