Some place else [Ann Jones in Thailand]

Older refugees long to return to their homeland in Burma, a place that children and grandchildren born in the camps may never see. Photo: Phar Mo

The International Rescue Committee is working with writer, photographer and long-time women’s advocate Ann Jones to give women in war zones an opportunity to speak, loudly and clearly.

With digital cameras, women who have survived conflict, displacement, discrimination, sexual and domestic violence vividly document their own lives and make their voices heard.   You can follow Ann’s latest posts about the project, from Thailand,  this week during the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence.

Photo: Ann Jones

The drive from the IRC office in the little town of Mae Hong Son to the refugee camps high in the forested mountains is spectacular. Sometimes on the main road, before we turn off to climb a slope on a skinny red track leading deeper into the dripping jungle, a white van speeds past us, full of gaping tourists who’ve paid top dollar for the view, knowing nothing of the people trapped up there in the trees.

I say “trapped” because to me the worst thing about the camps is that they’re closed. It’s not that people who live inside can’t go out at all.  Some slip out to clear and farm the steep hillsides nearby, or to gather firewood or building materials in the jungle.  Others go out on IRC trucks, when in need of medical care or consultation at the hospital in Mae Hong Son. But everyone returns to camp.  They are strangers in a strange land, with no place else to go.

Many refugees are grateful that the camps offer things their villages lacked—things like free schools and health clinics—but nobody in camp longed to be there.  Except for children born in the camps, everybody came from some other place—some place just as beautiful just over the border, some place that once was home.

Photo: Elizabeth

When I first went to the camps to meet members of the Karenni National Women’s Organization (KnWo) who’d volunteered for the Global Crescendo Project, I wanted them to tell me about that home, and how they’d got from there to here.

Photo: Ann Jones

I really wanted to go to school, but there was no school for us because we always had to move from place to place.  I thought, ‘My mother has died, so who will send me to school?’  I heard there is a school in the refugee camp and people support the refugees who want to go to school. So I decided to make my way to the camp. I am happy now to live at the boarding house for orphans and go to school.  I thank god that he sent me to school and a safe place.”