I made it to my first day of school intact. The drive, my first on a motorcycle as driver, went through Mae Sot, out onto the freeway then off into the country side. The area we are in is beautiful in a very gentle way. Rolling mountains meet sugar cane and rice paddies, both just in the tilling stage as the heat of summer is at its peak and the rains are expected any day now. It really is stiflingly hot. Most days the heat feels like a full force furnace when you come out of a building, other days it is so steamy, it feels like walking, fully clothed, into a steam room. Either way, I am dripping in sweat most of the day.
 There is really no way to escape the oppressive heat, even on the motorbike. Slowing for a traffic light means the breeze stops and the intensity of the sun envelopes you. The route through the countryside is absolutely lovely: winding S curves, through villages, around dogs and cows and bicycles and farm equipment. Past temples and forests and open fields and over every type of roadway possible, all in one trip. In the city the roads are clogged with vehicles, out on the freeway, trucks and the occasional bus and minivan, and in the country, both hard packed gravel and just plain hole- pocked dirt roads.
For the neophyte biker, it would be a great place to learn how to maneuver across all these types of terrain. For the neophyte biker who is on a tight timeline and has anxious kids waiting, there is little time to feel much other than terror, trying to figure out how to turn, when to steer and when to lean, and how to ensure braking and accelerating are separate actions.
By the time I made it to school the first day, I was exhausted and just wanted time to savor my accomplishment at having just learned to ride in extreme circumstances. What I found at the school( I hadn't even given any thought about what I might see there as I had only the energy to become obsessed with getting there the minute I learned I would have to rent the bike and drive it 35 minutes without any skills), soon made the fears about the ride home seem far away. The three of us got off our bikes and were immediately swarmed by the students. Sharon had already been teaching two weeks on her own, Laura had joined her the week before, and now I was there to do something. The Thai school year runs from June through March. April and May, because of the extreme heat, are school holidays - summer holidays for Thai schools. Our little school runs summer school because it is not a regular school. For displaced Burmese, there is nothing regular or for sure in their lives.
 Mae Sot straddles the Thai- Burma border and has been home to millions of Burmese refugees, the first having fled the brutal regime in 1984 - the year I was first here. Those early years, 84 through to the late 80's saw the creation, by the UN, of refugee camps, up and down the border, on the Thai side. The hope back then was to save the millions fleeing and find resettlement for them in developed countries. The Thai government donated the land and the camps grew and grew and grew. The last 30 years in Burma have seen Human Rights violations unseen in even the most undemocratic countries. Persecutions by the government have resulted in the country being locked down from 1962 to 1983. In 1984 I was with some of the first tourists into the country after 21 years of no contact with the outside world. I remember today the gentleness of the people and the difficulty of the travel for us. Women and children asked to touch Leslies and my hair and skin as they had not seen anyone that looked like us. No television, no media, no contact for twenty years combined with a trade embargo left a whole generation in a time warp. It was a highlight of my travel history and remains so today. The country enjoyed a brief couple of years of seemingly stable times until the uprising that saw the government overthrow their elected leader, daughter of the assassinated previous democratic leader. At that time students took to the streets in protest and there were mass killings and mass detentions and once again the country closed and the leader was exiled. She returned to Burma after a few years and continues under house arrest today. Two years, 2007, there were mass protests and the Monks (Burma is kind of the Holy Land for Buddhists), joined with the protesters for the first time ever. It is still unknown how many Monks and protesters were killed in that uprising.  Once again the crack down on the people saw mass imprisonments and torture. Just one year ago yesterday, Burma was hit by a cyclone that killed over 150,000 people and displaced over 2.5 million. It is still unknown where the aid money that was collected globally went as the government ousted foreign reporters after the last uprising and refused to allow them back in to cover the cyclone devastation.   Add to all of this a civil war, between two factions of the same tribe being actively fought 10 kms from here in the jungle, and you have more sad stories and more need than you could imagin
About 10? years ago, the Thai government tried to get out of the refugee business here on the border as the costs to the Thais are astronomical. The refugees continue to flee persecution, coming through the jungle, over the mountains, and arrive on the Thai side of the river. Many NGO's have been around here for decades but the need does not subside. The UN continues to support the camps, which have now become permanent settlements after 25 years, and the number of Burmese being absorbed by the developed world shrinks as other parts of the world come into favor and the global appetite for refugees' wanes. If it was a country song - It would include "" A whole lot of hurtin"going on around here""
I realize lots of you didn't want a history lesson of the region, but it is very confusing and necessary to have some basics to understand why all of these kids are here, without parents, and unable to leave. The city of Mae Sot has an arbitrary border, imposed by the Thai government I think, that allows illegal Burmese to be in the area, but they are unable to leave beyond the borders as the Police and Military have checkpoints on all the roads and are constantly checking papers. If you are checked without papers outside of the Mae Sot borders, you are arrested and either deported back into Burma where may be arrested by the Burmese or fined with large fees they do not have. The real refugees who hold Un refugee status cards are not allowed to even leave their camps. They cannot come into town, they are not allowed out of the camp even to go on the road. The camps are huge - multiple camps with 50 to 60 thousand refugees living multigenerations in a defined space, no jobs, no freedom. It is no wonder many of them choose to flee even the camps and subsist as slightly freer illegal's, always fearful of arrest.
The kids at the school are a mix. In the Mae Sot area alone, there are reputed to be over 1 million refugees, some legal and most illegal, trying to survive. A network of schools, around 60, has formed a network - Burmese migrant Workers Education Committee Schools. Our kids, 75 of them, live at the school. Some have parents, some do not. The ones with parents dropped them off or sent them across the border to give them a greater chance at education and safety. They range in age from 7 to about 21. The teachers also join in the classes as students. The teachers are, for the most part, young and uneducated and not always paid. They are as eager to learn as their students.
The school consists of outside classrooms, only one has desks and chairs, the others have bamboo mats on the ground where the kids sit. Each classroom has a whiteboard and one marker. The school has a library consisting of about 40 books, has two electric fans that are extremely popular, and is actually a very joyful place. It is funded right now by the Committee, which relies on donations and a small group of Pilipino nuns associated with a group out of Montreal. The very cool nuns, no nun wear, come every day with food for the school as there is so much corruption you cannot trade in money as it will go missing - usually to a military cause. The nuns bring the building supplies and volunteers to fix things. The kids live in bamboo hut dormitories and are pretty healthy. Some get money and clothing from their parents in Burma. It is clear who has direct supporters and who doesn't but they are so kind to each other they seem to share everything they have.
The kids have to be in summer school because they have nowhere else to go - they cannot leave the property as they have no papers, they desperately want to learn and so the school looks for volunteer teachers for the month of April. They use the month of May as a work month - repairing and rebuilding.
It is pretty amazing the job Sharon was able to do with the big group she encountered on her first day. Seventy five eager kids, squished into seating for 30, staring at her, waiting for some kind of lesson. She told us of the sheer exhaustion she was feeling when we got there as she is a serious teacher and had been spending every waking and sleeping moment planning the next day's lesson.
Laura had arrived the previous week from me and had split the class according to age. She took the under 12's and she too jumped in with both feet. When I arrived, the two of them were drawing out lessons and planning for the last week.
My first day I was given the middle group. It consisted of all the boys who were a little rowdy, supposedly the middle ages. Laura took the really little kids; Sharon kept her smart, focused older kids and the teachers as they were really serious about learning.
I was the last one in, the freshest and only had a week left so it was fair that I take most of the boys. My group of about 30, consisted of all super energized boys, ages about 8 through 17. I secretly coveted the little girls who like to color and sing!!!!. I asked them all how long they had been at this school and it ranged from 5 days through 6 years. Most had been there about 2 years. They all do not speak the same language as these kids are from Hill tribes so each tribe speaks a completely different language. Most of the school though is Karen and the teachers all speak Karen and some speak Burmese.
After my first two hour spontaneous lesson, I was glad to be invited to lunch with the kids. It is pretty basic stuff out in the country - they have camp cooks who live on site and have rice at every meal. The nuns try to ensure there is one hot meal per day. We had rice and boiled chicken bones and cucumbers. They gave us much more than the kids had so we felt pretty bad about eating too much but it would have been rude not to eat.
The ride home felt a little less stressful as I now knew how far it was and what I would be encountering as far as road surfaces. I still saw very little other than that road surface.
Next on the agenda was to return to home base, our lovely rented house - (I paid $5 a night rented from a pseudo NGO) to get ready for teaching assignment #2 of the day.....back out onto the freeway for a longer distance, this time a different direction, out into the hills to teach a group of Monks who had fled after the 2007 uprising. Some of them had been imprisoned and had escaped, others had different stories. they had been holed up in a Thai monastery waiting resettlement to America.
Yet again, another terrifying yet exhilarating trip on the bike. Sharon led the lesson and I just helped now and then with pronunciation. The group is very diverse in language and education. They range in ages from about 23 to 37, with most late 20's. To say the least they are very eager and committed students, knowing that they will need English desperately and soon if they get the call about resettlement.
I will never forget my first full day in Mae Sot. When I finally lay down and reviewed the day, it epitomized the idea of living fully and without fear. I was so glad I pushed myself to come here, seize the opportunity and just go with whatever came my way.
Then the thoughts turned to doing it all again the next day...............
.