Someone Else is Living Your Parisian Dream

An e-mail I sent from abroad after a journey in the Burmese jungle….

WHAT: A perspective of Burma little known to anyone..even the Burmese.

Where: Burmese jungles to stay with people of the Karen nationality, and KNLA’s Brigade 5

When: April - May 2003

Why: Because it’s our responsibility to know the goings-on in the world. How: Trucks through riverbeds, and washed out, muddy roads, Boat down the beautiful Salween between Thailand and Burma, Foot up and down mountains and everything that comes with silently and cautiously trekking through the Burmese jungle.

…….and after a few weeks of all that, i’m not dead, so i must be stronger at this point. The hike in was difficult. And vertical. So, so, so vertical. Switchbacks don’t exist in the mountains and jungles here, but even if they did, the time spent to take a switchback is far too dangerous. The preferred alternative is to go straight up and down the mountains. We were caught in a false, but convincing start into rainy season, so it was river-like muddy and vertical. Bamboo forests, teak forests, slash and burn, climbing over trees, under trees, up mountains, and despite my newly discovered fear of leeches that wrangle and wriggle through those tiny vents in my shoes, I don’t think I’ve ever seen/experienced anything so inherently beautiful. And natural. And rich. The people, the territory…all of it.

I spent a few weeks with the ‘Karen’ (Ka-yin) in their Burmese jungle villages, and was reminded at every turn of how different my world at home is from that of theirs. From transportation, or lack thereof, to eating on their feet quickly and silently ‘just in case’ there’s an ambush by the Burmese military where their villages are burnt down, and family members either murdered, gang raped, or taken as porters to both carry Burmese military supplies, as well as human mine detectors.

Imagine living everyday of your life for 54 years, if that’s your age, in fear that you could lose your home, husband, wife or children today - in the most violent of ways. One man in the KNLA told me that he joined the Karen Army after his village was attacked and burnt down. From his hiding place in the trees, he saw a close friend shot after being taunted and forced to rape his own mother. The friend was laughingly called a “mother fucker” by the Burmese soldiers before they pulled the trigger, he said.

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