Mae Ra Moe Refugee Camp

We spent a week in Mae Ra Moe, the ‘Club Med’ of the Karen refugee camps. The location is breathtaking; it’s in the middle of the jungle with a river through the middle of it and, compared to the other camps, pretty spacious. We were there with the Karen Education Partnership, a group of teachers who come out to Thailand every year from Newcastle to deliver a week’s teacher training programme. This year, Abby was teaching community development in a women’s school in a different section of the camp. This meant walking up there every morning, an amazing journey along the side of the river and over a ‘suspension bridge’ of sorts that we were surprised to see was actually still there each morning. The journey back was by boat as it was too hot too walk.

The week flew past – teaching, swimming, and playing with the children. It was a bit disturbing to see how much the kids had been influenced by the fighting going on around them. When they were drawing, most of the boys drew guns, bombs and soldiers in accurate detail – it’s maybe inevitable in this sort of situation but still hard to handle. The general atmosphere is immensely positive though and we were made to feel very welcome.

On the last day of teaching we had a party for the students. It was excellent, though a word of warning when planning party games in flimsy bamboo huts – don’t try anything that involves jumping around with balloons between your knees.

Related links
karen womens organization
Inside Burma with the Karen - from BBC
UNHCR
UK Refugee council