What I was really doing ...

I sit here now to punch this out in a small, stuffy, forgotten area of the Bangkok International Airport. I decided to rest here for the night and try to stay up all night long in order to more quickly re-adjust to U.S. time. I’ve been trying to hide out in an undeveloped section I found here because the air conditioning is better, but I keep getting chased out by security guards who seem a bit too eager to show off their weaponry. That paired with the fact that my hard-sided, plastic camera case looks awfully suspicious. I must say that this is quite a fitting way to finish up my time here in Thailand, sneaking around the airport, trying to hide out long enough to pop open my laptop and punch out a blog entry. Fitting because it’s kind of what I’ve been doing here the whole time. Allow me to explain.

You see, I haven’t been completely up front on this blog or to most of you in general about what exactly it is that I have been doing here this summer. Why is it that I mentioned interviewing sources, but never told you who those sources were or why I wanted to talk with them? Why is it that I spent three months here and virtually never left the area between Chiang Mai and the northern Thai border? Well, that’s just it really: the border, or rather what’s on the other side of it. Thailand is bordered both on its north and west sides by the country called Myanmar, more commonly known as Burma. Chances are you haven’t heard much about Burma. It doesn’t get a whole lot of coverage in the states … or in most of the West for that matter. You see, Burma is kind of a bad place to be … well … to be anything but a Burmese soldier that is, their military junta government ironically called the State Peace and Development Council. There are rebel groups in the jungles all around the country opposing this government’s treatment of its people; the way they will often descend upon and burn entire villages. Or the way they have re-routed all of the country’s funds to support only the members of the already-rich military party’s interests. This, along with the country’s severely low currency worth, is causing many of its tribal people to flee into neighboring Thailand, hence where I kind of come in.

I was there trying to learn more about these people that are fleeing, dealing specifically with the problems they face before coming and once they arrive. My research involved talking with migrant workers in Thailand working in rice mills and road labor crews, working nine or ten hours a day for a fraction of the pay they would be receiving if they had either refugee or citizenship status. I talked with drug addicts who were either using or dealing (usually both) drugs produced in Burma, the largest exporter of a caffeine-laced methamphetamine called “yaba.” And I spoke with 15 and 16 year old prostitutes – girls whose parents sold them into cheap brothels both in Burmese border cities and inside Thailand to make money for the family … often for the parents’ own drug addictions. As can be imagined, it was a difficult and sad story to cover on several different levels. As a journalist, I learned so much about covering stories and conflicts in which people are still very much involved and very much afraid of things still happening to them and their families. Because of the looming stigma that surrounds this ongoing conflict, people would often times be afraid to talk to me fearing I was some sort of government informant, not to mention the fact that many of them carry a great deal of shame for their situation.

As a person, I realized that there are so many people in this world who are hurting. I’ve seen now what an oppressive government without any such thing as a freedom of speech or of the press or any rights of privacy, can do to its people. When I wrote that message on the fourth of July about how much I appreciate what we have as Americans, there was such a burning desire to write more. But, thus rises the reason I didn’t. While I was still here, I didn’t want to put the people I was working with or myself in any jeopardy by making it explicit on this blog what exactly it was I was covering here. There are Burmese intelligence monitors all over the place, especially in the city where I was based, Chiang Mai, reading the content on the Internet and scanning outgoing e-mail messages, just hoping to catch the word “Burma” in there somewhere. This was also paired with the fact that my mother and I sort of have an unspoken agreement that I don’t tell her the dangerous things I’ve been doing until I’ve returned home safely. There are times when she probably just wouldn’t be able to handle it. But she has been so strong this summer, in spite of her being a bit in the dark ;)

So if my blog never seemed really to have any sort of purpose and was confusing at times, I hope this explains why. This also, I believe, explains why there would at times be two-week gaps in my entries. Those were the times I was researching, and was so overwhelmed with what I was learning that I couldn’t bring myself to sit down and type out a chipper, fun entry that made everything seem hunky-dory. It wasn’t. And for so many of these people here, it’s still not.

The same journalism professor I mentioned a while back in this blog once said during a class on international newsgathering that students often come to him overwhelmed with the amount of sadness in the world, wondering how someone as small and insignificant as they could possibly begin to make a difference. “Do you want to know what I tell them?” he said. His answer was simple. He picked up a folded and dog-eared copy of the New York Times sitting on the desk in front of him and held it up in the air. “Learn,” he said, “and be aware of what is happening in this world around you. This is the first and most important thing we can ask, and the thing by which the most fruit will be produced.” I know what he means. We, as Americans, have this incredible access to information – to true information. The worst atrocities this world has seen have sprung first and foremost from ignorance. The only way to break the atrocities, therefore, is to break the ignorance.

It may be some time before I am able to pound the information I have gathered into some digestible form. But when I do, I will be sure to get it on my Web site or let you know where it is published (cross your fingers) as soon as I can. I learned a lot this summer, and I was changed in a lot of ways … in a lot of good ways. I can’t thank you all enough for visiting this little, poor excuse for a blog. Though I never had a hit counter, the thought that you were all reading and the comments you left were an unexplainable comfort to me in times when I felt very much alone. People like myself, those we call journalists, would have no purpose whatsoever if we did not have people to listen. People to read. So read on, and help be a part of smashing this ignorance that has forever made the world at odds with itself.