The first time I heard about the tensions along the border between Thailand and Burma (which has been renamed Myanmar by the government there, but many countries do not recognize the renaming or the legitimacy of the government) was during grad school. One of the women in my program was working closely with the large population of Burmese refugees we have living in our city and helped found an organization to support them as they learn to live their lives here in the States. Her leadership project (one of the capstones of our program, along with doing research and writing a thesis) involved studying ways to better support the refugees in our city and the programs that would be most beneficial to offer through their organization. In learning from Michelle over the two years of our program my eyes were opened to some of the atrocities happening in Burma. It's horrible and many people are fleeing the country in hopes of finding safety. People are being killed, child trafficking is rampant, women and children are being raped...it's awful.
Last spring our small group from church began exploring ways that we could become more involved in our community. We watched the film
God Grew Tired of Us, which tells the story of the troubles in Sudan and the highlights and struggles as Sudanese refugees resettle in the United States. It's an
amazing film. One of the women in our house church contacted a local agency that helps refugee families settle in our city. Our house church agreed to mentor a Burmese refugee family that came to the United States in July 2011. The family consisted of a mother, father, and five children. They had spent the past ten years living in a refugee camp in Thailand - the only life their children had ever known. We first met our family in August or September 2011. A translator helped facilitate the first meeting, along with a representative from the local organization that helps settle refugee families. But after that we were on our own. We were bit hesitant and nervous, I think on both ends of the relationship.
But over the past 6 months or so our relationship with this family has blossomed into something so beautiful. Almost every Sunday afternoon at least one person (usually more) from our small group goes over and we spend an hour or two working with the parents on English vocabulary and playing with the kids. We help go through their mail and communications from their children's school. We've helped take care of problems with their apartment complex (they spent nearly a month with no hot water). Matt and I used to be nervous going over, especially with the language barrier, but now we find that we look forward to our time with this family. We've learned some words in Karen (prounounced "kuh-rin) and they're all doing a great job with English. The father of the family has found a job working in a factory and though he is gone long hours (he leaves around 5:30am and gets back home around 8-9pm Monday-Saturday) he always asks us to come visit on the one day off that he has each week. We've gotten to know other Burmese family members and friends who live in their apartment complex and the apartment is usually full of children when we come over.
Matt and I hadn't been in a month or two because of Eleanor but we started visiting again a couple weeks ago. When we arrived for the first time with her no sooner had I gotten her out of her carseat than the mother of the family came over, held out her hands, smiled, and took Eleanor to go sit on the couch with her. Eleanor just looked at her and was perfectly content. It was awesome and beautiful.
This past week something amazing happened. I received a phone call at 4:00am from the father of this family telling me, in very very broken English, that his wife needed to go to the hospital - because she was in labor! We knew she was pregnant with a boy and I had given them my phone number to call if they needed a ride to the hospital since they don't have a car. I arrived at their apartment about 25 minutes later to learn that his wife was already at the hospital and he wanted me to go to the hospital to be with her since he needed to go to work. So I drove to the hospital and spent a couple of hours with his wife and helped communicate (through lots of gestures) what the doctors wanted/needed to do. The nurses and doctors kept asking if I knew Karen and how I knew this woman who was calmly sitting in bed handling contractions with no epidural when she was in active labor. It was great to be able to advocate for her but also just to be there for her in what must have been a very different birth/hospital setting than the places her older children had been born. I wasn't able to stay since Matt needed to go to work (another friend from our house church had picked Eleanor up and driven her to the hospital but I didn't want to be in the way in the delivery room with a 2 month old) but a few hours after I left her precious little boy was born. The first American citizen in their family!
We weren't able to get to the hospital to meet him before they came home, though other members of our small group did. Yesterday we went over to the family's apartment (taking a big case of wipes and a big case of diapers from Cos.tco) to meet the new baby. As usual the apartment was full of children. The mom said that she was feeling okay, though she looked tired (like any mom of a newborn). A little bit after we arrived the mom gestured at Eleanor, said "Eleanor," and held out her arms to hold her. After I handed her over, an older niece went into one of the two bedrooms in the apartment and came out with the new baby and handed him to me. For the next 10 minutes or so the mom held and played with Eleanor while I got to hold and smile at her new son. (for the record, Eleanor looked like a giant next to him. I can't believe she was that tiny only 2 months ago - she's growing so fast!)
We continued to talk with the mom and play with the children. I love that the children in our house church now play with the Burmese children flawlessly. It's such a beautiful thing to watch and there's so much joy among them all. As we were packing up our things to leave the father of the family disappeared into the back bedroom for a moment and came back out with two plastic shopping bags. In them were these
beautiful handmade traditional Burmese shirts - for each member of our families. The ones for us are pictured below - mine is purple, Matt's is red, and Eleanor's is turquoise. They did make sure to tell me, through the translation of one of the older children, "the one for your daughter is big now. It is for when she grows bigger." There was also a bag with shirts for each of the five members of the other family who was there from our house church. Another couple from our house church visited last night and both of them received shirts as well. This gesture almost brought tears to my eyes. Here is a family that, through our eyes and the eyes of American culture, has so little. Yet they feel so lucky to have what they do - a safe place to live, a two-bedroom apartment with their own bathroom, schooling for their children, a job for the father that allows them to pay the rent on their apartment and buy some food. And they value our relationship enough to have these shirts made for us.
Aren't they beautiful?
We are so, so lucky to have a friendship with this family. Because it really is a relationship. It's not just us showing up to save the day and take care of things but it's a mutual relationship with give and take on both sides. We are so looking forward to our relationship with this family continuing to grow and develop.
If you want more information about what's going on on the Burma/Thailand border or the challenges faced by refugees here in the States:
- This is a link to the Burmese Community Center for Education that my friend helped found: http://www.bcceindy.org/
- An amazing movie that highlights some of the struggles refugees face when coming to the States - from little things like how faucets and light switches work to big things like working two jobs 6-7 days a week. The film highlights the stories of refugees from Sudan, but many of the struggles are the same: http://www.godgrewtiredofus.com/
- This video talks a bit about what's going on in Burma: http://vimeo.com/37774019
- This is an organization that helps provide food, etc. to the hundreds of thousands Burmese refugees living in refugee camps in Thailand. There are some photos or the camps and some brief history explanations about what's going on http://www.tbbc.org/index.htm
- Here are Goo.gle image results for photos of Burmese refugee camps in Thailand. I can't imagine living there for a few days, let alone years and years. But the refugees can't return to Burma due to safety reasons.
