What about Burma?

Its a little known fact that the Burmese people have been living in oppression for almost 50 years. Oppressed by a military run government or as some may call it a military dictatorship. Most people don't even know where Burma is, but when you live in Northern Thailand you learn about Burma very quickly. The amount of refugees that you see stream into Thailand is not surprising when you hear about the life they left on the other side. The rounder darker faces of the Burmese women are easy to recognize, with "thanakha" smeared in circles to cool their skin. I don't pretend to be an expert on this subject matter. I've entered Burma three times...twice through Mae Sai and once on a boat..rather a canoe like structure...through Ranong. Each time just to gain another three months on my Thai visa. I never got to walk around the country a lot, but the difference between the two countries is remarkable. The oppression is evident if not completely noticeable on people's faces. I had a friend who was from Burma, she was studying at the university in Chiang Mai. She knew about as much Thai as I did, I didn't know Burmese, and she knew English so it worked out pretty good. We used to rent and watch movies together, but made sure they had Thai subtitles so that our mutual friend who was Thai could understand them. We were a funny threesome. She used to talk about her country a bit, more so the poverty of it economically and spiritually, and I saw that poverty when I stepped across the line. I saw it on the streets and I saw it in the eyes of the women. Women who are abused and raped under systematic violence by the military. Many of these women belonging to ethnic minority groups.

And now with the cyclone hitting Burma last weekend and their government regime refusing aid and sending away relief teams, maybe the world will finally realize that Burma needs help to. Now there are over 100,000 homeless, jobless, fatherless, daughterless people in Burma and their government is preventing the help that is trying to come. Did it take a huge natural disaster to finally get Burma on the map?

But yet, it still makes me wonder, when did helping countries and causes become a popularity contest. Big named actors got behind Save Darfur, thousands slap a Free Tibet sticker on the back of their car and refuse to acknowledge the Olympics, the US sent thousands of troops to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, but what about Burma? I'm not saying all these causes are not worth fighting for...I'm just asking...

I was in Thailand when the Tsunami hit...I flew down 3 months after...to sit and talk with people in their hastily made camps, temporary housing until the government and relief organizations could build them something better than a tin shack. I sat and talked with mothers whose babies had died, and girls who's fiances had died and fathers who had lost their jobs, but it was the Burmese camp that made me sad. It was a camp that was now being visited because now, their camp wasn't the only camp in town. This camp sat hidden behind the police station with the Burmese men leaving camp every morning crammed in the back of a pick up truck, off to go look for work. But now....people were noticing...taking pity on a people group shunned by their own government, looking to find a home in a place that shut them off in their own camp..What these relief helpers didn't know was that even before the Tsunami...the camp had always been there....