As the price of rice rises and refugee rations decrease, a vulnerable people will starve
Kate Heartfield, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Sunday, April 27, 2008
While Canada congratulates itself on rescuing a few thousand refugees from the Thailand-Burma border, it seems willing to watch 140,000 starve, as rice prices threaten to shrink their rations to nearly nothing.
What's more, Canada and other resettlement countries are unwittingly making life even more difficult for those left behind in the camps.
Burma is the source of a number of refugee populations throughout Asia. On the Thailand border, many refugees are from the Karen minority. Thailand refuses to allow most refugees to enter mainstream society and find work.
So the Karen families have been stuck in the camps for years, relying on food rations and watching for the Burmese soldiers that are still close enough to shoot.
Over the last couple of years, Canada's resettlement program has had many successes. The faces of the Karen people I've met in Ottawa are still lined with worry, but you can also see relief: their children are safe. The program should continue.
But even good policies can have unintended consequences.
Most of the work in the camps is done by the refugees themselves. Here's the problem: the refugees most likely to choose resettlement to countries such as Canada are the most experienced and educated: the teachers and medical workers.
Jack Dunford is the executive director of the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, which gets food and blankets into the camps. He estimates that the camps are in the midst of losing 70 per cent of their skilled workers.
In the meantime, the resettlement isn't easing the pressure the way you might think it would. While tens of thousands of refugees are making their way to North America and Europe, about 4,000 babies are born in the camps every year, and another 4,000 or so refugees arrive every year from a civil war in Burma that won't end.
The military government has finally gained much of the territory near the Thai border, and now it's consolidating control. That means a whole spectrum of repression for Karen farmers: from holes in their cooking pots, to land mines, to forced labour, to burned villages, to rape, to shooting on sight.
Donors are tired of feeding refugees from one of the world's longest-running crises. The aid organizations have already cut every "luxury" (i.e., mosquito nets) they can.
Just when it seems things can't get any worse, world food prices go through the roof.
In January, the consortium was paying about $350 Canadian per tonne of rice. On Thursday, the price hit $1,000 a tonne.
Mr. Dunford has been working in the border area since 1984. "We've seen our ups and downs and crises in the past, but this is on a different scale." He compares it to a natural disaster -- that's how fast and how damaging the inflation has been.
With one difference: donor countries are quick to respond to natural disasters. Mr. Dunford was in Ottawa recently, cap in hand, trying to fill this year's funding gap, which will be at least $7 million. He's gone to other donor countries too; Ireland and the Netherlands have pledged a total of about $1.3 million. As I write, he still hasn't got a pledge from Canada's government. (Individuals can donate, too, at tbbc.org.)
If he doesn't get the money by June, the consortium will start cutting rations.
The current daily ration is 2,126 calories, consisting of rice, beans, fish paste, oil, chilies, salt, sugar and fortified flour. If prices stay where they are now, each refugee will be limited to 944 calories a day, and the rations will consist only of rice and salt. If prices keep increasing, the ration will go to 555 calories a day.
The likely result: malnutrition, starvation and desperate people leaving the camps to make money in Thailand, illegally, any way they can.
Canada is deeply involved in these camps already, through aid support and through the resettlement program. It can't ignore the starvation of the friends and relatives of the new Karen Canadians. And it must come to grips with the fact that there will always be a constant stream of refugees into these camps, so long as Burma is under thug rule.
On May 10, Burma's people will vote -- or will at least appear to vote -- on a new sham constitution that entrenches military rule. It could be the focus for another uprising in Burma, especially given the Olympic spotlight on the military government's big ally, China.
It's also worth remembering the September uprising was sparked by inflation. This food crisis could be enough to set the country alight.
Larry Bagnell, the Liberal member of Parliament for the Yukon, is the chairman of the Parliamentary Friends of Burma. In January, he visited the camps in Thailand, and met with many activists and community leaders.
"Resistance is not dead," he reports. "The September uprising engaged a whole new generation of students."
Mr. Bagnell has a booklet that bears the title The Constitution of the Federal Republic of the Union of Burma (First Draft). Burma's many pro-democracy groups are collaborating on creating an alternative to the generals' constitution. To Mr. Bagnell, such efforts at legal reform represent one more way -- and there are many -- Canada can help the cause of freedom in Burma.
Only when freedom comes will the camps stop filling up. Until then, we have a moral duty to keep alive the people we can't rescue.
Kate Heartfield is a member of the Citizen's editorial board.
E-mail: kheartfield@thecitizen.canwest.com.
Blog and podcasts: ottawacitizen.com/worldnextdoor
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Update news about Karen people in Ottawa
You read about Karen farm, school and communiy at Ottawa and below is an update. Ottawa Citizen Kate Heartfield has coverd several stories of Karen community.
Home free
The first Karen refugees arrived in Ottawa about a year ago. All at once these 'pioneers' are go-to experts for those who've just arrived
Kate Heartfield, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Sunday, April 13, 2008
Scott La Htoo is a brawny, cheerful baby who doesn't, as the folksy expression has it, "make strange." That's just one idiom his mother has had to learn, along with how to move a stroller through snow and what a caesarian section is. She learned the last one the hard way.
His mother is Say Blue, one of about 200 people who recently left refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border to make new, safer homes in Ottawa. They're members of the Karen ethnic group, which has long been persecuted by Burma's dictators and displaced by its interminable civil war.
Canada began a program of resettlement for the Karens in 2006. About 2,000 have arrived in Canadian communities during the past year and a half, and another 1,000 expected this year.
I met Say Blue a year ago when I was writing about the newly arrived Karen families. At the time, she struck me as shy but determined. She wanted, she said, to grow vegetables.
Thanks to the generous spirit of Roger Stone, who owns a little land in the Stittsville area, Say Blue and other Karen refugees planted crops and benefited from an abundant harvest last fall. She hopes to be out there again this summer.
In the year since we last spoke, her English has improved. She's a little more settled. She's learned a lot about Canada. And, to her surprise, she's had a baby.
She's 38 and her husband, Saw Htoo, is 44. The last time Say Blue gave birth was in 1997, to Eh Hser Htee, Scott's brother. For years the couple wanted another baby, but perhaps because of the stress of camp life it just didn't happen. Soon after the move to Ottawa, Say Blue was feeling suspiciously unwell. Scott La Htoo was born Nov. 21, 2007 -- about a year after they arrived.
Coleen Scott, a Canadian who's spent time working in the refugee camps, is now a pillar of support to Ottawa's Karen community. She helped Say Blue understand the hospital system, including showing a video that explained the c-section. And Ms. Scott was given the honour of helping to name the little boy.
Most of the adult Karens spent more than a decade in the dangerous limbo of the camps before coming here. About 140,000 other refugees -- including many relatives of the Karens here -- are still in camps, waiting.
But as Ottawa's Karen community grows, a few family members will be reunited. Newcomers enter a community full of support and energy.
Another pillar of the community is Nimrod Andrew, a Karen man who lived in Ottawa before the resettlement. In just a few years, he's helped a nearly non-existent community transform into a thriving cultural force.
Mr. Andrew says that with every arrival the Karen community feels more complete.
On Saturday mornings, about 35 Karen children go to Cambridge Street Community Public School for classes in their mother tongue. They're learning to read and write the Karen alphabet. Perhaps more importantly, they're speaking a minority language that could otherwise disappear in Ottawa.
The children are picking up English quickly, and they already treat French as a secret language they can speak without their parents understanding.
At Cambridge, they start the day in the gym where they sing the Canadian anthem, along with the children of five other language schools. The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board runs an international language program in 43 languages at 17 sites across Ottawa. Last year, the Karen language was added to the curriculum.
Tha Gay, a smiling 25-year-old man who's only been here for five months, teaches the youngest kids. He spent 19 years in refugee camps before coming to Ottawa. He's a natural teacher, but he has also taken teacher training and is studying English and political science at Carleton University.
The older students study with Wah Paw Ler, 25. This is her first year in Ottawa, too. The day I visit, Tha Gay leads the little ones in a Karen song that translates as "Clever students." Next door, the older children play traditional percussion instruments.
The relationship between the pioneers and the newcomers is reciprocal. The pioneers, especially the youngest, teach newcomers about Canadian culture. In return, the newest arrivals, such as Tha Gay and Wah Paw Ler, keep the Karen community in touch with the camps they left behind and with their native Burma.
So far, the children seem happy to talk about their refugee status with their Canadian classmates. They are taking on a new, Canadian identity. It is hard to predict whether the refugee part of their identity will survive. It's even harder to determine whether it should.
Little Scott La Htoo will grow up without ever having known Thai camps or Burmese villages. I ask Say Blue if she wants Scott to go to Burma one day. She says yes, but there's a sad expression on her face. We both know she doesn't want her son to return to the violent Burma she left behind.
Nimrod Andrew and I met with a group of Karen teenagers recently at Woodroffe High School, where they're part of the English-language learners program. There are numerous languages spoken at Woodroffe, which might help explain why the Karen students seem to have found so much support there.
They're comfortable enough that they've been heard singing Karen songs with each other in the hallways. Still, high school isn't easy. In addition to learning about science and geography and the rest, they've had to figure out timetables, bus schedules, how to dress and how to participate in a Canadian classroom. They have found mentors in other students at the school, though, and the Karen teenagers who have been here the longest are helping the newcomers figure things out.
Susan Carlton teaches a class of 15 students, nine of whom are Karen. "Their work ethic is contagious," she says. "It's changed the dynamic in there." Ms. Carlton describes one of her students, Paw K'Mwee Eh Kay, as "liquid energy."
Paw is 16 "and a half." She lives, with her three younger brothers and their parents, just down the street from Say Blue. Many of the Karen families live in Centretown or Westboro.
Paw's brothers are among a group of Karen boys who play hockey at Dovercourt. So does Eh Hser Htee, Scott La Htoo's older brother. Many of the Karen children like to skate and even braved the canal this winter. Soon it will be soccer season.
Like Say Blue, Paw and her family came to Ottawa in the fall of 2006, which makes them pioneers. I ask what advice they'd offer newcomers. "I would tell them we have to work
really hard and we have to try our best," Paw replies.
It is hard work, being a new Canadian. You can see it in Say Blue's face.
For many of the Karen pioneers in Ottawa, financial support from the government is running out.
Their lives are filled with small stresses. A call from a telemarketer is annoying enough for the average Canadian. For a new refugee, it's a test of skill.
Ehamoorah Kay, Paw's 38-year-old mother, admits she doesn't have the energy to answer the phone some days.
The adults have had some success finding jobs, particularly in landscaping. For many, their experiences in the Canadian job market have only heightened their desire to learn English as quickly as possible.
Ehamoorah Kay and her husband, 40-year-old Ter Kay, have picked up quite a bit of English in recent months. Their household is typical, though, in that it's the teenagers and children who are the most fluent.
When I ask about the differences between life in the camps and life in Ottawa, Paw translates for her parents: "In their country, they have to worry about the Burmese army.
"Here, they have to learn the language."
Online: Read Kate Heartfield's blog at ottawacitizen.com/worldnextdoor
Home free
The first Karen refugees arrived in Ottawa about a year ago. All at once these 'pioneers' are go-to experts for those who've just arrived
Kate Heartfield, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Sunday, April 13, 2008
Scott La Htoo is a brawny, cheerful baby who doesn't, as the folksy expression has it, "make strange." That's just one idiom his mother has had to learn, along with how to move a stroller through snow and what a caesarian section is. She learned the last one the hard way.
His mother is Say Blue, one of about 200 people who recently left refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border to make new, safer homes in Ottawa. They're members of the Karen ethnic group, which has long been persecuted by Burma's dictators and displaced by its interminable civil war.
Canada began a program of resettlement for the Karens in 2006. About 2,000 have arrived in Canadian communities during the past year and a half, and another 1,000 expected this year.
I met Say Blue a year ago when I was writing about the newly arrived Karen families. At the time, she struck me as shy but determined. She wanted, she said, to grow vegetables.
Thanks to the generous spirit of Roger Stone, who owns a little land in the Stittsville area, Say Blue and other Karen refugees planted crops and benefited from an abundant harvest last fall. She hopes to be out there again this summer.
In the year since we last spoke, her English has improved. She's a little more settled. She's learned a lot about Canada. And, to her surprise, she's had a baby.
She's 38 and her husband, Saw Htoo, is 44. The last time Say Blue gave birth was in 1997, to Eh Hser Htee, Scott's brother. For years the couple wanted another baby, but perhaps because of the stress of camp life it just didn't happen. Soon after the move to Ottawa, Say Blue was feeling suspiciously unwell. Scott La Htoo was born Nov. 21, 2007 -- about a year after they arrived.
Coleen Scott, a Canadian who's spent time working in the refugee camps, is now a pillar of support to Ottawa's Karen community. She helped Say Blue understand the hospital system, including showing a video that explained the c-section. And Ms. Scott was given the honour of helping to name the little boy.
Most of the adult Karens spent more than a decade in the dangerous limbo of the camps before coming here. About 140,000 other refugees -- including many relatives of the Karens here -- are still in camps, waiting.
But as Ottawa's Karen community grows, a few family members will be reunited. Newcomers enter a community full of support and energy.
Another pillar of the community is Nimrod Andrew, a Karen man who lived in Ottawa before the resettlement. In just a few years, he's helped a nearly non-existent community transform into a thriving cultural force.
Mr. Andrew says that with every arrival the Karen community feels more complete.
On Saturday mornings, about 35 Karen children go to Cambridge Street Community Public School for classes in their mother tongue. They're learning to read and write the Karen alphabet. Perhaps more importantly, they're speaking a minority language that could otherwise disappear in Ottawa.
The children are picking up English quickly, and they already treat French as a secret language they can speak without their parents understanding.
At Cambridge, they start the day in the gym where they sing the Canadian anthem, along with the children of five other language schools. The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board runs an international language program in 43 languages at 17 sites across Ottawa. Last year, the Karen language was added to the curriculum.
Tha Gay, a smiling 25-year-old man who's only been here for five months, teaches the youngest kids. He spent 19 years in refugee camps before coming to Ottawa. He's a natural teacher, but he has also taken teacher training and is studying English and political science at Carleton University.
The older students study with Wah Paw Ler, 25. This is her first year in Ottawa, too. The day I visit, Tha Gay leads the little ones in a Karen song that translates as "Clever students." Next door, the older children play traditional percussion instruments.
The relationship between the pioneers and the newcomers is reciprocal. The pioneers, especially the youngest, teach newcomers about Canadian culture. In return, the newest arrivals, such as Tha Gay and Wah Paw Ler, keep the Karen community in touch with the camps they left behind and with their native Burma.
So far, the children seem happy to talk about their refugee status with their Canadian classmates. They are taking on a new, Canadian identity. It is hard to predict whether the refugee part of their identity will survive. It's even harder to determine whether it should.
Little Scott La Htoo will grow up without ever having known Thai camps or Burmese villages. I ask Say Blue if she wants Scott to go to Burma one day. She says yes, but there's a sad expression on her face. We both know she doesn't want her son to return to the violent Burma she left behind.
Nimrod Andrew and I met with a group of Karen teenagers recently at Woodroffe High School, where they're part of the English-language learners program. There are numerous languages spoken at Woodroffe, which might help explain why the Karen students seem to have found so much support there.
They're comfortable enough that they've been heard singing Karen songs with each other in the hallways. Still, high school isn't easy. In addition to learning about science and geography and the rest, they've had to figure out timetables, bus schedules, how to dress and how to participate in a Canadian classroom. They have found mentors in other students at the school, though, and the Karen teenagers who have been here the longest are helping the newcomers figure things out.
Susan Carlton teaches a class of 15 students, nine of whom are Karen. "Their work ethic is contagious," she says. "It's changed the dynamic in there." Ms. Carlton describes one of her students, Paw K'Mwee Eh Kay, as "liquid energy."
Paw is 16 "and a half." She lives, with her three younger brothers and their parents, just down the street from Say Blue. Many of the Karen families live in Centretown or Westboro.
Paw's brothers are among a group of Karen boys who play hockey at Dovercourt. So does Eh Hser Htee, Scott La Htoo's older brother. Many of the Karen children like to skate and even braved the canal this winter. Soon it will be soccer season.
Like Say Blue, Paw and her family came to Ottawa in the fall of 2006, which makes them pioneers. I ask what advice they'd offer newcomers. "I would tell them we have to work
really hard and we have to try our best," Paw replies.
It is hard work, being a new Canadian. You can see it in Say Blue's face.
For many of the Karen pioneers in Ottawa, financial support from the government is running out.
Their lives are filled with small stresses. A call from a telemarketer is annoying enough for the average Canadian. For a new refugee, it's a test of skill.
Ehamoorah Kay, Paw's 38-year-old mother, admits she doesn't have the energy to answer the phone some days.
The adults have had some success finding jobs, particularly in landscaping. For many, their experiences in the Canadian job market have only heightened their desire to learn English as quickly as possible.
Ehamoorah Kay and her husband, 40-year-old Ter Kay, have picked up quite a bit of English in recent months. Their household is typical, though, in that it's the teenagers and children who are the most fluent.
When I ask about the differences between life in the camps and life in Ottawa, Paw translates for her parents: "In their country, they have to worry about the Burmese army.
"Here, they have to learn the language."
Online: Read Kate Heartfield's blog at ottawacitizen.com/worldnextdoor
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Fresh Violation-Burmese soldiers order to rape Karen women in Burma
New Year Presents- for civilians in Burma
A few days ago when 2008 arrived we greed each other to have a healthy live, peace and prosperity. Yes, because we want New Year bring us a better life, a good health and luck. However, it was not for the civilians in Burma. In late 2007, the Burmese military commanders ordered solders in Mutraw District, Karen State to torture and rape every girls and women on their way to the border. According to the news on January 28 posted at Kwekalu, a Karen online news website, confirmed, “Battalions’ commanders in Eastern part of Burma order soldiers to arrest and rape any girls they saw in that area”. The Karen Information Centre (KIC News) also confirmed this news and District Karen Women Group at the area warmed girls and women to avoid and run away if they knew that attack would happen. Actually, for many of us who watched John Rambo movie, we might visualize what was happening in the movie and was the location that described in the movie. Burmese military have been using torture, rape and violence as a weapon against Karen and other ethnic women at the rural area where the war took place and it was well documented by several human rights institutions. Lately we saw “License to rape” and “Shattering Silence” were among violence conducted by Burmese military against women in rural areas. It is an ongoing practice that happen so long military ruler is in power. Many of the observers might feel that Rambo, this time, a real one, to rescues Burma and bring back democracy and freedom for Burma civilians.
A few days ago when 2008 arrived we greed each other to have a healthy live, peace and prosperity. Yes, because we want New Year bring us a better life, a good health and luck. However, it was not for the civilians in Burma. In late 2007, the Burmese military commanders ordered solders in Mutraw District, Karen State to torture and rape every girls and women on their way to the border. According to the news on January 28 posted at Kwekalu, a Karen online news website, confirmed, “Battalions’ commanders in Eastern part of Burma order soldiers to arrest and rape any girls they saw in that area”. The Karen Information Centre (KIC News) also confirmed this news and District Karen Women Group at the area warmed girls and women to avoid and run away if they knew that attack would happen. Actually, for many of us who watched John Rambo movie, we might visualize what was happening in the movie and was the location that described in the movie. Burmese military have been using torture, rape and violence as a weapon against Karen and other ethnic women at the rural area where the war took place and it was well documented by several human rights institutions. Lately we saw “License to rape” and “Shattering Silence” were among violence conducted by Burmese military against women in rural areas. It is an ongoing practice that happen so long military ruler is in power. Many of the observers might feel that Rambo, this time, a real one, to rescues Burma and bring back democracy and freedom for Burma civilians.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Rambo - He is back
John Rambo – He is back
(Action and violence for viewers, but for the sufferers, it is the reality)
After twenty yeas of his last Rambo movie about Vietnam War, Sylvester Stallone is coming back with his new Rambo movie, which is release on January 25, 2008. This time, it is about Karen people in Burma and their struggle for freedom and self-determination. On near by Thai-Burma border, the world’s longest-running civil war, the Burmese-Karen conflict, rages into it 60th years. After the Second World War, the Karen people had been fighting for self-determination, freedom and the reorganization of Karen State, however, their struggle was long and continues until today. Since Burmese military controlled media inside Burma and the conflict took place in the rural areas, this longest civil war is rarely covered by international media and little known by International communities. Burmese military are systematically attacking not only Karen fighters but also Karen villagers, killed, reaped women, girls, and torture them all. Human rights abuse, force labor and force relocation happens everyday since the war started. Ten of thousands of civilians sacrificed their live for freedom and democracy in Burma.
‘The situation in Burma, there has been a large civil war in the world and it’s been 60 years. So I thought if there is going to be another Rambo, let it be about something that actually exists. Though we are giving you an entertaining film, we’ll also be able to help some people who are facing life and death every day,” said Stallone.
The British newspaper, Daily Mail, quoted leading actor Sylvester Stallone as saying: “I witnessed the aftermath [in Burma]—survivors with legs cut off and all kinds of land mine injuries, maggot-infested wounds and ears cut off. I want people to feel the violence because that is what is really happening in Burma. Believe me, it's even worse than what we depict. "I felt that I had to live up to the responsibility of showing the world what is happening in Burma," he added. "People were dying there while we were making our movie."
It was true that after watching this movie by myself, I felt that it is a good opportunity now to show the world what Karen people are really suffering under the Burmese military rule. Most viewers might feel that it’s another good Rambo movie and enjoyable to watch, but for the Karen people, it is the reality and their suffering is happening here now in Karen State, Burma.
"Live for nothing or die for something" Rambo. "Freedom is for those who dare to fight" Gen. Saw Bo Mya.
(Action and violence for viewers, but for the sufferers, it is the reality)
After twenty yeas of his last Rambo movie about Vietnam War, Sylvester Stallone is coming back with his new Rambo movie, which is release on January 25, 2008. This time, it is about Karen people in Burma and their struggle for freedom and self-determination. On near by Thai-Burma border, the world’s longest-running civil war, the Burmese-Karen conflict, rages into it 60th years. After the Second World War, the Karen people had been fighting for self-determination, freedom and the reorganization of Karen State, however, their struggle was long and continues until today. Since Burmese military controlled media inside Burma and the conflict took place in the rural areas, this longest civil war is rarely covered by international media and little known by International communities. Burmese military are systematically attacking not only Karen fighters but also Karen villagers, killed, reaped women, girls, and torture them all. Human rights abuse, force labor and force relocation happens everyday since the war started. Ten of thousands of civilians sacrificed their live for freedom and democracy in Burma.
‘The situation in Burma, there has been a large civil war in the world and it’s been 60 years. So I thought if there is going to be another Rambo, let it be about something that actually exists. Though we are giving you an entertaining film, we’ll also be able to help some people who are facing life and death every day,” said Stallone.
The British newspaper, Daily Mail, quoted leading actor Sylvester Stallone as saying: “I witnessed the aftermath [in Burma]—survivors with legs cut off and all kinds of land mine injuries, maggot-infested wounds and ears cut off. I want people to feel the violence because that is what is really happening in Burma. Believe me, it's even worse than what we depict. "I felt that I had to live up to the responsibility of showing the world what is happening in Burma," he added. "People were dying there while we were making our movie."
It was true that after watching this movie by myself, I felt that it is a good opportunity now to show the world what Karen people are really suffering under the Burmese military rule. Most viewers might feel that it’s another good Rambo movie and enjoyable to watch, but for the Karen people, it is the reality and their suffering is happening here now in Karen State, Burma.
"Live for nothing or die for something" Rambo. "Freedom is for those who dare to fight" Gen. Saw Bo Mya.
If you are interested helping Karen people in Burma or in Canada, please write to ottawakaren@gmail.com or visit http://www.karencommunity.ca/ for more information.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Karen New Year Celebration Ottawa
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nkT_xGRUOdI&feature=related
you can visit www.karencommunity.ca for more information
you can visit www.karencommunity.ca for more information
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Wayne Cuddington, The Ottawa Citizen
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/views/bios/story.html?id=bbc4b9de-3979-4d6f-8c13-905c299b677f&p=1Kate Heartfield . The power of volunteerism
Kate Heartfield, The Ottawa CitizenPublished: Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Kate Heartfield, The Ottawa CitizenPublished: Tuesday, July 31, 2007
The most powerful force for good on the planet is the inclination to act on a simple idea.
Why not volunteer? Why not compost? Why not offer your unused land to somebody who can use it?
That last one is the idea that came to Roger Stone a few months ago. He'd read one of my columns about the Karen refugees, people who have been living for years in camps on the border between Thailand and Burma. Canada is resettling hundreds of the refugees, and more than 100 have already come to Ottawa.
Roger Stone, centre, has given a group of Karen refugees in Ottawa, including Lah Say, left, and Way Thaw, use of several acres of formerly fallow farmland on the edge of Kanata's suburban growth so they can grow food.
Mr. Stone lives in a farmhouse that's more than a century old, in a rural area that seems doomed to be swallowed up by suburban Kanata South. A stone's throw from the strip malls and parking lots, Mr. Stone and his wife Margaret live with their border collies and the flowers and birds, a few outbuildings and some lovely old trees. They moved there as newlyweds nearly 40 years ago.
Part of their land has been sitting fallow for years. Mr. Stone thought the newly arrived refugees might be able to use it, for picnics or barbecues. So he got in touch with Nimrod Andrew and Colleen Scott, who have been working tirelessly to help the newcomers adjust to life in Ottawa.
Ms. Scott told him that what the Karens really wanted was a place to grow crops. So Mr. Stone, an engineer, mowed about an acre of his land.
"They took one look at it and said, we'll take the whole field," Mr. Stone says cheerfully. "That's when I started to think about water."
He found a guy with a rototiller who could help clean up the field. "Within about a week from a standing start, we were ready to go," he says, surprised himself at how smoothly it happened.
The Karens are now using about three or four acres. Their rows of tomatoes, eggplant, coriander, corn, lettuces, onions, squash, cabbages, dill and peppers stretch across the field, dotted with rain barrels and a few young oaks planted by jays or squirrels.
Mr. Stone hasn't just made his land available; he's become a friend to the community. He keeps a curious eye on the crops and talks with the farmers, across the barriers of culture and language. He gives them advice about growing in this climate, about the need for water and weeding -- although he admits to some embarrassment on the water score, since our summer so far has been downright tropical.
OC Transpo does have a route that goes fairly close to Mr. Stone's place, although it can't be a very convenient trip. So some of the refugees stay overnight on the weekends, making use of a trailer on the grounds or Mr. Stone's homemade indoor squash court (he's always trying to find partners.) The kids swim in his pool.
There's more work to be done: He wants to create a shelter so the farmers can grow from seed next year instead of buying seedlings. As long as the Stones are on the land, it looks as if it will be available for the Karens.
The crops look fantastic: when I was there, the tomato plants were heavy with green fruit and the Karens were harvesting the lettuces and cabbages.
They might not have experience with the Canadian climate, but they do have experience with farming. Many of the refugees grew food in the camps, and before that, when they were living in Burma and being persecuted by the military. In March, I interviewed a woman named Say Blue, who spent 14 years in the camps. She told me she'd like to have a place to grow vegetables: now she does.
These refugees have been in this alien culture for less than a year and most of them don't speak fluent English or French. Despite that, despite all the difficulties they face, they get on the bus and spend their weekends growing food. It's the simplest way people can provide for their families, and a universal joy.
And it started with a very simple idea: if you don't need something and your neighbour does, you lend it out. It's a country idea, as beautiful and old-fashioned as Mr. Stone's house. And just like Mr. Stone's country house, I hope it survives.
I think it will: I know of many other Ottawans who have helped the Karens in their own ways. Anyone who'd like to help at harvest time or on special projects at the farm can e-mail me and I'll put them in touch with the Karen community.
And it started with a very simple idea: if you don't need something and your neighbour does, you lend it out. It's a country idea, as beautiful and old-fashioned as Mr. Stone's house. And just like Mr. Stone's country house, I hope it survives.
I think it will: I know of many other Ottawans who have helped the Karens in their own ways. Anyone who'd like to help at harvest time or on special projects at the farm can e-mail me and I'll put them in touch with the Karen community.
Kate Heartfield writes for the Citizen's editorial board. Blog: ottawacitizen.com/worldnextdoorE-mail: kheartfield@thecitizen.canwest.com
The Ottawa Citizen: Karens learn to deal with freedom - Kate Heartfield
Tue 13 Mar 2007
When I ask the Karen refugees what they like about living in Ottawa, they say they like being free, that they like not having to deal with harassment from soldiers.It’s an obvious answer, but it hits me in the gut anyway. I expect them to say they like the stores or the washing machines or the snow. All that stuff is incidental to them. They don’t talk about the weather or shopping unless I ask. Even then, they’re unlikely to answer with much more than a smile.
They’ve only been here a few months. Their old life is still fresh: refugee camps in remote parts of Thailand, and before that, villages in Burma (officially Myanmar). Burma is ruled by a junta that persecutes the Karen people and other minorities.
The soldiers came and burned the villages; the refugees fled. There are about 140,000 refugees in those camps near the border. Many of them have been there almost 20 years.
The federal government recently resettled about 800 Karen refugees from those camps across Canada, almost 100 of which came to Ottawa. The government plans to bring about 1,850 more refugees from the camps to Canada over the next two years, starting in May. Some of them will come to Ottawa to join the little but rapidly growing Karen community.
Say Blue, a small woman with a sweet but serious face, spent 14 years in the camps, before she came to Ottawa with her husband, her 17-year-old daughter, Say Gay, and her nine-year-old son. In Burma, she had a farm. There were pigs and chickens. She grew rice, cucumbers and beans. That was before the soldiers came, burning the crops and putting holes in the cooking pots.
Now, Say Blue is learning to cook with an electric rice cooker on a countertop, instead of on a charcoal fire in a bamboo hut. Everything’s different in her life. She doesn’t know much yet about workplaces in Ottawa. She isn’t sure what kind of a job she might have. She’d like to have a place to grow vegetables. The first thing she says to me is that she’s very lucky because she isn’t on the run.
She’s finding English difficult to learn. All the recent Karen refugees spoke with me through an interpreter, Nimrod Andrew, a young Karen man who’s lived in Ottawa for a few years.
“We believe that as long as we have rice we will survive,” he jokes, as we talk to Say Blue about cooking in her new home.
Way Thaw was a businessman in his village. He traded in cows and produce. He tries not to think about the time when the soldiers burned his village. During his 15 years in the camps, he felt guilty because he was getting food without working for it. And he felt deeply the lack of freedom. Thailand does not allow the refugees to leave the camps, unless they’re being resettled to another country such as Canada.
He found the Ottawa February difficult because he has asthma. But he’s still happy to be here because there’s no war. There’s freedom. His children and grandchildren will have better lives and the chance to be hard-working people.
Colleen Scott, an Ottawa woman who’s spent time with the Karen in the camps, is helping the fledgling Karen community here. She’s been teaching them about bank machines and buses and helping them get to appointments. She says she learns as much from them as they do from her.
“It’s a terrifying journey, and an unbelievably brave thing that they are doing,” she says.
One of the challenges they’re facing, she says, is that many have never had chances to make decisions for themselves. Autonomy is unfamiliar. The young people, such as Say Gay, have known nothing but camps. They don’t even remember Burma.
Way Thaw’s son, Htoo Htoo, is also 17. Like Say Gay, he’s going to Woodroffe High School, learning English and a few other subjects. He’s been skating, on an expedition led by Ms. Scott, but he still hasn’t been to a movie. He enjoys playing guitar, basketball and soccer. He would like to be a doctor, although he’s embarrassed to say so.
In January, I wrote a column about the obstacles these Karen refugees might face in Ottawa. Ms. Scott says Ottawa’s reception of the newcomers hasn’t been perfect. Few people here have even heard of the Karen people, or know that they’re a distinct ethnic group within Burma. It’s still a struggle for people such as Ms. Scott and Mr. Andrew to help the refugees get around town and learn about their new home.
“It’s an overload situation, with a group of people nobody knows anything about,” says Ms. Scott, her frustration evident.
Nonetheless, I’m impressed with what this little community has accomplished so far. They’ve set up a school in the Karen language so the children won’t lose their heritage. The ability to understand English is starting to come, especially for the youth. Some are able to speak a little English, too.
I’m glad the pioneers, including Way Thaw and Say Blue and their families, will be here for the next group.
But there’s more the rest of us could do to make the transition easier for the Karen refugees. For example, aboriginal people in the Ottawa area might be able to talk with the Karen families about ways to maintain their cultural values of self-sufficiency and respect for nature in an urbanized society.
There are all kinds of possibilities. As the Karen people have reminded me, all possibilities begin with freedom. Everything else is secondary.
Kate Heartfield is a member of the Citizen’s editorial board.
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