Learning Thai: Trip to the northwest

This past weekend I had the chance to spend several days in northwestern Thailand, along the border with Myanmar. I went to visit my friend Manat, the Thai man who taught English at the first school Claire attended. He is now spending some of his time in this border region, working among the Karen people (many of them refugees from Myanmar). This was a part of Thailand I'd never seen before and I'm grateful that I had the chance.

Manat and his team are working in a number of small villages in that region and it was encouraging to see their perseverance and dedication in the midst of such difficult circumstances.

I'm still processing a lot of what I saw and learned and wondering how we should or can assist in this work. For starters, I'll be taking the REACH team back in a couple of weeks so that they can do an English camp and some work projects.

Here are a few pictures and some more comments...

These are Karen kids. Many of them (and their parents) are not living in Thailand legally. This prevents them from receiving adequate education. Manat is working with a small church to build a very simple school building/pavilion that will serve part of this undocumented population.

We visited the Mae La refugee camp. This is managed by the United Nations and houses 60,000 people. Some of them have been there for years, others are transferred on to a third country. People move to the camp to escape the persecution and unrest that continues across the river in Myanmar.

On Sunday we worshiped with a group of kids in one of the villages. From what I could observe, many of these families are living on next to nothing. The parents and kids can sometimes find work picking corn for $2-$3 per day, but even that is very inconsistent.

One of the traditional Karen handicrafts is woven cloth. I bought a couple of nifty man-skirts while I was there. Candice think that they should be the subject of a future photo-shoot and blog.

And, on a lighter note, this is me making a very brief and unofficial visit to Myanmar. Since one of the villages that we visited was right on the Moei River that divides the two countries we stripped down to our boxers and went for a swim. So, even though my passport won't confirm it, I can now claim to have visited Myanmar (in my underwear, no less).