Burma
Kawthoolei - an area controlled by the Karen
January 1991
I remember that Sigmund Freud wrote that: “There is no such thing as biographical truth”. So whatever I post now and later is my memory, but others may remember things quite differently.
I remember my visit for Health Unlimited to our project with the Karen people in Burma across the border with Thailand in early 1991. I was accompanying our South East Asia Manager, Liz Lewis. South East Asia was unknown territory; the closest I’d been to the region was a few days at a meeting in Madras a decade earler.
I remember arriving in Bangkok in the early morning with the sun and heat rising through the mist. We held a couple of meetings and then went to check in at the Peachy Guest House, somewhere near the river and the UNESCO offices which we were to visit. The Peachy had a variety of rooms, but Liz liked to save money and, I think, wanted to impress me with the toughness of the HU assignments. The “room” was more like a cell – no glass in the barred windows, thin matrass on a concrete base, toilets down the corridor with a communal concrete water tank, a pail and an area to splash down. Liz compensated by taking me to a small local restaurant next to the river. But sleeping was not easy, though a few buckets of cold water in the morning seemed like a blessing as the heat rose. Of course I didn’t say a word about the accommodation.
I remember that I never stayed at the Peachy Guest House again. I came back on my own and, for about US$5 more a night found a small but comfortable hotel in the Sukumvit area. Later on we took to staying at the Federal Hotel, originally a haunt of the CIA during the Vie tnam War and then of NGOs.
I remember that we got up early the next morning to catch the bus to Katchanaburi – a state of the art effort with TV showing Thai boxing films for the whole four hour trip. It felt very foreign but not poor. We passed through endless rice paddies coming right up to the road, not a square metre wasted and people busy everywhere.
I remember that in Kachanaburi our local contact was a Thai pharmacist who had an interest in minority people. While we went to see the River Kwai war cemetery, he made contact with the Karen National Union/Karen National Liberation Army to come and collect us. We were officially working with the civilian side of the Karen liberation movement who had been at war with the Burmese government since 1962. But it was nonetheless a military “state” engaged in a struggle for independence.
I remember coming back from the cemetery and waiting for several more hours. Then suddenly an army jeep appeared with a couple of Karen soldiers. We threw in our bags and headed off for the border, high in the hills. A complicated journey ended with some narrow roads through the jungle, a border crossing where our escorts picked up their WW2 vintage rifles, and on to the headquarters of the army and civilian administration a mile further on.
I remember that we had a meeting with health officials and an army Colonel at the military headquarters of, I think, the fifth brigade. Then we clambered back into the jeep and drove slowly down into the valley to the small village Htee Hta where the project was based.
I remember being deeply impressed by the two HU staff members, Graham Mortimer, a lab technician who was training local people to identify malaria and TB, and Maggs McGuiness, a nurse who was running a basic nursing course. There was, of course, no doctor in the areas and serious cases were taken to Thailand for treatment. As someone with no experience in health programmes and an almost entirely urban background, travelling to areas of deep rural poverty scarred by conflict as well as deprivation, was a revelation.
I remember that it was a desperately poor place, though a Thai family had set up a general store which also served simple meals of noodles and rice for locals and visitors. We took chocolate, cheese and whisky as a gift for our people. Even though the tropical heat melted both chocolate and cheese in transit, they were, I discovered what our expat staff really missed. The whisky was an added extra, and one which Graham rationed carefully, storing the bottle in a metal trunk. Graham seemed a bit severe, but he was one of the most committed people ever to work for the organisation.
I remember that years later, when the area was finally overrun by the Burmese army, a huge number of Karen people escaped to Thailand where they were confined to refugee camps along the border. Graham married a Karen woman and continued to work with in camps and then for the Karen cause from the UK for many years. I do hope that he, Maggs and others who worked on the project will write more about their experiences on the ground.
I remember that in the late 1990s we got a letter from the pharmacist in Kachanburi to say that some Karen nurses had been in touch with him. They had lost their HU health manuals in the flight across the border and wondered if we had copies. We dug about in the archives, found them, made more copies and sent them off. We often had more effect than we believed and it is a pity that nobody has the money to follow up on projects after five or ten years.
I remember going down to the river to bathe on the first evening. Looking along the river you could see the smoke from the Burmese army camp about a mile away at the bend. Everyone was ready to leave at short notice if fighting started. “What”, I wondered as I gazed down the river, “is a nice South African boy doing in a place like this?”
(A footnote: I have only a few photos of this and other projects. It would be great if anyone can locate more and post them. I’m also looking for some help with reorganising the HPA archives which have been somewhat disrupted and where I know there are a lot more photos that both I and others took).
liz with out supplies at Bangkok bus station
Tha pharmacy in Kachanaburi
Liz talking tothe team in Kawthoolei
The view down the river. The Burmese army camp was on the other side as the river curved to the left.
