One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [46]
Two colleagues and I were crowded onto the back of a little motorbike. I was the most junior of the group, so I hung precariously off the back. We set out to get a drink at a local bar popular among expatriates. The roads in Mae Sot all seemed to be one way. I marveled that the same malicious urban planner that made driving in Boston impossible had found his way out to this Southeast Asian border post. In order to get where we wanted to be, we had to go down the main road past our destination, turn onto a small side street, and cross to the other main road that went the opposite direction. The side streets were unlit, and our hearts froze for a moment when we saw a group of uniformed policemen standing in the middle of the small bridge that we had to cross. My mind raced back to the checkpoints of the Congo and unscrupulous soldiers with submachine guns. Checkpoints can be the most dangerous places in the world. In the Congo, a few wrong words at a checkpoint had nearly landed me in jail.
I clung to the back of the motorcycle and held my breath, each bump threatening to knock me off. We slowed, but did not stop as we passed. The officers looked us over but made no move to halt us. Thailand relies on tourism. We continued on.
We missed the bar and had to double back again. None of us were happy about crossing paths with those policemen again. I held on tight and we approached the bridge. That was when I saw what the policemen were doing. They had stopped a Burmese man walking at night with a sack over his shoulder. For a Burmese man, coming from a land of military oppression and vanishings, to encounter a group of uniformed men on a dark bridge is a harrowing experience. As we passed, the soldiers circled the man, blocking him from our view. They were shaking him down.
“The police,” my colleague told me, “request to get stationed here. They’re all getting rich.” If the Burmese can’t pay up, they can be arrested. The family must come up with money to pay off the police and retrieve their relative. Otherwise, the unlucky migrant will find himself or herself deported, or worse. We learned from a local NGO that the slave trade is flourishing, with over a hundred Burmese sold into slavery every single day. Children were certainly not exempted from this and were all forbidden by their families to go out at night. Every Burmese child I met said that they did not go out a night for fear of criminals and fear of the police.
The next morning I went to a migrant school outside of town. The school sat in the middle of a field. My guides were a group of students who arranged human rights education and democracy training for the exiled Burmese.
It was crowded and stuffy inside the one-room school building, which was made from leaves and bamboo. There were too many students in too little space. The headmaster and his two teachers greeted me at the door. They offered me a seat outside in the shade of the building. The sun shone, and we thought it would be good to take advantage before the rain came. So my translator and I sat and waited for some students to be brought to us. Through the openings in the bamboo, I saw children’s curious fingers and wide eyes peering out to get a glimpse of me. Most of these children’s families had been subsistence farmers in Burma, and they had little exposure to the world beyond the distant hills. There was a lot of excitement in the air, especially when I brought out markers and paper to draw on. The school had few supplies and everyone, even the teachers, was eager to make use of the new materials. A group of children were sent out. Before anything could begin, I distributed paper all around.
Eleven-year-old Nicholas had wide almond eyes and wore soccer shorts and a frayed jersey. We looked at his drawing—the frightful crucifixion of a villager, bodies falling from the sky, a little boy in purple hiding behind a tree. Nicholas told me about the SPDC attack on his village and his recurring nightmares in Thailand. He had trouble sleeping because he was