Early Years

La Eh was born on Friday, November 11th 1960 into a family of Karen farmers. Her mother and father lived in south eastern Burma in a mountainous village of 15 houses that had no road coming in or going out, a full days’ walk from the closest (nearest) town. She was the second child of 7, but her older brother has now been dead for 15 years. La Eh lived in her village with her whole family. She was closest to Pee Pee (grandmother) and would often go to stay at her Pee Pee’s house so that she wouldn’t have to help at home with all of the little kids running around. Her mother was too busy to pay attention to her, but Pee Pee took good care of her and she loved her very much.

One memory from her childhood that remains strong is the day that the Burmese soldiers stormed her village school and forced all of the 12 and 13 year olds to be their porters. La Eh was too young to be chosen to carry the soldiers’ food and supplies, but not too young to be afraid and she has not forgotten that day. Luckily, all but one of the students returned that evening, unharmed. The last student was gone for one month and La Eh’s father had to go find him and ask the Burmese soldiers to send him back to his family.

La Eh’s father was a leader in her village. Because of that he was often beaten very badly by the Burmese soldiers. La Eh’s village was a farming village; and, as is common for many of the mountain villages, it would move every few years to find better farming land. The Burmese did not like when villages moved: it made control of the villages more difficult. After the village moved, the SPDC would find it again and would question La Eh’s father about the move; since he couldn’t speak Burmese very well the soldiers would beat him quite brutally. He died in 1990 from an illness that they think is from being beaten so many times.

School Days

La Eh was able to go to a school in the nearest town (one day’s walk) when she was 12 years old. She was very excited about going to school and was able to study there for 3 years, until she was in the middle of 5th grade. She lived in the town with the school headmaster and was able to see her family on holidays. But in 1974, the Burmese implemented the infamous "Four Cuts Program which essentially sut of villages from the cities. So La Eh had to return to her village without finishing school. She was so devastated that she cried for two days. That was to be the end of her schooling, although a few years later she would begin to teach. For the next few years she helped her family farm rice. It was a difficult time. The Burmese often came to raid the village looking for revolutionary soldiers, which left the villagers living in fear. It was during this time that La Eh’s beloved grandmother died. La Eh was heartbroken and wouldn’t eat for days.

On The Run

In 1978 the Burmese soldiers tried to force the village to relocate to an area where they would be easier to control. Most of the villagers refused and fled into the jungle and reestablished themselves in a more difficult area to find. La Eh was not in her village during this time – she had traveled to a different village with some friends. On the way back to her village she, and all of her companions, was captured by the Burmese military and taken prisoner. They were kept as prisoners in a nearby village – the men were forced to work and the women did the cooking and served their captors. They were often interrogated about the revolutionary army and were physically and emotionally tortured. They were called all kinds of horrible words and had objects thrown at them. La Eh’s younger brother, Ti She, was also there with her and he and the other men were treated especially bad. After a month of imprisonment La Eh’s father arrived to save her and the other villagers. But the Burmese would only allow him to take La Eh; no one else was allowed to go. The price for La Eh was 5 more village women being sent back to the prison camp. Of course La Eh’s father didn’t send more village women, instead the whole village fled again and hid in the jungle. It was another month before the rest of the prisoners were able to escape in the middle of the night and flee into the thick of the jungle.

In 1979 La Eh was asked to go and teach in a village school that was deep in the jungle. She taught kindergarten there for one year, despite the leeches! That was the year that she met her future husband, Shwe Baw. He was friends with Ti She and fell in love with Ti She’s older sister. He sent La Eh a letter of love, but she didn’t accept his love right away. They didn’t get married for another six years, and when they did marry it was a wedding on the run…they were deep in the jungle. During most of their courtship and marriage they have only seen each other once or twice a year, as Shwe Baw is a soldier in the revolutionary army (since 16 years old) and La Eh has spent most of her life hiding in the jungle from the Burmese soldiers.

After her first year of teaching La Eh moved to a different village and taught in their school for two years. Then she moved to another village and taught there. During this time she often had to flee into the jungle for weeks at a time to escape the Burmese soldiers who would raid villages, killing livestock and eating the villagers’ food. She doesn’t remember the soldiers killing people or burning villages during this time (that didn’t come until the 90’s). Moving from village to village to teach continued until she got married in 1985 when she moved back to the village where her family was living – the same village of her birth. It was there that she had her first baby, delivered by her mother, the village midwife. When she was 8 months pregnant Shwe Baw came home from the front line to help his new wife for a couple of months, and to meet his first son.

A couple of years later she and her husband moved to a refugee area on the Thai side of the Salween River. Times in her village had become extremely difficult and they went seeking relief from the raids. But a few years later she went back to her village where her family lived. There she had another son, and then a daughter, and in 1993 her last baby, a daughter.

In spring of 1997 came the worst time yet. The Burmese soldiers raided and occupied her village. They looked in all of the corners of the village for the revolutionary soldiers that they knew were there – luckily there were no soldiers there at the time. They broke everything in La Eh’s house and tied up her brother, Ti She. They kicked her and her children. All the villagers were forced to lie on the ground. After the first few days of terror she escaped in the night with one of her daughters and four or five others. (Her other children she left with her mother who managed to escape to the nearest town to a safe location.) They could carry only the clothes on their backs. They could carry no food with them and had to survive off of what they could find in the jungle. La Eh was hiding in the jungle for 6 months this time, the longest length of hiding yet.

She remembers staying in a 4x12 foot hut with 6 people. It was the beginning of rainy season and the giant thunderstorms threatened to obliterate the hut. She had to use rice sacks for blankets for the children. La Eh has beautiful long ebony hair – one of her memories of this time is that she had no brush and no soap and so her hair became a tangled nest. Jungle food was scarce and so whenever the group could they would sneak into a village and ask the villagers for a chicken or a handful of rice. La Eh became exhausted of running in the jungle, she wanted to die. Finally Shwe Baw located her and their daughter and the three of them decided to flee to the refugee camps of Thailand. They had to walk for weeks to arrive at the Salween River. Part of the walk was a mountain precipice that both La Eh and Shwe Baw remember as being very scary – only the three of them were walking the narrow, slippery path in the rain and they thought for sure they would fall.

Refugee Life

They finally arrived in the refugee camp in Thailand, exhausted, ragged, starving, but alive. They stayed there for just under a year and then in 1998 the Thai authorities moved everyone to a new camp where they stay now. Their three children were still somewhere in Burma and they didn’t hear news about them for an entire year after they had last been together. Shwe Baw had to go back to the front lines and he also went to look for the children; some time later he brought back one of their sons as well as news of the children’s whereabouts. After three years he brought back their other daughter. Their eldest son has never come to Thailand and has been able to study at a private Catholic school in a town there. Last year she was able to go to see him. She is happy that he is able to study but it made her very sad to see him. He is very poor and she doesn’t have any money to be able to share with him. She told me that she took him out for an icy treat and he said it was the first that he had ever had. It brought her to tears that he wasn’t ever able to have any treats.

La Eh’s first couple of years in the refugee camp were very difficult. She had only one sarong and it was full of holes and so she was ashamed to go out in public. She spent the first year at home, crying and praying for her children. She wouldn’t eat anything and she couldn’t sleep. Her husband was her strength in that first year and even he couldn’t do much to help her. Finally her husband had to go back to the front line and she decided that she had to pick herself up. She began to sell beetle nut and tobacco to make some money and to forget her worries. Her friend owned a little shop in the refugee camp and she gave La Eh some of her goods to sell house to house. After a few months La Eh was able to buy a new sarong and by working hard she had regained her confidence and spunk.

Today

Now La Eh is one of the most active women in the camp. She is on the top committee of the women’s organization, which serves as the social service organization of the camp. She is constantly busy organizing activities, giving trainings, visiting people who need help – whether they are handicapped, elderly, mentally ill, or orphans. She attends many trainings and is eager to learn all that she can. She is often taking care of children who aren’t her own. La Eh, who never finished 5th grade, is one of the most talented and intelligent and motivating women I have ever met. And best of all, every time she walks into a room she lights it up with her contagious laugh.

La Eh has suffered much. She has spent the majority of her life as an internally displaced person, on the run. But she has risen above the obstacles that life has presented and she gives unconditionally to those who need help, who need hope. La Eh told me that she still cries at night, but that keeping busy helping others takes her mind off of her own pain. Her dream is to go back to live in her village again one day. Her mother is still living there and last year La Eh went to visit. She reports that the situation is awful – her siblings and their families spend much of their time hiding in the jungle from the Burmese military. They have no medicine and very little food as the enemy soldiers steal it. There is no freedom in her country of birth, if she would return she would be captive. She must work from where she is now for freedom for her village, for her Karen people. Someday she, and all those who live alongside her in the camps, will be able to return to their homeland.

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