Teaching OT in faraway places

Many people arrive at Mae La on the main highway from Mae Sot the nearest town about 40 minutes to the south. The first time hopefully a contact will pick you up from the bus station, after that it is easy (except on the behind) to catch a “line bus” (a ute with bench seats for passengers either side of the luggage). At first the highway goes through farms, then as it climbs into the hills there are less and less people, and lovely forest on either side. Pleasant country, though not spectacular.

After a Thai Army checkpoint you start to pass the camp. The main purpose of the check points seems to be to “catch” Burmese citizens moving freely around Thailand without proper papers (i.e. to restrict the movement of refugees and illegals – there are checkpoints on many roads in the border area, not just near the camp). KKBBSC and its associated Baptist centres (like the home for landmine victims and the children’s “orphanage”) are at the far end, almost were the camp stops and the hill rises to Prayer Mountain.

Mae La is the largest in a chain of seven camps inhabited mainly by Karen refugees fleeing the Myanmar Military Government. The chain stretches along much of the length of the Thai border with Burma from the extreme north down to one east of Bangkok. The official figures are certainly an underestimate of their populations, since there are many reasons why some inhabitants of the camps do not want their presence officially known. The UNHCR figures cover only those people who have been granted official “refugee” status, something that sometimes takes years to achieve. According to the figures used by The Thailand Burma Border Consortium as a basis for the food and other resources they supply there were 38,923 refugees in the Mae La camp during March. All one can really say is that between 40 and 80 thousand people inhabit this camp.

It does not look like a town though, because the houses are not built of permanent materials (officially all buildings are of wood, bamboo and leaves). The line bus will stop several times along the camp, the longest stops will be the checkpoints, and outside the market. Officially there can be no market in the camp, since no one has any job or money. However, humans being what they are if you do have money you can buy almost anything you need in the market that isn’t there. A student managed to find me some blank DVDs to backup these videos, and others have got medicines they needed there too…

Driving past the camp in a private car takes about 6-7 minutes at 80KPH with a couple of places where one has to slow for checkpoints, which gives an idea of its size. It is long and fairly thin, squeezed between the road and the steep cliff that rises on the other side of the river. The camp is formally divided into “sections”, KKBBSC is in Section C. I can’t show you photos of the market or of the other sections, since our presence was unofficial we were asked to keep within the college area.