Zokawthar, Day 1

Finally, a little action. Within 15 minutes of opening the clinic the building echoed with the sound of a young woman's obscenely laboured breathing. What made her do that was a mystery, but it didn't matter because it stopped, abruptly. Immediately after that the curtain around the doctor's office blew aside and the unconscious girl was carried upstairs.

“Put her in Doctor David's bed upstairs so she's not in the way.”

“What was wrong with her?” we asked the Calgarian doctor who decided to conclude the check-up when his patient passed out. For the sake of accuracy, I have to admit we asked him that night.

“She's having panic attacks and hyperventilating. When I tried to get her to breathe in a paper bag she got scared and stopped breathing altogether. So I thought, 'uh oh.'”

“Why is she having panic attacks?”

“I don't know. She lives in Burma, so, stress.”

This was the first day in the Zakawthar clinic; the closest you can get to Burma without leaving India. Most of the patients had walked for hours from inside Burma to be seen by visiting Western doctors on the India side of the river. This group of Canadian doctors ran health checks in half a dozen villages in the area over the past week, but most of those villagers had left Burma years ago and live permanently in India now, so they're sick, but not Burmese sick. Zakawthar is the Indian side of a town centred precisely on the border, where Burmese (Chin, to be accurate) cross back and forth all day to sell cheap Burmese goods on the other side.

The two halves of the town are connected by a dirty iron bridge painted red in the middle to mark the borderline. On the Indian side is a thatch hut with two guards paralysed with boredom, since Burma wouldn't dare. Across the bridge is a more elaborate check-point manned by Burmese guards, identifiable by their buzz cuts and leather US Air Force jackets.

The ground around the clinic was splattered red with betelnut spit. Betelnut is a stimulant, chewing wads of it is so popular in this part of the world that enclosed spaces generally reek of it and even teenager's teeth are stained red.

It was a good day in the clinic for voyeurs of medical curio. After Panic Attack came Bear Guy, a man who had been mauled by a bear years ago but who couldn't afford reconstructive face surgery in Rangoon. Since then much of that side of his face has healed into a purple misshapen lump. Once a week he changes the gauze that protects the skin that refuses to heal.

There were a few goitre ladies, a little girl pale with malaria, starvation-soft hair and pierced ears, 80-lb old ladies and productive coughs. Unfortunately, for the voyeurs anyway, we missed the guy whose butt cheeks were melded together by untreated syphilis scars. He was in last week. Gross.

Very gross. But the majority of patients were just tired and hungry. They needed vitamins and aspirin and TUMS. In the morning volunteers and interpreters fought off fatigue by exchanging courtesy questions about family, in the afternoon by genuinely cracking jokes.

Around two o'clock, three of us, Dr. Lopita from Toronto, Zoey the Geisha-faced interpreter, and I, were called to the house on the hill to see a woman in labour. Woman, or teenaged girl, not important. She was well, the midwives were skilled, and we were only taking up space in the little plywood house. “Call us again when the baby comes.”

Around five o'clock the crowd was thinning and the sky was dimming. I slipped around the curtain and into Lopita's office. Her and Zoey were chatting softly, really just waiting for it to become too dark to work. Zoey's tiny Betty Boop lips were stretched over a piece of chaw lodged in front of her bottom teeth.

“Zoey, what are you eating?” She giggled and threw a pack of powdered betelnut on the table. “You should know better!” She giggled again and crossed her legs.

“You want to try?” Of course. Of course I want to try. She split the pack between Lopita, whose Indian heritage accustomed her to betelnut long ago, and the one who doesn't even like to drink. That's me.

One new to betelnut, especially in its potent powdered form, will suffer from an urgent desire to hork it as far and fast as possible out of their mouth. Then to go drink from a hose. Bitter, nasty dry stuff that sticks all over the mouth. My face blushes and contorts wildly even with mild discomfort, so my reaction now sent Lopita and Zoey into hysterics.

“Spit out! Spit out!” laughed Zoey. No, never. I'm tough, I can't take it. I squeezed my face to keep

myself from gagging and shook my head. When I stood up to go back to the waiting room I was introduced to the true power of betelnut.

“Oh god I'm dizzy. Zoey, I think I'm high!” They were laughing so hard by the time my knees gave out that the doctor in the office banged on the wall for us to shut up or share. I staggered back to the waiting room and collapsed into the chair. While I tried to scrape all traces of betelnut out of my mouth into the garbage can at my feet, Chester, who is from the '60s, counselled me. “Chester I'm high.” He agreed. “It's a stimulant Suzy, like mild cocaine.”

“I don't think this counts if I did it by accident...Oh jeez Chester, these Chins are all high.”

“Yeah,” he grinned. “Didn't you know?” Until that day I was proud to have never experienced a chemical high. Now I have to find something else to feel superior about.

The midwife raced back in, the baby was born.

“Wait for me, I need you two to help me to walk.” Every time either of them looked at my situation they began to laugh again, which made our hike to the house on the hill a giggling stumble. We stomped through the door, laughing and wiping away tears and holding me up until the world stopped spinning.

But there was a bad air in the room. The mother was resting, wrapped up on the floor. The midwife sat on the bed. a silent bundle of blankets in her arms. She unwrapped the blankets to show us. I thought it was already dead. It was least two months premature, like a skinny little guinea pig. It's skin was grey, its eyes were sealed shut and it's mouth dry and open. The midwife leaned this tiny body toward my lens so it would be easier for me to take a picture, which made me feel guilt-sick.

Outside the room Dr. Lopita said she couldn't tell if it was alive or dead, but the midwife said it was still breathing a little. Dr. David agreed to bring an injection of steroids to force the lungs open. When they stuck the needle in the little baby's thigh, it flinched, and gave us hope that it might survive until tomorrow. But Lopita said there was no hope it would last longer than that. It did indeed die overnight.

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.