1st World Problems

For a part of my winter vacation, I volunteered to escort a group of high school students as they visited a refugee camp in Thailand for one week. There were many highlights that deserve to be mentioned.

Lack of running Water? Check. No TV? Check. Geckos crawling across the ceiling during church service? Check. Minimal electricity? Check. Erratic access to the Internet? Check. Sleeping within mosquito nets to prevent disease and irritation? Check. Primitive bathrooms and bathing in the river? Check and double check.

We arrived at the school that we will be working at for one week last night.To be honest, my high school students are taking the shock of living in a remote refugee camp a lot better than I had anticipated. One of the boys stated that he was not comfortable, that there was nothing nice here, but he was still going to try and enjoy himself. This is an awesome attitude to have. After a nights rest, a few of my students are starting to play with the orphans, and enjoy themselves. Both of my girls looked miserable last night, but they have seemed to accept the limited conditions of our location. The dispositions of these wonderful teenagers brightened considerably just now when they noticed that I had set up an Internet hotspot to post this blog and upload pictures. Having 8 android devices connected to my smartphone is a little much, so I will need to figure out how to make it password protected. My first idea for this is to have the same people who taught me to create a hotspot show me how to password protect it, but that would be the same teenagers who are diligently adding more money to my Internet bill. *sigh*

One fact that I stressed to my students is that there are billions of people who live in conditions similar or worse than what are found here at the Burmese border of Thailand. The refugees within this country are more fortunate than in other countries as the Thai government is more humanitarian focused than most other governments. In fact the people fleeing conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, and Zaire have had to deal with conditions that are much worse. The fact is even though I grew up in a poor city on welfare, I am still blessed to have grown up in the United States, where I still had the opportunity to improve my life as long as I made good choices. It would be difficult at best to have accomplished the same improvements in my life if I grew up in poverty in Bangladesh, Cambodia, or Yemen. One goal in my life is to always want to help those who are not as fortunate as me, not only because it is the right thing to do, but because I would be unworthy of the name 'Christian' if I was unwilling to do whatever I could for them. In fact, it is only 40 years since South Korea (where all of my students are from) transitioned from being a 3rd world country itself. Our oldest Korean here, Pastor Seo, was telling me that he in fact did grow up in a place similar to this village in amenities. One potential benefit for my students it that now the may understand the conditions that their grandparents grew up in in the aftermath of the Korean War.

The children of this community are so friendly. They are constantly smiling, and legitimately enjoy spending 3 hours in a religious program without falling asleep or causing any problems. Their joy comes not from material things, but from the simple joy of living yet another day. This is a lesson that I hope my students can pick up on before leaving.

Tomorrow (Sunday) we will begin working on construction of a building in the mornings, and teaching sports, art, and music classes in the afternoon. We came here with a group from the Hong Kong Adventist College. The college students have prepared to teach all of the classes, and my high school students are going to act as their assistants. It should be a lot of fun!

#Karen #Thailand #refugee