The Girl In The Picture: Thailand

Myanmar.

What an interesting place to travel to.

When you cross the border they take away your passport andgive you a temporary piece of identification that becomes your lifeline. It containsa picture of yourself taken that day by the border security, your passportnumber, name (excluding your last name), birthdate and a number. That number isyour connection to your passport the government is now holding. Upon leavingMyanmar, you hand in this piece of paper and retrieve back your oh-so-valuedCanadian passport.

This process leaves many volunteers feeling vulnerable and,to put it quite honestly, kind of sketched out. You have been told all yourlife how precious your passport is—keep an eye on it, never let it leave yourside when you are travelling, lock it in a safe when you arrive at yourdestination, keep a photocopy in your luggage, take a picture. Your passport,especially one of Canadian citizenship, is beyond valuable to the bearer andallows you access to anywhere your heart desires in the entire world. And hereyou are, trying to access another country only to find out they are going totake it away and hand you a flimsy piece of card-stock with random informationon it instead, while they will KEEP your passport?! That piece of card-stockbecomes your everything. You guard it with your life as if it were your actual passportbecause handing that piece of paper back in is the only way you get your belovedpassport back.

#CatLadyInBurma

This piece of card-stock comes with some limitations—you areonly allowed in the country for 14 days, no sharing or transfers, and you areonly allowed in the tourist zones of the country. That’s right, folks, Burmahas set tourist zones where us foreigners are allowed to visit. You go too far,step out of the limits, and police have their say. We are nothing but mere touristsin this country with a troubled past and questionable present situation. As thetourists we were, we visited a couple temples (the Chinese temple had a catwhich made me a happy lady #CatLadyInBurma), hit up the massive border market(my size stretchy floral print pants are perfect for 36 hours of travel) and wewere sure to stay inside the tourist zone limits.

The Garbage Dump.

While in these limits we had the opportunity to drive past avery interesting area. This area is home to the beginnings of a hugeinternational school, massive shopping complex, high end real estate, and the over 300 people that currently call the garbage dump home.The issue is, the garbage dump is quite the eye-sore in what will soon be awealthy neighbourhood. The garbage dump is so undesirable to the vision of the area it begs thequestion of why they even chose to build there in the first place. Instead ofbuilding somewhere else, they have decided to clear the garbage dump of it’sresidents, displacing hundreds of individuals and families who are stateless,providing no help to them. If their already dire situation wasn’t bad enough,forcing them out with no assistance is the exact way to make the situationworse. It’s unimaginable to everyone on the trip why this happens-- how the richcan easily forget the poor are human beings; individuals with value, heartscapable of love and limitless dreams.

Kru Nam answering questions and New translating.

The child residents of the garbage dump are some of the sameindividuals that visit the drop-in centre on the Thailand side of theBurma/Thailand border. The drop-in centre is a place where street kids can cometo get a meal, medical attention, hangout, and learn about the children’s home.Kru Nam was there the day we visited and we experienced her in action—reaching outto children and offering her help, building their trust and hoping they willaccept her invitation to a life of love and education at the children’s home.

The combination of Kru Nam and eager to learn volunteersalways makes for an interesting, informative, and emotional conversation. Thevolunteers asked many questions, and while statistics rocked our world andshattered our perceptions of Burma and the way individuals are treated, it’s thestories that stay with you and really change your heart.

One of the volunteers had asked about disease and sicknessin the garbage dump—her question, as a doctor, was of how their must be so muchdevastation there. Kru Nams response was that if you were to ask the familiesliving there about being sick, they would respond with ‘what do you mean?’.Their entire lives they are unwell. Sickness is normal for them—it’s common, itis something they live with every day. It’s not like how when we get sick it’s a noticeabledifference from how we feel when we are ‘healthy’. For them this is how theyare every single day. To expand on this with a tangible example, Kru Namstarted handing around a picture of a little girl who is smiling and laughingas she stands behind a little boy who is playing the violin. The girl in thephotograph, WaWa, is described as an awesome little girl. At her young age, she fellvictim to the preventable sickness and disease of the garbage dump and passedaway as a child of not even 13 years old. As the picture was passed and we eachhad the opportunity to put a face to the facts, you could see how theinformation went from head to heart.

Burma has the most human rights violations in the world.When the cyclone hit in 2008, the Burmese government denied the UN access toprovide aid, furthering the amount of death and devastation, which could havebeen preventable. A noteworthy quote from the discussion referencing thesituation was ‘just forget about human rights’.

The Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25. December, 1948 hanging up in the Mexican restaurant

A poster at a Mexican restaurant we went to in Chiang Maireferences the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25 from December1948. It states:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate forthe health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing,housing and medical care and necessary social services and the right tosecurity in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old ageor other lack of livelihood.

While it can be easy in our North Americansociety to think the Universal Declaration of Human Rights rings true to individuals everywhere, it doesn't.For those in both our own communities, and our greater global community, thereare too many WaWa’s proving this is not the case.

Thanks for the image, Pinterest!