It’s hard to use the word “fortunate” in the same sentence as Myanmar at the moment. I don’t know if you saw the picture on the front page of The New York Times this week of a seemingly endless line of Burmese sitting along the side of the road praying, hoping for any morsel of food. Though I admit to being desensitized to most media reports on suffering a world away, this image kicked me in the gut.
Nonetheless, despite my reluctance, I’d have to say we were indeed fortunate to have started the construction of a safe house for Burmese trafficking survivors nearly six weeks before the cyclone hit. Our Thai partner, Kru Nam, had asked us to help her build a facility autonomous from the Buddies Along the Roadside village for children. We did not have all the funds in hand, but like most of our Not For Sale ventures, we embarked on faith that the funds will come.
So it was a thrill to visit the safe house today and watch it near completion. Our constituency has shown extraordinary generosity not only to construct the building (a big tip of the hat to Bob Squeri and his One Child at a Time foundation) but also to raise the funds to keep it functioning. By mid-June Kru Nam hopes to begin taking in the most high-risk children and women. The safe house lies adjacent to the Golden Triangle region, near the Myanmar border town of Mae Sai. Not many families from the cyclone-afflicted region are passing through this border at the moment, above all because it is a highly guarded border crossing. Kru Nam is in touch with some of the remote hill tribes which lie along the remote, western border of Thailand. There the mountainous passes connecting to Myanmar are safer. Kru Nam has word out to her network to watch out for abandoned or obviously exploited kids.
What we know for sure is that there is now a huge vulnerable population in Myanmar. Save the Children recorded a case in Rangoon just a week or so ago that orphaned kids are being targeted by suspected traffickers. As time goes on, the people in that region without food, work, school, hope for a future will for sure be potential human trafficking victims. It is likely that many of those trafficked in the cyclone region also will pass through a southern route to Phuket or Bangkok or perhaps through Mae Sot or Kanchanaburi. Recently in the news you would have seen Burmese illegal workers that died in the back of a truck coming through this southern route.
Maybe it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the depth of the tragedy. But I’m here on the ground on the Myanmar-Thai border, and I can tell you that your prayers and gifts are an oasis of hope.
