Everyday Opportunities

No matter where you live, everyday brings new opportunities and challenges, but the opportunities and challenges that come our way in Thailand come in different shapes and sizes than what we were used to in Canada. Here are a few examples of the diversity of experience here: a few weeks ago we welcomed a team from BC to Takua Pa, the community we have worked with since the tsunami. One of the families that we have assisted continue to be affected by the memory of the Dec 26 tsunami. Su was a contractor working on site when the wave came and swept away his entire crew and the tools that made provided for his income. He never went back to construction and instead took up a Thai art form Batik through a program we offered. His ability is great, but that didn't mean he could move on. Every night he would have nightmares of the corpses he saw on the beach that day, ten of them friends and co-workers. The BC team went to the family with our group of Thai staff stationed in Takua Pa. They talked for a long time and before leaving asked if they could pray about his nightmares. He agreed, and just before leaving town the team returned for a visit. His irrepressible smile tipped off the team that something was up and when pressed he confessed, that the nightmares left the night he was prayed for. He couldn't stop smiling or saying thank-you. I love a story like that, because it really doesn't point attention to what we can do, only what God does when we ask Him, and the real impact he makes in the life of a person who needs what God offers.

Well, after New Year's we took the team to the border town of Mae Sot. We had planned some instructor training for teachers in the refugee camps and visited some of the organizations serving Burmese refugees and migrant workers in Thailand. One organization the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners was formed to document and disseminate information on the real situation of political prisoners in Burma and to provide assistance to the families of prisoners. We found our way to their office and before we had chance to sit down, the director explained that one of their members had been picked up by Thai police who in turn were planning to hand him to Burmese authorities. Being a political threat to the military government in Burma he faced life in prison and severe torture. What to do? Well we did the little we could, give some money to help smooth his release. Not a lot mind you, about $70 Canadian, but enough to at least save him from a life in Burma's brutal prisons. We're not sure if the money was what did the trick, but the police agreed to release him on the condition that another Burmese was offered in his stead, someone who while faces some hardship in Burma, will not be sent to live out the rest of his days in prison.

Of course when we are faced with the harsh realities of life in Burma, and the hardship faced by those who oppose injustice, we are left to wonder a lot of things. On the feel-good side 70 bucks to buy a person's life doesn't seem a lot, but we sure felt fortunate that we could have a small part in making sure this man remained free. And yet, this is something that he and millions of other people in and out of Burma face everyday in order for a paranoid dictatorship maintain its' hold on a country. There wasn't a single person that we talked to who didn't want to return back to Burma, but couldn't for fear that they would be shot on sight (current Burmese policy) once they found their way home. Resettlement to Canada and other Western nations is generous, but the transition so hard that many enter into deeper misery once separated from the world they have always known.

So their world in a small way enters into our world. We are asked what can we do? Well for our part, we plan to focus on Burmese (largely Karen people) in Thailand living as legal and illegal migrant workers. We have one staff worker who will focus on some issues there, particularly insuring that migrant schools have adequate funding, clean water and sanitary conditions so that kids growing up in this context at least have some of the basic necessities for life and building a future. We'll write more about that in another blog, but for now that gives you a small window into the opportunities and challenges that come our way here.