"...for this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you"

Mae La Ou: Breathtaking

I've just come out of the camp for the first time having spent a couple of weeks there. A lot has happened and I've been scribbling away in my diary every day but its a tad tricky to roll all of that into a bundle, digest it, and convey the essence of my experiences of Mae La Ou onto a single page... but here goes - a day in the life of burmaborderrefugeecampben (best chewed in bite-size chunks):

4.00am

I am usually awoken from slumberous enjoyment by two sounds. Usually overseas it's just the sound of grasshoppers and insects, but inside the camp they face stiff competition: the sound of children's voices. And in particular it's the chorus of kids reading aloud - rhymically reciting homework through and through until learned by heart. As I'm sleeping in the headmaster's hut in the middle of the Yaung Ni Oo boarding students' area, this sound is usually 100 or so children strong - it comes as a shock, and is strangely beautiful and kind of haunting.

4.00-7.00am

The next few hours are a battle to subdue this and other noises of the morning (people sweeping away yesterday's dust, the cockrels encamped below our hut stamping their authority on the day, the distant information point loudspeakers sparking up at four with ascerbic relish to deliver meet-up requests for so and so or give important bits of info to who-je-me-flip who's somewhere around the camp). Add to that a cocophany of people visiting the hut from the early hours - kids, students, teachers and others; things around here move by the light of the day and people are up very early. I'm still attempting to adjust.

Slowly, he began to change into something very different

7.00am (ish)

Here I usually do a bit of hurried lesson planning from the embracing warmth of my mosquito-netted blanketed kingdom ready for my three morning classes (Standards 8, 9 and 10) over at the School. A student advances to a higher standard if they pass their exams; if not, they remain at that standard until they do, which contributes (along with students starting school as and when they can) to the wide range of age groups in any class. The Burmese tend to do things in a wake-wash-work order; I'm more prone to the wake-work-wash way of doing things (sometimes work-wake-wash, and let's face it washing is sometimes not involved at all): I think this means folks see me as a bit of a sleepy head when I arise from this mini-kingdom at eight o'clock with barely 15 minutes left before the walk to school begins...

8.00am

So I walk out from my 2m x 2m bamboo room with bamboo floor through the open bamboo doorway onto the bamboo veranda of the bamboo hut (in Mae La Ou huts are made mostly of bamboo)...

A bit of the the school's boarding area, complete with Ben-a-bode

But what greeted my eyes that first morning was unbelievable: a world of wham-bam amazing beauty, a world teeming with life, a vision of some new dreamlike netherland. Mountains to the front, to the right, to the left of me (here I am, stuck in the middle with...); mountains carpeted by dense forest on my right; on my left by refugee huts spread equally thick upon steep slopes, the huts raised into the air, held horizontal and glued to the mountainside by just three or four thin hardwood treetrunks jutting out vertically from the slope's dry soils. On the left the jungle is high and close, a track of freezeframed debris left running down the mountainside until the next violent rains free its passage through to the valley floor and Mae La Ou river - the sole passage in and out of the camp once the rains descend in July. Before me the ABSDF huts line the edge of the foremost slope, flowing uphill to the reaches of the monestary high in the mist above. Drying blankets adorn the sides of the houses and blow in the mountain breezes, fires burn and cook the morning's rice, kids wash in the nearby streams, a dirt track creeps through the valley floor bringing scatterings of the world to Mae La Ou and its people - it watches the rice trucks haul food to the masses, sees returning peoples disembarking for home, looks on as a few exotic treats are distributed for sale in the camp's many tiny stalls, doubles as a dust-ridden football pitch, greets the millions of footsteps taken by the fifty-thousand people living here, and it says a last goodbye to those on a hot ticket out of town.

View from the right of the veranda, as the sun says its goodbye

To my right the view extends from a foreground of more huts reaching up the mountains as far as the eye can see through to a stunning background horizon: framed by disappearing vally sides, the river flows out to the distant foot of the commanding Manerplaw mountain, half consumed in a mist being corroded by the sun's eastern rays and still magnificently silhoetted against a giant, open sky. Zooming back from this level of epicry, searching inside all this space there are kids everywhere - preparing for school, doing chores, playing games, kids going here, kids going there. Kids with jet black hair, with big brown beautiful eyes, with a bright ensemble of clothes (the guys with many an old football shirt); kids bringing energy, enthusiasm and sparkle to a place that wouldn't be the same without them. On first introduction, it's all awesome. I breathe deeply and try to soak it all in.

The photos not too clear but the huts stretch right up to the top of the tree-lined mountain ridges

8.14am

Then with the gawping done, I realise the time, head off to wash, the procession begins in but a minute...

8.15am

Grubby, dirty and still trying to work out how to tie my new green longyi (traditional Burmese attire, any genuine Pho Htaung just couldn't be without one), I leave with the headmaster Ko Hla Htay and his entourage for school, about a twenty minute walk. Looking down from the doorms we can see a trail of green and white (students dressed in the school's uniform, worn only on Mondays and Fridays as students/families can't afford more than one outfit) descending into the valley and down to follow the riverside track to the school - a descent which is a negotiation of rocks, dust, mud, water and, for me as the sore thumb, mild panic, laughter and much amused guidance from the rock-climbing pros.

Climbing back home after school

8.45am

The entourage arrives at Yaung Ni Oo. Here practicality is the word. It's all bamboo bar the roofs (dried forest leaves) and the familiar supporting wood struts. There are six main buildings, with a classroom for each Standard from Kindergarten A up to 10th. The set-up is the reverse of the UK - it's the teachers who move about, the children stay put in their classroom for the day. A few dogs roam about the dusty sloping playground (the dust is becoming a familiar theme). By the entrance a snack shop sells treats to kids for the equivalent of about one and a half pence upwards. The teachers gather in a staffroom (often choked in smoke from the fire below the floor used to boil drinking water) and await their lessons, the changing of which is announced not by the ringing of a bell or buzzer (no electricity here) but the hitting of an old wheel hub hanging from the roof - the job of the hat-wearing, tatoo-emblazoned "Madonna", a truly wonderful member of staff. The students have no form tutor but organise themselves to the ringing of the bell - the first hit of the morning means get to class, the second, stand up, the third, begin reciting the "student's commitment" (about why education is important, in the camp it's easy to lose sight) before a forth signals the start of the first lesson, the day begins proper and the teachers float off quickly or slowly to their classes. It all works like clockwork and is a sight to see: screaming, rampaging kids into students in four strikes of a dangly metal wheel, and not a teacher in sight.

Yaung Ni Oo High School Today

My addition into the fray is greeted by a wild concoction of smiles, waves, stares, puzzled looks, expressions of nonplussedness, many a 'mingalaba' (hello in Burmese), and many a 'whorleggy' (good morning in Karen). So far there've been no tears, though I've been close on a couple of occasions.

9.00am

I have two to three school lessons each morning, and spend the remainder in the staff room attempting to plan these or other classes I have. Attempting = operative word as more often than not I'm surrounded by a crowd of ever-enthusiastic teachers-come-language-learners asking about this, that or t'other. Often I'm taking an impromptue class in one of my free periods and a perceptive younger teacher informs me that there are actually no teachers left teaching in the classrooms, they're all here learning English... It's revision time at the moment though, and this is generally seen as a student-only activity: teaching proper has finished until the exams (starting 6th December) are over, so they (the teachers) are allowed to skip class.

Anyhow, my teaching's going really well (for me at least), I'm blooming enjoying it (with a capital flowery BLOOM). The students are brilliant, really committed, if often totally bewildered as to what the hell the freak in front of them is saying (or doing... for 25% of the time I've got my head between my legs picking up my longyi which keeps falling down as I address the class, or HeffaBen has just leaned against a supporting beam and broken it, or broken the whiteboard, or fallen off the raised bit up at the front (etc etc)). Calamities aside, resources are unsurprisingly minimal: whiteboard, marker pen, textbook; the kids a pen and exercise book. My mission impossible (should I choose to accept it) is to teach the kids how to (1) speak English (they have learned how to say words on the basis of the alphabet which isn't good) and (2) make sense when they do speak (they know about grammar but don't tend to use it that often). With the mission accepted, the challenge is turn around habits and learning styles picked up from a system which prioritises writing, reading and learning by heart - not good for the skills of on the spot speaking. They aren't used to listening to a native English speaker either - I'm the first English person at the school since it's been in Mae La Ou and the first for four years, so many of the students just have each other to bounce off. Whatever is round the corner (and in two weeks there have been many suprises) I feel pretty darn pround to be hear along for this journey, giving it a go, having a bash.

Teacher Pho Htaung (the longyi fell off a second later)

1.00pm

With the morning lessons over and lunch negotiated I have time to plan for my evening/afternoon classes where I teach the teachers and other interested folks - usually from 4 to 6pm every day. I also have lots of small classes with two teachers who want to come over to the UK to study next year, so they're having the intensive Pho Htaung teaching method inflicted upon them at the mo: lovely (though they do keep coming back for more).

All in all teaching-wise I'm a busy Benny, with plenty to keep myself occupied. It's maybe 6.00pm now (in this imaginary day - yes I know the last 9 hours went by very quick) and I'm getting exhausted. Hrumph, there's too much to write. I'll finish off with a good old list and save the adventures for a rainy day:

(1) On my first day here I was warned of the black Jungle Cobras that live in and around the camp and whose bite has proven deadly for the two unlucky soles this year. As a result I have a 1 in 25,000 chance of copping it this year by snakebite and have been told to rhythmically beat and scour my room and the toilet hut before entering at night. I am particularly worried about the toilet thing as the toilets here weren't designed for the BenLeg... whichever way I seem to try my butt always ends up in the wrong place or in the air, and I sure wouldn't like to end my years bitten plumb on this bulbous point by a terrified snake.

(2) We have electricity (via a generator) for three hours a day between 6 and 9pm - enough to power a small light. The students rhythmically chant out their homework/revision during this time too.

(3) The huts shakes quite violently when people enter. I am frequently worried one of my gargantuan flippers crashing through a bamboo and half of me disappearing and dangling out below where young children would begin to beat my legs with small bits of bamboo.

(4) The Burmese are addicted to coffee. Their coffee is half coffee, half sugar, half creamer. It's coffee and a half.

(5) I am confined to "Section 13" for 'security reasons' (more of that at a later date) - which means the area I can walk around in is pretty limited (considering the whole camp with 13 sections takes an hour plus to walk through). But, thinking about it, the bit of the camp I'm in is beautiful and I get to leave every three weeks (security raisins again, damn the dried grapes) and ship out of the country in some months time - everybody else has to stay. Looking at it this way it's a very good thing to be feeling this claustraphobic, it gives you a tiny idea of how things must be for those living here.

(6)On the food front I have now consumed raw eggs, river catfish, more frog, too many extremely-strong-tasting dried fish for words, plenty of beloved fishpaste and 'mohinga', a Burmese speciality. But I love rice, its always cooked to perfection (on big fires in big pans by groups of schoolchildren assigned to cook for the week on the remarkably efficient boarding student rota), and there's always some nice curry to go with it.

(7) I'm caught in a lingo-loophole on a daily basis, my head is full of bits of Burmese, Thai and Karen, plus bits of Romanian and French keep unwittingly cropping up in my conversations... and as everyone rightfully wants to practice their English with me I find the time I once had for Burmese learning gone (sniff sniffle), oh what am I to do but deal with it?

(8, finally) Everybody sings here, its absolutely brilliant. I find myself singing too... the shackles of the English reserve have been swept aside and the talent - clear for all to see when I was a part of that awesome St Laurence School pop beat combo "Image" back in the (glory) day - is being unleashed upon a strangely welcoming population on regular occasion. 'Yesterday' is a favourite, but I have plans to convert them to some Pointer Sisters classic or something undoubtedly similar. I wish I could play the guitar too, it's the only instrument people here and everyone sings along together merrily - be they songs of freedom or maybe an ode to love (Bryan Adams' 'Everything I Do' is particularly popular).

One great moment has been sat on the veranda with three teachers transcribing and gently breaking into song - 'Vincent' by Don McLean - as our candles flickered, the night closed in around us, and the valley welcomed in the stars and sounds of the night. That night we sang as equals and as brothers: hail music, the ultimate leveller, it makes my heart sing.