Never met a refugee I didn't like...

In April we joined a team going to Mae Sot. This is a town that borders Burma. There are refugee camps all up and down the border. They are made up of people from the Karen tribe. I have talked about these people before, but this time we actually went and met them ourselves. This particular camp is called Mae La. There are 50,000 people living at this camp. There are something like 13 camps like this one.


They are simple people. Farmers who are living in camps and are not allowed to go out into the fields surrounding the camp to plant because there would be no way to control it. They make due with a stipend of rice, shrimp paste and salt. They used to get chilies but they have been cut. The rumor is the shrimp paste will have to be cut as well. Feeding the people is becoming more and more expensive as the price of rice and the shortages of food become more and more desperate. The world is not a good place to be for a lot of people. I am grateful for all that I have, but I find myself daily wishing for more to give.

Many of these people have been visibly wounded. Victims of gunshots and land mines. Victims of the genocide that continues against their people by a government that rules through paranoia and mistrust. They are abused, shot at, their houses and churches are destroyed. The villages are land mined to keep them from coming back. This government wants these people eradicated. I want you to meet some of them.

This little guy was born in this camp. They want him dead.

These are the most amazing people I have ever met. There life could not be harder, but they are warm and friendly. It amazes me every time they smile. It's not that they are poor. It's not that they don't have all the things we take for granted because they never have had those things. They can't miss what they never had. What they don't have is freedom. They don't have the ability to properly take care of themselves. They don't have the opportunity to do for themselves and their families what they would if they were on the other side of the mountain across an imaginary line that separates governments, yet they smile and love and make the best if it all. They make the best of the life they have in the camps. They keep it as nice as possible. They have churches and worship God. The pastors who are telling them the promises of God are refugees themselves, but they walk in faith. They believe God to take care of the orphans and get the kids some schooling. They find reasons to smile.

Here is a shot of some of the houses in the camp. They build these themselves from what is available. This is how they would live back in Burma except they are all squished close together and they can't farm. This picture is amazing because you might not be able to see it, but there are roses in that garden among other things. I thought it was symbolic of the spirit of these people that roses would be in this garden.

This is Pei Pei. She was my best friend. She guided me through the camp and made sure I knew the way to everywhere we were going. I gave her the fan because she was fascinated by the way it folded up. Then she kept trying to fan me with it and I felt like a monster because I wanted her to fan herself. She wasn't having it, and kept trying to fan me.

This little guy is one of the orphans here at this camp.

Here are two more. Their parents were either killed by the soldiers who prey on their people or sickness and disease that cannot be taken care of in time. The results are the same regardless of why. They are cared for by the churches, but this is a refugee camp. There is not actually much to give.

It was seriously hot this particular day. It was just the end of the dry season and the rains had not come yet. It made it all feel worse to see the dried up grass, like the plants thirst made you feel more thirsty yourself. The entire camp is the base of a mountain though so things don't get any easier when the rain does come.

This is one of the meeting houses we visited while in the camp. One of two churches we visited at this camp. This was a special meeting for the youth.

The second church was the next day. Troy and I had a chance to do children's church and we had an absolute blast. We got volunteers out of the crowd and did a wonderfully unrehearsed acting out of the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. It was silly and fun and still got the point across. We loved every second of it. I told the story, through an interpreter of course, while Troy acted out the kings part and the volunteers played the main roles and the guards. We don't have pictures because we were both doing it. It was classic.