Normal?


Our life here has fallen into a normal routine now. Each day begins around 3 a.m. with some of the kids getting up to start breakfast.  I roll over in bed and mentally note the time, while falling back to sleep. At 6 a.m. I am once again disturbed in my sleep by the kids beginning worship time. They sing as if they had been awake all night instead of just getting up. Even the soldiers up on the hill have mentioned the kids singing in the morning. (which they like by the way)  I listen to the song service from my warm cozy bed and then sit up to have my own worship. I stay in my bed just as long as I can manage since it is the best place on the whole campus, made so by my one and a half inch thick foam pad, and my warm fuzzy blanket.  By the time I finish my worship time, the kids are back from worship and usually one or more of them has crawled under Tremaynne’s mosquito net with him, trying to wake him up. It is amusing to them that we stay in bed so long! Next, one of the kids bangs on bamboo with a stick calling everyone to breakfast. Some of us go over to the cafeteria for breakfast, and some of us eat fruit and milk at home.  After breakfast we clean up the house and then head out for our various duties. Roy and Tremaynne begin the school day, while Travis goes out to his work project. This week his project has been to clean up the orchard. They are cutting the grass under the trees so that it can all be burned. There are a lot of poisonous thorns and snakes and terrible things like that in there. When they get it all done it will actually be usable.  I head on up to the porch to help Gayle.  We treat patients for several hours in the morning. Usually there is a nice assortment of babies to choose from, and worried mothers, and doting fathers, and sweet Grandma’s and crippled Grandpas. It is amazing to me how many are missing legs from the land mines.  When the morning crowd is about finished I know that Travis will be heading to his 5th grade math class. Emily asked him to take over her math classes last week, so now Travis teaches 5th and 6th grade math classes each day. At about that time Tremaynne will be finishing up his math class, and starting on writing. Sometimes I then head to town with the group that needs to go to the hospital. We drive them in the vehicle that happens to still be working by some miracle. You might wonder why we have to take them to the hospital when there are songtows going by every few minutes. What to us is a routine trip to the hospital would be a terrifying experience for them if they were to try it without us. On the way there, we pass several police checkpoints. There are soldiers with big guns slung over their shoulders at each checkpoint. They will stop us once in a while to chat with Bradley, but since they know who we are and what we are doing, they never question the quivering  people in the back seat. One time, Gayle did not have a functioning vehicle, so she got on a songtow with her patients and started to the hospital. At the check point, the soldier made one of her patients get off, and started to abuse him while Gayle frantically tried to make him understand that he was her patient. One of the students fathers was caught at a checkpoint last week and deported back to Burma. We don’t know if he is ok or not, but we know that it can mean death for him. So, this means that at least one of us has to take the patients to the hospital. Once there it is also important to stay with the patient. The Thai don’t really like Karen people, since they are aliens in this country, kind of like illegal Mexicans in America. They will not always treat them very well, and often the doctors will just label them as having “gastritis” when it is not that at all! So, Gayle stays with them through the whole process, making sure that they are treated properly. While Gayle is following her patients around the hospital, Bradley and I are doing the shopping for anyone who needs anything, and then we head to the internet café to check emails and update this site. Bradley is our driver, so all I have to do is tell him where I want to go and he takes me. This may sound like a 16 year old just having the time of his life, but driving here is a scary proposition to say the least! Not only do you sit on the wrong side of the car, and shift on the wrong side, and drive on the wrong side of the road, but you also have to be continually fixing the car! Bradley is turning into a real expert at mechanics. And, he does it very cheerfully! Yesterday he got the blinkers to work, and he was so excited about it, you would have thought that he had a new car!

When we get back from town, we either take care of more patients, or we do laundry and take our baths. Each person is responsible for doing their own laundry. My favorite way to do it is to go down to the river and wash laundry there. It is the perfect spot for doing laundry. You choose a nice rock as your base, and then you take your little laundry tub, place it in a strategic location next to the rock, then you add water, soap and clothing to the bucket, mix it up real good, then take one garment out at a time and scrub it on the rock. I even have a little pink brush for scrubbing clothing. After it is thoroughly washed, you swish it around in the water flowing past the rock, and then wring it out. Presto….. clean laundry! Then you just have to find a spot to hang it out to dry where it is least likely to wander away. ( I have lost about 6 precious items to villagers who think they need the clothing more than I do) But, I don’t want to make doing laundry sound like all fun and games. Yesterday I stepped on a piece of broken glass while scrubbing, and that is why today you are getting such a nice long update!

Meantime, Roy and Tremaynne have finished school, and then they head out to help with different work projects around the school. They are working on building new toilets, and on Thursday Tremaynne and Josiah and I dug a huge hole for burning garbage. They usually just burn the garbage beside the driveway, and it had gotten to be an eyesore. So, we dug this deep pit to burn the garbage in and contain all ashes and debris that are left over. We hope to hinder the dogs in their wild rampages this way.  During work time, a lot of the girls are working on making uniforms for the school. They have been provided with looms and string, and they weave them into nice Karen clothing.

After work time, it is play time. The boys enjoy playing cane ball, or volley ball, or “football”. Tremaynne talks more about that on his page.  I have actually never been able to participate in playtime. I usually end up back at the “clinic” to check on our inpatients or to organize the shelves, or help with making lunch.

Right after supper begins my favorite time of the day. We start by going to evening worship with the kids. We all sit on the floor in the girl’s dorm/class room building and listen to the kids sing. That is followed by a worship talk by one of the students, then the bible teacher or the principal gives a devotional. They sing some more, have a prayer, then come all the announcements and plans for the following day. After the kids are dismissed, there is a little stampede to me. They all have to show me their little owies and tell me all about how things are healing or not healing. Keep in mind that this is all done in a language that I am trying really hard to understand. They will tell me something and I have to dig my pink book out of my bag, and try to find where I have written down those sounds and what they mean. I do have some words down pat, like Ah Chau means “does it hurt?” I use that one a lot! Or, Ah Thau means “does it itch?” Then, I say “Gullawah Hee”, and the whole herd comes singing and laughing up to the house on the hill where we do clinic. Each child is treated as if they really had a sore that needed a life and death surgery.  While Maria, Lena and I treat the kids, Roy and Travis and Tremaynne entertain the waiting ones.  ( Gayle is NOT on duty in the evenings, she spends that time with her boys)

When we are done with foot clinic it is time to go home. I usually arrive at home to find a conglomeration of boys sprawled out on the floor of my house with their English notebooks in front of them. Travis and Tremaynne each have a group of them surrounding them going over their lessons in English.  While they are working on English, they are teaching Travis and Tremaynne and I Karen. We correct them and they correct us, and we all laugh together.

Everything is going so routinely that you don’t often stop to think about what is actually taking place here. Several  of  the boys on the floor of my house have no home to go to. In the distance, you can often hear gunfire and explosions, but they are becoming just common place. Oh, the Burmese are fighting the KNU again. Ho hum…… until it affects one of the students parents. Or, you lose the man who was hired to clear the orchard. Or the school manager tells you how he has heard that there are 100 soldiers on the other side of the border who are in trouble and he needs to go at night to check on the situation.  Or, the little girl who came to me and told me about her family, and how her father was killed by the Burmese, and her mother does not want her. This is her home and this is her only hope for a future. 

Normal? May this NEVER become normal to us so that we are calloused to the needs of real people who need real help in order to just survive.  May the children never become just another child to us, but let us keep in mind that they look to us for the love and care that their parents are unable to give them anymore. And for those who have homes, this may be the only chance they have to learn about Jesus and what He has done for them.   May we continue to see them as Jesus sees them.  Please continue to help these children with your prayers, love and concern. Please continue to hold up in prayer those who are working here. As I write, Travis is laying on the floor beside me after throwing up all night, and Lena is in the bedroom, still coughing like she has done for the last month. Their lives are hard, with very few comforts….. but it is so worth it!