‘wOw Friend’ Adelle Lutz, an artist and Burma activist, is reporting from Bangkok, Thailand, on the post-cyclone situation in Burma.

Mae Sot is hot and steamy in every way — both meteorologically and politically. A border town seven hours out of Bangkok by bus, it is one of those places where "don’t worry, they will find you" is a common phrase. The Friendship Bridge crosses from here into Burma and leads straight to Rangoon. Trucks have been carrying donations over and into the stricken land. O-o-o, and the two lanes change in the middle of the bridge! What a shock to be in a vehicle that is on the left side and then suddenly it whooshes over to the right-hand lane, over the water, smack in the middle; diplomacy at its finest.

As Dharamsala is to the Tibetans in India, so likewise is Mae Sot the center, or even hotbed, of Burmese-in-exile in Thailand. With massive refugee camps — migrant workers legal and illegal everywhere — there are more Burmese than Thai in the town. Many heads of the democracy movement as well as ethnic rebel leaders are based in Mae Sot.


Mae La refugee camp dwellings such as these extend up and down the mountains for miles

I went to get a sense of this climate and fairly quickly was whisked across the border into rebel-held territory to attend the wake of Saw Ba Thin Sein, the Karen National Union president (he died at the age of 82 of protracted illness), firstly by van, through a number of Thai checkpoints, and then by boat across the river. One of our party, a high-ranking KNU leader, actually fell into the murky brown river getting into our tippy launch. I was so grateful it wasn’t me. It had been many years since I’d touched Burmese soil and, as much as my heart was pounding with nervousness, it also thrilled at the sight of the lush green mountains closing around me.

I took my Buddhist mala (prayer beads) along; turns out he was Anglican. The grave they were carefully crafting was like a tilted three-layer cake of cross upon cross. It was a sweet and quiet afternoon spent in this jungle clearing even as the young soldiers held rifles at the ready. It was, actually, the calmest time I’ve had on this whole trip.

On the ride back, we stopped to let off a young woman at the Mae La refugee camp, the largest of the nine camps in Thailand; Mae La has 50,000 refugees. Seen from the main road and moving at a fast clip, Mae La looks like a huge Dogpatch. “How lovely,” I think, as the pink sunset glows magically behind the stilted tiny houses perched on the tropical hills. One could easily imagine Mammy Yoakum with a cheroot. But inside, a harder and less picaresque scene unfolds. The housing is flimsy, the children filthy, the water stagnant in many places, gutters looking pretty horrid. Although the camps have self-governance, these 140,000 people must rely fully on the Thailand Burma Border Consortium for all food. As the cost of rice went up in January of this year, the TBBC is in dire need of money and must soon cut rations to bare minimums. They say that people could very quickly sink into malnutrition.


The smallest of the 50,000 refugees at Mae La

At this time of great strife in Burma, please also consider supporting those refugees on the border. They are stuck, stuck, stuck in a very tough situation with little — if no — freedom of movement.

Any donation makes an enormous difference. Ten dollars provides rice for one month. Please check out the website by clicking here.

More from Adele Lutz on the dire situation in Burma

Click here to read The Aftermath of the Cyclone in Burma, by Adelle Lutz (Warning: graphic photos).

Click here to read Haunted by Burmese Ghosts, by Adelle Lutz.