Elaine

Elaine is 69, a Canadian. She looks, acts, as though she could live in a bungalow with dachshunds. She has a grey bubble-cut, speaks no other languages, can't take spicy food, and walks very slowly over rough terrain. However provincial her personality, she has come to the Thai-Burma border and worked on either side of it with her husband every year for 18 years. If she acts old now remember that she got old waiting for Burma to change. What Elaine said: She is tired of watching the struggle in this struggle. Watching the unchange. “It just makes you weep when you see the inhumanity...I think a lot of people in North America feel helpless, but if you join an organization or write letters it does make a difference, even if it just makes you feel like you've made a difference. But some people I think just think about their next golf game. The ones who have any real power to do anything.”

Hlah Tay

Hlah Tay has a smooth broad face, thin lips and yellow teeth that seem to suit him. He's not tall but he doesn't look weak. He is Karen. He tends to wear a sarong and a tan Lufthansa cargo crew ball cap, the ABSDF has not made him rich. But his best feature is his bowl-cut hair. A full black helmet of hair beginning to show flecks of grey. His English is good, with just the slightest east-Indian accent to it compared to the others. He has a wife and a one-year-old son who live in Mae La Oon refugee camp, and he loves to play with his little son. When he's in camp he'll play with the baby until it's late at night, they see each other so irregularly. This is what he said: In 1988 Hlah Tay was studying botany, in his second year at Rangoon University. To the express disappointment of his family, he got involved in the democracy movement. He took part in the 1988 protests, and that is how the government came to know his name. When the protests failed Lhah tay ran for his life, never looking back. He ran to the border to hide escape the fairly terminal revenge the government had ready for him. He joined the All Burma Students Democratic Front as soon as it existed. From 1991 to 1998 he was a rebel soldier on the front lines. There he crept in the jungle, slept in a hammock, saw foreigners, rarely, who arrived to give military training, even a few video journalists. “They are very very strong. When they take video it's between the battle.” He was at Manipor. 21-years later he is still working for it, not tired, not disillusioned, even as it's membership has shrunk to a mere 1,500 scattered along the border. After the front lines he was recalled to teach in an ABSDF grade school. With nine years of that under his belt he has been assigned to be headmaster in the refugee camp, but before that must fulfill his duties at the office in Mae Sariang. He knows the War on Terror has made armed revolutionaries unpopular, but insists they are necessary. They are as necessary as is publicity and diplomacy in the struggle to free Burma. “I believe that we push at the same time as the armed struggle, the diplomatic ways, the media ways.” Only using every method at their disposal will they win this fight. He doesn't want to be hamstrung by only using peaceful demonstrations. Burma has had too much slaughter come of peaceful demonstration. The student uprisings of 1962, '74, '88. The workers' uprising in 1975. The monks uprising in 2007. “If you demonstrate, they kill.” He won't give up, he's not tired of this waiting. “No tired, because I believe that we must get democracy in Burma. But I don't know if quickly or slowly. But I believe that one day we will get democracy. Our people will live peacefully, with human rights...I understand that first we remove the military junta, then we establish the general federal union. At that time we'll have many problems with the ethnic groups and the general government. But I believe we can sit at the table and make the dialogue. If we sit at the table there can be understanding. But the first is we remove the military junta.” Hlah Tay has his own family now, a wife and son. He's dead to his past family. “I never contact with them, because I'm afraid if I contact with them the military generals will know...My mother, she is alive or not alive? I don't know. Also my sister and my brother, are they married or no? What is their situation, I don't know.”

Dr. David

Dr. David has a soft business card with his entire Burmese name on it and his parents' address. He is 26 years old. He became a doctor about a year and a half ago. The rule in Burma, if you become a doctor, you work where the government tells you to work for three years. Then, I think, he can apply for a passport. Where the government tells you to work can easily be someplace horrible, for (I think) a horrible wage. Dr. David didn't want to work where they said, and began to look for a job with an NGO, of which he says there are many inside Burma and they pay well. Against the odds he decided to go to the fringes of his home state, working for a Canadian NGO on the India side of Burma's Chin state border. He's the only medical staff in the clinic on this growing border town. It grows because it's contiguous with Burma's town across the river. Burmese refugees are still relatively welcome in this part of India, so they cross the border to contribute to the population, and as traders, casually smuggling Burmese goods all day long (especially alcohol, since the Indian state of Mizoram is dry). Dr. David is very soft, shy. He is tall, and still young-looking even for a 26-year-old Asian. Asians on the whole look young for a long time. They just do and we all know it. He is tall, thin, his hair is cut flat on top and too short on the sides, and he doesn't gel and spike it the way a lot of the others do. He wears glasses. If you know what Frank Grimes looks like, he looks like Frank Grimes. He's a difficult man to joke around with because he is so shy. Teasing makes him nervous. Spies make him nervous. Sometimes he crosses the bridge to shop in Burma, sometimes goes a little further in to treat people in the countryside. He hasn't had trouble yet. If the Burmese stop him he lies and says he's a government doctor. But he's worried about the spies. They cross into India as easily as he crosses out. They visit his clinic, ask questions, watch him and tell on him. They suspect him and he doesn't know of what or what's going to happen. He wants to go to Canada, or Australia, or back home to his parents in Burma. Somewhere away from this place. “What will happen if you go back to Burma?” “I don't know. Maybe nothing. Maybe put in jail. Maybe a few years or 20 years. I don't know because there is no law. It depends on the government.” He has a loft above his clinic, but he's too lonely to sleep there. He sleeps on the couch at the next door neighbour's. His way of talking is to smile and squirm. He's self-conscious about his nasal English because he so rarely speaks it, but his English is really quite good despite his agonizing. He gets this story out with difficulty. Not language difficulty, but shyness. Dr. Lopita tells him if he can come to Canada she'll give him a job in her clinic. Eventually he's brave enough to say something to his Canadian bosses. In all he does say to them there is an air of grasping for excuses to leave this job without angering them. He wants more money. True, he deserves more. He only makes about $400 dollars a month. Good enough in this town but not good enough to send any home to his retired parents, and not as good as he could have made with an NGO on the inside. The organization can't afford to pay him like a Canadian, but he deserves at least $1,000 a month, even if that is twice what other professionals make in town. They give him a raise, $500 a month. Next, he says he doesn't feel qualified. He's such a new, young doctor. If only he could return to his home town for another two years of training. Then he will come back. He knows other doctors from his graduating class who might replace him. They tell him wait, bide your time, it took long enough to find him. What if you don't come back? Just stay a little longer. Maybe they were on to him.

Uncle Sam

“Don't take my picture. Don't say where I take you. Don't call me my name, call me 'Uncle Sam,' I have enough problems before with foreigners.” Uncle Sam began his life when he was born in Rangoon in 1951. That was before the junta. His mother was a midwife and his father was a health assistant for the government. Even though they were Shan, they had little to fear from the government because of their jobs, and because things weren't so bad then. When he finished high school and had to choose a career, Uncle Sam chose jade trading. Moving gem stones out of Burma was a popular business. His dad gave him some start-up funds, which Sam quickly ran through. The trade wasn't as easy as he thought, so rather than face his father with the bad news, Sam went to work construction in Bangkok for three years. His father wasn't an idiot. He entreated Sam repeatedly to come home and try something else. “You don't have a head for business Sam. My friend will set you up with a job in the hospital mixing drugs.” Sam took the job. Although he wasn't impressed with the pay he found he liked being in Health. Eventually he became a health administrator for the government as his father had been. As such he was assigned to government convoys sent to the Shan countryside, forcing development projects along the way. Much of what employees like himself told the Shan about the projects and the benefits was just propaganda. They never got much. Shan nationalism was growing then. The people weren't happy, not with the government, not with the union, not with the starvation. Kun Se's rebel Maung Tai army was getting stronger, really at its peak back then. They had real weaponry, real training, tens of thousands of volunteers. And of course, such a charismatic leader. Uncle Sam began to help them secretly. As a government employee, the son of a government employee, from Rangoon, he was above suspicion. He wasn't counted among the Shan, even while he stole medicine from the government and gave it away. Things were going fine and he wasn't particularly worried about being found out, until Kun Se surrendered to the Burmese in 1996 and went into house arrest in Rangoon. The Maung Tai army broke into pieces, and in the crumbling Uncle Sam was ratted out. “Betrayed me!” he says. He fled to Thailand. When he arrived there he found a reunion of rebels. A little disoriented, he served briefly in what was left of the rebel army. By 1997 he knew soldiering wasn't for him any more than gem trading. He learned of the medic training centre in Thailand, further south along the border. The Shan sent him there, where he trained for two years to become something of a rough and ready doctor. He was good at that. And ambitious with it. Before too long he brought his skills to camps of displaced Shan scattered along the northern Thai-Burma border, where the Shan were pushed by a furious Burmese army. Those refugees are still there. Uncle Sam still sends them medicine. Today he lives permanently in Thailand, fat and loquacious. Canadians bought him a migrant worker ID, and as long as he has that he can stay. He is happy in his young career. He takes Shan teenagers and makes field medics of them. He butts heads with rebel commanders who stew along the border in new villages of displaced ethnic minorities. Butts heads with well-meaning foreign doctors who come to help him train. Can't ever go back. He betrayed the Burmese government, and then was betrayed himself, so he cannot go back and keep his life.

Kang Hseng

Within three days of arriving in Loi Kaw Wan, we all had a Kang Hseng crush, and he knew it. Kang is hot to begin with, but being one of the few city boys in Loi Kaw Wan, he possesses unusual charisma. This is what he said: Kang was born and raised in the capital city of Shan state: Taunggyi (Dong-chi). He has two older sisters, both of whom have been to college and now have relatively good jobs in retail. His father was an opium addict for 25 years. He paid for his habit by dealing. It's a little fuzzy, but he may have been a bootlegger too. The work put Kang's family squarely in Taunggyi's middle class. When it was evident Kang was on the verge of growing up, he had to decide what to do with his life. He's Shan, but because they lived in the city and his father had a mind for business they never felt threatened by the Burmese. At first Kang wanted to be an engineer, but he fell 5 per cent short on the entrance exam. His uncle in Singapore offered him a job. “Come work for me in Singapore. I'll set you up with a position and you can make a good living here,” his uncle told him. No. Another uncle is a monk in San Francisco, but Kang didn't want to be there either. A third uncle told him about the rebel Shan State Army, which he knew nothing of before, and the medics who bring aid to the Shan huddled along the border. That was the job 19-year-old Kang took. When Kang first told me this I thought “well you're a good guy Kang, but you're the only one here who can go home anytime you want. It doesn't have to be a serious thing for you.” Then I realized how much it meant. He could have chosen so many other lives. He was one of the rare ones; safe, comfortable, educated. He chose to go in when the others ran out. Almost three years later. He likes Loi Kaw Wan. He's a good medic and when the supplies hold he's the town dentist. He'll only leave if he wins a spot in the Mae Sot training clinic. And after that he would come back. Plus, he's staying because he's fallen in love with a 20-year-old student down the hill. He's a clothes horse with a choker of black beads like the surfers wear, and a black motorcycle jacket. His motorbike lust is strong, but with the honorarium salary he gets it will take him years to save up for one. He has an elfish face, likes to smile and show-off. His anime haircut makes him look like Bruce Lee and he loves it when people tell him that. He has no desire to be a soldier, but he calls the SSA “our organization.” Many Shan change their names when they escape or become rebels. Kang didn't change his, because he wants people to know it's him doing these things. Dangerous. He has his own private house; a bamboo and thatch hut the size of a backyard tool shed, with a dirt floor. There's a bare light bulb in the thatch that works for the two hours a night the generator's running. Between the bamboo cot and the rest of the house is a rack of clothes that acts as a wall. The door hangs onto the upper corner of its frame literally by a thread. He loves his house, because it's his only private place. In a few months he and the other two single male medics will be moved into a dorm, and he's not looking forward to it. Early every morning he took Cody and Sanjeev down to the clinic yard to teach them kung fu. Now and then he'd find one of the medics' guitars and play, which he was good at, and sing, which he needs to brush up on. Every night when all the others went to bed, Kang and I stayed up together to talk. We would play cards and tease and flirt. He told me all his secret gripes about how the Commander runs the town when there are no strangers to see it. Talked about politics and the genocide in Shan and how it's all going to end. And what happens after the end. He reminds me so much of another friend.

Shan Tattoos

Most of the Shan men have blue-black tattoos on their arms; tattoos of writing in Shan; one line of writing with other lines of writing branching off like domino chicken foot. Many of them have explained these tattoos to us. They are a magic charm that will protect them from violence; knives and bullets. They admit the charms won't really make them invincible, but they make them a little braver when they need it. They get them up अत the monastery when they're teenagers. The women and the other ethnicities don't have tattoo charms.

Shan AIDS

Bay Da said in 2007 he saw about 10 HIV positive patients. That he generally sees “a lot,” and they are typically male, under 40, and soldiers. I don't know why he said “2007” instead of “2008,” unless he hasn't counted up the 2008 cases yet. The first AIDS patient I saw was on February 11. She was, well she still is at the moment, a 52-year-old woman who had been in the week before (although this one looks so shrunken that I find it hard to believe it's the patient they're referring to) with an infected tooth socket. This patient is very wasted, certainly under 100 lbs and probably around 75 lbs, black lips surrounded by sores. Her daughter is with her, a healthy-looking, distressed woman, also a young man and a bunch of same-aged kids who may just be in for the show. The daughter is so upset that she won't let me take pictures, Khang Seng is busy putting her IV in and he looks up to tell me to stop. So I'll wait until the family leaves the In-Patient ward for awhile, if they do at all. The photo is necessary Why is the photo necessary? Because she's part of her people's genocide। Burma has enough money to have kept her safe and well if it wanted to. Her death is a victory for them. Word is, the woman will die within days without medicine, which can only serve to hold her on a little longer, slow the deterioration. That much is probably obvious to anyone. Amy says that her daughter said that this woman's husband died a few years ago. “Of the same thing Mom has now.” The next day she's still alive. She has tuberculosis and pneumonia, and what all the medics call “CD4,” which is code for HIV. I ask Homm Noon if people here understand the phrase “HIV.” She says they do. I ask her if they've told the woman's daughter she has HIV. She says no. I ask her if it will embarrass the woman's daughter if they say “HIV.” She says like she always does when I wish she'd be precise. “Yeah sure.” “But they must guess that she has AIDS.” “No I don't think they guess it.” “Why did they bring her in?” “Some abdominal pain. The air around her bed smells dangerously rotten। A terrible smell around her, but it's not that she's soiled herself. I don't know what can take the nasty smell of death off her body. It's not the same as feces or vomit. It's unnatural decomposition. Like something breathing of a dead body. Anyway. The next morning I come in to take her picture if I can. She's awake. She nods when I show her my camera, and she pushes down the comforter and lifts up her blouse so I can see her emaciation.

Bay Da

We arrived in Loi Kaw Wan in the afternoon. Once we came through town to the medic compound, we stood and looked around at things. Suddenly a tall young man running at full tilt leapt onto Dr. Semkuley and hugged him with his arms and legs. That's the most emotional reunion I've ever seen between two men. The man was Bay Da, whom everyone knows has the biggest smile since Eddie Murphy, and much nicer than Murphy's. Especially since the corners of Bay Da's mouth curve up, even when he stops smiling, which he eventually did. He smiled so much those first few days anyone would think he was the happiest man in the borderlands. Of course, his smile fell into disrepair over the next two weeks. It began with slow fractures, changing from joy at having Myron back, to worry, nervous smiling. Beaten dog smiling. Shorter smiles, frowning in between, right in front of us. It took two weeks for Bay Da to stop being formally gracious, open up, and say enough for me. Two weeks to say something to me that could make me cry. When the woman watching her mother die of AIDS in the clinic down the road only made me angry. Bay Da climbed down from the frame he and the others spent all day building to hold these mega big solar panels, so the clinic will finally have night light. We sat on the grass together and he took off his Chinese army boots, inside which his feet had stewed all day without socks. Man what a stink! Like grade C ham left under the deck for a week. I moved to sit up wind and we joked about the smell. He said I should write about how people in Loi Kaw Wan are too poor for soap so donors would send some for his feet. Then we headed off to bring the tools someplace for safe keeping. “Sometimes when we walked in the forest for four or five...or seven days, very difficult to get clean. No soap and got very dirty.” “You mean you were in the forest for that long?” “Yes” “What were you doing in the forest for seven days?” “Hiding, from Burmese soldiers.” “Oh. You were one of those people.” “Yes.” “What would happen if they caught you?” “They want to make us porters. Porters carry their weapons and food, and big bombs. A big bomb... They burned my father.” My skin crawled. “They took cigarettes, pressed on his face. You know when cigarettes burn, and the end is red? They burned on his face, here,” he traced his finger along his cheeks, “here.” “They tortured.” “Yes, tortured. I was seven...or six. I never forget that in all my life.” Earlier we had also joked about how he would like to be president. The things he would do, notably enact litter laws. Bay Da is an environmentalist, dislikes litter, and takes the decimation of the local teak forests by the SPDC personally. As he should, the SPDC are raping his people in order to rape his land. Anyway, his president talk ends with a smile and he says “in my next life.” “I want to have some coffee.” “I want my freedom.” “And what will you do with your freedom?” “I will travel, and present about Burma's politics and the environment.” I didn't expect him to have an answer so ready. After we put the tools away, and after he told me about his father's torture and I tried to keep my head tilted up so tears wouldn't fall out of my eyes and perhaps he was doing the same thing, he told me more. “I will tell you my real dream. This is real, what I wish. I want to go to a small village and teach English. Have maybe 50? students. I teach English and improve my English. At my home town we have waterfall,” he showed with his hands, “a beautiful waterfall. And land is flat and soil is very...good.” “It's no good here?” “No. Very hilly, and difficult to bring water.” The Shan aren't a mountain people. They are traditional farmers who are used to rich plains where they can grow just about anything. This place is Akha land. The Akha like the rugged land, but they had to move aside here to make room for the Shan refugees. “I want to have a house, and around the house, trees, because I like the environment. I would have trees. That is my real dream.” “Do you want this in Shan, or Thailand?” “Shan. If I can, I don't like in Thailand.” The whole time, his nervous smile would flicker by. It's surprising how a face constructed to fall so naturally into a wide grin can drop into such exhausted despair. He'd mentioned even on the first day that he doesn't think about worrying things because it would just make him depressed. But I knew when he said that, even though I didn't know him, that he must think about those things all the time.

Shan State Army 1

I'm not afraid of this Shan State Army. They're peasants and teachers, spread too thin over too much jungle to scare anyone. Every man in the village owns a machete, but they're still just school teachers and skinny farmers in uniform. I would give a lot if I thought it would get me embedded with this army. Kang Hseng says growing up in Taunggyi he'd never heard of the SSA, not until it was time for him to pick a career and his uncle told him about coming here to be a medic, under guard of the SSA. They have few weapons. A pair of AKs seem to be floating around town for special occasions, that and gardening machetes is about it for Loi Kaw Wan. A radio tower, a small cinder block house for the Commander, one flat bed truck, that's all I've seen. How could they get more? They don't have international support, or do they? Why should they? They make money only from taxing the people they mingle with, and corruption, like opium traffic, maybe some lumber like all the others. Corporal Hsuo said he didn't know how many SSA soldiers exist. I guessed 25,000 for him and he agreed that was possible, and that 50,000 isn't possible. The vice principal says it's hard to get new soldiers, and I think it was hard to get them from the start. The intention is good, but with no pay, no food, no clothes, no strength, how many can they entice to join? That's why there's only 25,000 ill-armed farmers spread from Chiang Mai to Yunnan. Manyof the women here are married to a soldier, meaning most of the men here are soldiers, even the ones who look too old and hard-lived to be. All day long they trickle by. One, ambling. Two if by motor bike. Sometimes wave, sometimes salute, and smile when they realize who they saluted. The SSA guard the Thai-Burma border before Loi Kaw Wan, posted in a sunny grass hut, with a lazy dog. I think they let anybody in, including the Thai guards. How can those two teenagers stop the Thai guards from walking down the road to take pictures of the whites in Loi Kaw Wan who aren't supposed to be here?

Election

February 10 The election the SPDC has scheduled for spring 2010 hangs over this town like a doomsday. What is the SPDC's plan, because surely they have one. They know right now what the outcome will be, if only we did. I can guess. So can the townspeople. Homm wants to have a baby, but she and her husband are waiting until the 2010 election is in the past, just in case it brings war to Loi Kaw Wan, they'll have one less life to protect if they wait to have the baby. We're working to save money to buy Homm a Burmese passport. It will cost about $1,000. It's $1,000 if she mails her ID card into the government and they mail the passport back, about $650 if she travel to Rangoon and applies in person, plus $350 in bribes to get there safely. I don't want her to go to Rangoon. She lives here under an assumed name, but it's still risky to travel. What if there are spies who know her? What if it's enough to be Shan to get into trouble on the route she takes? We have to get her that passport before the election, just in case. Maybe anticipating the fallout of the election is the reason the Commander wants the hospital expansion to be so big. A lot of new people may be moving to Loi Kaw Wan. Maybe it's for them that he wants it big, but maybe he wants MMC to pay for an operations office for his army. We don't know and I'd have to visit with him every day for months before he'd tell me, and we only get one invitation a year to visit him.

The commander of 30 Mountains

February 16 Another illegal trip into Burma, using what the local connection calls “positive corruption” (whiskey) another dusty refugee village, another SSA commander. Since the rest of the party moves like a glacier, and because I wander off without regard, I soon became separated from the others and didn't know where in the village I was or they were. Behind a weak bamboo fence was what was obviously a mini military compound, because it was painted. I saw a truck in there that looked like ours, so, well, they must have driven in and be waiting. There is a compound guard in a little thatched gazebo at the fence, with an MK balanced on his lap. When I walked in, surely the first blonde in months, he looked at me, and I looked at him, and neither of us admitted anything was unusual. There's an army troop truck inside, and a set of flags, so it's a place for some important person. After moseying around long enough a woman motioned me in to one of the hot, dark houses, or offices, or whatever. Inside was a man sitting crossed-legged on the raised floor, obviously eating his lunch—rice and dark brown stuff and dark green fluid with black mounds of stuff. He looked at me and I looked at him. I said hello. He said something authoritative to the women, who showed me to sit down, and scurried off. A walkie-talkie buzzed on the table in a corner of the room, which was heavily decorated with maps of Burma and pictures of military processions. I sat down across from him and we looked at each other. His English was laboured, but he was the only one around who could speak it, and the only man about the place. “What country you from?” “Canada.” “Hm. Canada.” A woman came with a bowl of rice, for me. “Nam nam nam!” he said, and she returned with a glass of water. I spooned the broth from the black stuff onto my rice, which made whoever this guy was laugh. It was strange him being here, since word was all the village men had left to work in the fields. “Yum, good. Thank you.” “You are medicine?” “Medic? No.” “No medic?” He looked at me sideways and I hesitated and looked at him sideways. “I'm...a...journalist. Newspaper.” He raised his eyebrows and frowned and looked at my camera. Then he laughed but not a happy laugh, rather a slow laugh. “News. How you come?” “Someone brought.” “Who brought?” We stared at each other. I shook my head. “I don't know who.” “Sai Sam?” “No. I don't know. You medic?” “Ha ha!” “You're a soldier?” “Hm, yes soldier.” The walkie-talkie buzzed intermittently, and I accidentally looked at it every time it did. The woman brought another dish, of green and red crusty stuff, and another bowl of rice. “For you, I can't eat more,” I told him, but he shook his head and waved me to load up. “OK, you're big, I'm small.” “Ha ha!” “I take half, you take half,” and I did. “You SSA soldier?” “SSA...You come Dr. Myron?” “Dr. Myron?” then I breathed relief. If he knew of Myron then whoever he was it was probably OK. I told him yes yes, with Dr. Myron. He asked how many of us came, whether we were staying the night, how I liked his food. I ate as heartily as I could to ease the long pauses between our exchanges. He told me Myron was coming to the compound, and I knew I just had to bide my time and so on. Of course, the reason this man was still in town when most others had left to farm, was because he's the regional rebel commander। He's running the place। Jeez, I'm glad he liked me, because eating with him even before I knew who I was with was a bit of a pickle.By the way, he gave me an SSA 2009 calendar.

In Burma: Vice Principal Hsur

A secret refugee town, inside Burma. This is what Hsur said:

Hsur is the vice principal of the school in this refugee town in Burma. His English name is "James Fu," given to him when he was a student. Fu is his original surname, but that was destroyed a long time ago.

He's another refugee from deeper inside Shan state. A wiry, small-set guy who looks taller than his five and a half feet. He was born in Yunnan, in China. To all their misfortune his family decided to immigrate to Burma when he was a child. Hsur still speaks perfect Mandarin, using it with the odd Kumintang descendent.

His father died he was 17, so Hsur joined the Shan State Army. Once he became a soldier for these rebels his family destroyed his identification and pretended he was dead, to save

themselves and him from the government wrath they would suffer if it was discovered he was a rebel. For 10 years Hsur was a soldier in the forest.

There was never enough food to fill him. From his looks there wasn't enough food to grow on. He looks like his body never met its potential. As a soldier it was always sleeping in the forest, hiking steep mountains with cheap Chinese army boots that fall apart in three weeks. Suffering in the rains from mosquitoes and malaria and mud. Always creeping after the Burmese army. He is dried sinew, not a 32-year-old man.

He's against using child warriors. He's fought against the Burmese' child soldiers, 15-year-olds. He feels guilty about that. Children don't know right from wrong. Adults do, and if an adult is given an order that is illegal, or wrong, they would know it, they can refuse. Children don't know. They just become killing machines that nobody wants to attack.

He's been in this town for five years, working as this and that, now the vice principal, teaching classes and doing everything else. He's still an SSA soldier, waiting in reserve should they call him back to the forest.

When he gets a chance, he's eager to talk about intelligent things. About politics and language and how much money a person needs. About the similarities between Shan and Laos and Thai, about the Commander. Tells about the rebel Wa Army along the Burma-Yunnan border. "Go there," he says. "Go to the Wa Army near Yunnan. Yeah, they will talk to you."

He's friendly, and willing to work and talk, but he's sad. In a sad state. There is no wife, no family, not even his own grass hut. Just a bed in the office. He's in Shan country, but he's not a Shan. Everyone here dreams of their homeland, but his is one altogether different. Even when he laughs he looks alone.

Drive back to Aizawl

January 26

Today was the eight-hour drive back to the capital of Mizoram. The road just went around and around...and around. The curves and bumps would never, we were exhausted and the drivers floored it. All drivers in Mizoram floor it, and that's not a generalization. They also like to pass, and since the entire road is a curve, on a cliff, that's dangerous driving.

  At 3:00 we stopped at a roadside orphanage that takes in the abandoned from all over Mizoram, and even a few states nearby. The place was hopping by the time we arrived, with children running around outside and doctors running around inside. This is a terrible orphanage, the worst I've ever seen. But the staff try.

The entire place smelled of urine, the children were filthy, and disabled and retarded people abandoned by their families hobbled among the crowd of orphaned children. Inside one big room near the entrance was a child, maybe 12-years-old, laying on the floor and propped up on its elbows, with its crippled legs twisted uselessly behind. I couldn't tell if it's a boy or a girl, and didn't find out later that it is a little girl. The name is Rua, her hair is cropped short.

  Rua was excited to see us and tried to pull herself closer when we walked in. Her arms seem strong enough but she doesn't have any means of getting around beyond the distance she can drag herself. She is just left to lay on the concrete floor in that room with splinters of wood to play with. She can't talk either, all she can say is "bee," and the meaning changes with how loudly and excitedly she can utter her word.

  It seems terribly lonely in there for her, in that dirty concrete room. I knelt down and began taking pictures of her face to turn the camera around and show her the photo, which she loved.

"Bee? Bee! Bee!" I couldn't take enough to satisfy her. Finally I had to leave to photograph the doctors and other orphans, but I felt terribly leaving her alone in that dog kennel, still wanting company and unable to follow. "Bee? Bee?" I went back in again and again.

  There are others there as tragic as Rua, and others who are smart and healthy, eager to practice their English, and just as tragic for being thrown into the mix.

  The youngest is a preciously stunned four year old in a crinoline dress. The oldest is in her 80s. the old ones are the retarded ones. Too ill and embarrassing for their families to keep. One old woman, barely four feet tall, wanders around with a doll strapped to her back the way women strap babies on. A man with Downs Syndrome groans and points to a rotten black tooth at passers by.

 Since there were too many volunteers to work the clinic, I got to photograph the entire time. It didn't take long for the abled children to get the nerve to ask for a picture, and of course to immediately go nuts to see how it turned out. Kids are always beautiful , but I felt sorrier than usual for these ones. They're so poor, and with only three staff members surely they really only have each other. They were dirty but obviously dressed in their best for our visit, with all the little girls' short hair pinned away from their faces.

  Those who could speak English did, even if only to tell their name in a complete sentence. Those who couldn't strained to show how excited they were. They crowded in, led me around, sat me down and petted my hair and arms. Then they noticed my white skin against theirs and hurried off to find the darkest-skinned man there, and held our arms together in comparison. They unbraided and rebraided my yellow hair, thanked me, hugged me, lined up to give me five and get their picture taken all over again. It was terrible, because we had to leave them.

  When the doctors were finished checking everyone, the staff begged us to stay for supper. Dr. Myron refused repeatedly, and told us it was wrong to stay because we were in a hurry and the children needed the food that would be served to us. He was right on both counts, but once we saw the banquet they prepared we all knew it would have been another tragedy for that place if we turned our backs on them without eating.

  They didn't eat. The children were sent away and the staff watched us. What a spread. They gave us food we hadn't seen since we left Canada, and much too much to feed the 11 of us. Apples, pineapples, pudding, fried chicken, sliced bread, cheese, nuts, chocolate bars—they had everything, for us. It was a terrible meal, knowing how much anticipation had gone into it, and how much they should eat it instead and how much it would hurt them if that happened.

  Two ancient women had their beds behind the table. As we ate they petted our shoulders and motioned to their mouths for us to share with them. At the end we had cleaned our plates but the food left on the platters barely looked touched. We gave the orphanage some money, and the clothes we could spare. The pastor who runs the place told us about his ambitions to add a chapel, which is the last thing the orphans need. We drove away in the dark.

Indian Honey

Mizoram is where I tasted the best honey I ever tasted. Even now I'm eating it. I'm eating it right now. That's why I decided to write about Mizoram honey, because it tastes so good. An ode. It deserves an ode. Oh Albertan honey is good, yeah, but it's honey-flavoured (I thought) and I can take that flavour or leave it. But in Mizoram, the honey is dark, like dark ale, or maple syrup, which is what it tastes like. Maple syrup, honey mixed and sweeter still, with a but of fruitiness.

  For the first time in my life I'm happy to eat honey by the spoonful. Now our big rum bottle full of dark Mizoram honey is almost gone. We had to lay the bottle on its side to get the last drops out of it. It's so sad, knowing it will soon be gone forever.

Chester the beekeeper from Bluffton bought a bottle of Thai honey off the back of the motorbike lady store, but he knew instantly it was imitation honey. Crap. Cheap crap. You can't fool us. Crap concoction made from fruit juice and syrupy sugar water.

  It's important you know about this fake honey, because it's beginning to appear on the store shelves at home. It may cost a lot less, and say on the bottle it's a product of Canada, but it's just cheap fake honey from China. Don't save money that way. I love China and I love honey (now) so I'm not going to disrespect either by buying that fake stuff at home.

January 23, Zakawthar on the India-Burma border

January 23

Our first day working the Zakawthar clinic. Why is that important? Because Zakawthar is separated from Burma by a narrow river. In fact the town is contiguous with the Burmese one on the other side, and the locals cross back and forth all day without getting hassled. We can't go though, whities restricted.

  Half the patients crossed the border into India to get treatment from the foreign doctors. As we began there was already a 15-year-old girl lying on a bed suffering a major anxiety attack. A few minutes after Dr. Myron began treating her the entire clinic could hear her hyperventilating until she passed out and they carried upstairs to rest in the doctor's bedroom.

  The people coming in from Burma truly are in much worse shape even than the Burmese Chin who have migrated to India and live here full-time. two women came in with great big goiters, there was a man with a bandage over his deformed face who had been mauled by a bear years ago and couldn't afford to have reconstructive surgery in Rangoon. So, his face healed askew and he's been walking around ever since with a bandage taped over the part that won't heal at all. Also a little girl pale with malaria,and all kinds of undernourishment and infections.

Everything they have is something they just can't afford to avoid or fix. Simple things that we all get, but that we never see bet out of control.

  The worst thing by far was the birth. In the morning a young man and his pregnant wife came in. Dr. Lopita wasn't sure if anything was wrong and hoped it was just a bladder infection. Later, we were called to their house on the hill because the girl had gone into labour. She was lying on a blanket on the floor, well attended by midwives while the anxious father (who could easily be under 20) waited in the other room. Lopita thought the midwives were doing an excellent job so we left them to it.

  About an hour later they called us back because the baby had been born. We came in congratulating the mother, but there was a bad air in the room. The mother was resting, wrapped up on the floor, and the midwife sat on the bed. We couldn't see or hear the baby, it was bundled up completely in the midwife's arms.

  She called us over and unwrapped the child to show us. When I saw it I thought it was already dead. it was born at least two months premature, and it was the size of a skinny little guinea pig. It's skin was grey, it's eyes were shut and its mouth was dry and open. I thought I was looking at a dead body.

  Outside the room Lopita said she couldn't tell if it was alive or dead, but the midwife assured her it was breathing, a little. Dr. William, the Burmese Chin physician we're working with at the clinic, brought a steroid injection to force the baby's lungs open. When he stuck the baby's thigh, it flinched, just a little, giving us hope it might survive the night. But Lopita said there was no hope it would last longer than that, and maybe William only gave the injection to make us feel better. It did indeed die in the night.

Inefficiency 1

January 22

Inefficiency driven by ignorance is driving Dr. Lopita mad. She came up from dinner to the room this evening hopping to tell me something Deryl said that made Lopita blush. Lopita got an 8-year-old patient today who may have a congenital heart defect. She wanted to know how the organization could raise money for the girl should she need an operation. The girl had been told before she could only have the operation overseas, which Lopita said was wrong—complicated surgery can be performed in India. Actually, India is a hub for Westerners coming for affordable quality surgery. We can send the kid to Calcutta for this. Deryl had no idea this could be done in India.

  There are many things people on this trip are doing that are a waste of time and money, and which seem born of a stubborn ignorance in our group. They treat this place as if it's the ass-end of the earth, which from our perspective it is but from the locals' it's the other way around. If you look at it one way it's primitive as hell and half the people live in bamboo-wall houses. But look at it from another angle and we would see everyone has a TV, a camera phone, a fridge, an email address. While we eat they take pictures of us on their phones. They're not the end of the earth, just the other side.

Champai, Mizoram, India

January 18

I love Champai, in fact I think I love Mizoram. The town is much like Aizawl, just smaller, a little more primitive, but everybody still owns a cellphone, moped, TV (even if their house is made of bamboo), so not so primitive. It's another city on top of a low, misty mountain.

Since the area generally doesn't allow tourists, the tourist lodge can get away with smelling of cabbage, vermin infestation, dried food splattered on the walls, and no heating. But it's ok, because we're in Champai.

January 21

Another day running mobile clinics into the surrounding villages. It was a long drive to this one—nearly two hours. I opted for a break from the Canadians and ride in with the interpreters. There are three of them that have been working with our team, as well as the driver who sometimes interprets, and a mysterious middle-aged man who neither speaks nor drives. He may be ballast. The driver, Dina, is an overweight, baked-looking man of 27. The other three are flirty guys each around 20, full of piss and excited to have the blonde white girl in the car.

"We all like you very much," 'My Boy' told me when I hopped in. I'm not going to say I don't like being flirted with, so there.

Here's some info on the Mizo and Chin cultures: they smoke like chimneys, appear surgically attached to their cellphones, know the lyrics to altogether too many pop songs, and should really lay off chewing the betelnut because it's ruining their teeth.

Finally in Aizawl city, Mizoram state, NE India

We've been traveling every day for four days to get to Aizawl from Calgary. Everybody is jetlagged and hungry. Half our group is missing—we haven't seen them since we left the airport to drive to Aizawl, and those of us waiting at the Aizawl Ritz are worrying about what happens next. The Ritz is one of the nicest hotels in town, but if you saw Aizawl you'd know why saying that, this hotel is ragged, cold, and smells suspicious.

  The city is unbelievable. It's in India, but everyone on the street looks east Asian. They're Mizo and Chin people. Westerners don't come here. It's not easy to get here by any means, and we have to register with the police. I don't know what most Westerners would do here even if they did know the place exists, which we don't.

  The entire city is built on top of a group of green-topped mountains. The buildings that can't fit on the very top trickle down the sides. No road lies on a flat plane, or even in a straight line for more than a block, every alley way is a staircase. How long it must take to learn your way around. Why build on top, and not in the valley like every other mountain town?

It's cool and the air is clear here, cool tropical bamboo forests as far as I can see. People dress like east Asians—well and in western clothes. The water (for the Ritz anyway) is trucked up the mountain every day.

  Tomorrow we set out for an eight-hour drive to Champai, a town about an hour from the Burma border. It's an eight-hour drive because the roads wind around the mountains so severely. If we had a helicopter it would take two hours to get to Champai, so let's brace ourselves.