The river. Site of life.

(and sadly for me, a bloated human turd floating 10cm away from my distressed nostrils and seriously aggrieved eyes)

Just after winter the Section receives its annual ration of donated clothing through the European Union. Once a year, a pile goes to each family: one or two items for every mum, dad or kid.

The loneliness of the long distance goalkeeper.

Arrival greeting: energy, enthusiasm and welcome bursting forth.

Upon exiting a hut I was alerted by a strangely familiar (and usually watercourse-based) quakking to this uniquely-billed specimin: duckonaroof. It's number 43 down at your friendly local Burmese take-out.

Every time I see or hear of some foreigners in the camp I try to say a big hello - it's always great to share stories, experiences and the details and entrails of lives to date, complete with a familiarity of chatter that comes from knowing other worlds. Shame then that I didn't actually meet these folks, too busy fiddling with the bloomin camera.

It takes a while to saunter through the camp, especially in the heat. There aren't any motorbikes, taxis or bikes. Your best bet to get from one end to the other is to jump on one of the lorries or pick-ups that jolt and bump and grind their way up, through, over and under the long and winding hut-lined road to the Thai gate at the end of Section eight.

Kids' imagination surpasses all.

Hogs are everywhere, the snort and sniffles and sometimes-heard squeals . Lapping up the day's left-overs in their own special huts (and without the mud-wallowing luxury of UK trotters), they spend their days fattening for the day they'll bring a treat to folks unused to meat gracing their table. At 3000 baht a snort(er), a mid-sized shuffler is expensive, but brings relief to the rice/yellowbean/fishpaste trio of the expected and gives the kids' agile bodies and nimble minds a feast upon which to really grow.

Spot the laundrette, the home, the shop, the fire station - all rolled into one.

The vocational training centre fish farm come paddling pool (decidedly less popular with the kids now its turned green and is filled with big catfish).

Kay-ball. Traditional game of Thailand, national sport of Burma. Great for places short on space or flat areas of land, like refugee camps. Requires immense skill, agility and body co-ordination. Watching players' death-defying ability to keep the wicker ball in the air and flying over the net is amazing. Played almost religiously by teams of (usually male) camp residents and students morning and evening. Still plucking up the courage to take to this particular sporting stage, fearing my own, faulty brand of Tony Chin co-ordination.

One of the places in the camp known as 'Thai Gate', because of its contents of well-armed, smartly-uniformed Thai soldiers and the red and white barrier which used to regulate who came in and out of the camp. Since Yaung Ni Oo moved to Pwe Bo Loo, however, and overflow refugee housing began to be built there, this gate has been increasingly redundant as it was no longer situated at the end of the camp - and as a result this particular place welcomes only insects in for the night, the soldiers having upped sticks for a more distant camp extremity.
Back in November, December and January, however, this was the reason I couldn't teach at the school. With this between me and the school, with a new outfit of toughened Thai soldiers posted here, and with an outdated camp pass, there was no way to get to Yaung Ni Oo to teach. (Admittedly in a fit of claustrophobic arrhythmia I did start to tunnel, but had to stop because my 'der der der de deh, der der der deh deh, der der der der der der de deh deh' whistling was keeping people awake and alerting all the wrong authorities (mostly the chickens)).

High street, Mae La Oon. The picture belies the steepness of the scene. One day a man came a cropper on his motorbike while attempting the incline (hitting his head on a rock just past the first shop on the left) and had to be rushed - unconscious and bleeding heavily - to hospital, thankfully just two minutes sprint away. He was okay in the end. Yesterday on exiting the camp in a full to the brim pick-up, we duly reached the top of this particular slope and promptly (and rather scarily) slid all the way back down.

Refugee pillow.

Offloading precious cargo brought in down the river. The Thai authorities regulate what comes in and out; unfortunately folks can't bring in anything to voluminous - and that means essentials such as bamboo and wood - especially during the rainy season when its in high demand because of the closure of the four-hour dirt track route in.

Good shop. Pan Ei's mother's shop. Lots of fruit and yi-geh-thoat (the pink drink with everything in, remember?). Increasinly diversifying into cloth and material, but does sell bread for one baht cheaper than the shop round the corner, though the supply is inconsistent to say the least. There's always lots of passing-by patrons sheltering under its welcoming thatch, and always a runaway satsuma to cause some kind of hilarity calamity. Best visited after a long walk or a soak in the local rapids.

One of the huts in this piccy isn't real.

An extremely rare sight - a storm gracing the plains of Yaung Ni Oo school. The playground seen here in the foreground was completed about a month after I arrived (now there's a place to run around - it's particularly popular for volleyball, football and the Thai/Burmese speciality kay-ball); it was carved out of a mountain slope which isn't there anymore. The bamboo behind the goal is destined for the new teacher and boarding houses to be constructed around the school, and as noted before has most likely been lugged to the school by the students themselves.

Mae La Oon beach. Great views, cool waters, constant sunshine. Alas you can't readily swim on the actual beach because it's right by a Thai checkpoint, but it'd make a lovely postcard.

Funeral procession to the graveyard down by Pwe Bo Loo.

Kids (after having made an about turn and tailing the photographer for 15 minutes.)

There's always some cock around to ruin a photo.

Section 13 in all its uniform glory as seen from the Mae Sariang river down below. Much pride is invested in its linear form - pround exclamations as to its superior nature (as opposed to other sections' more random but equally tightly-squeezed scattering of huts) are regularly forthcoming from Section 13 members. When people first started moving to the camp in January 2004, there was no co-ordination of who went where, onto what mountain or into what Section - bar the secondment of the slope seen above for the Section 13 / Burmese lot. Students living in other sections have talked about how they and their families had to scramble up mountainsides to stake a claim for a patch of land upon which to build their lives.

One of the many mine warning posters. Don't stray off well-trodden paths, this area used to be a combat zone.

People carry all manner of stuff everywhere, no matter how steep the slope, no matter how worn the steps. Women are experts of head-carriage; men pretend to be more gutso and go for the any-which-way-but-loose approach. After careful evaluation, I'd say that women tend to be the more effective carriers. Gender of this particular entrepid mountain descender unknown.

At somepoint around the start of my camp life, I asked about the significance of the green flags I saw flying in each Section. The answer was 'camp security'. Thinking I understood the answer, I probed no further. Last week I was informed of the flags' fuller role in camp affairs. If the flag is green, all is well. If it's red, the camp is - literally - under attack. Asking if this had ever happened here in Mae La Oon I was somewhat relieved to hear an answer siding with the negative. In the past, however - in many other such camps, particularly in the nineties - security has been a serious problem, with the SPDC launching raids on camps and forcing the movement of many to safer climbs. Mae Kon Ka, the camp from which most Mae La Oon inhabitants came from, did suffer from such attacks.

Rain two months away and umbrellas out. Hmmm...

Extra-violent dodgeball, played (thankfully, but not always successfully) with bamboo shields. There's no 'below-the-knee' pussy-footing around here. Oh no. It's just a case of hurling an often-flat leather ball directly at your fellow player and attempting to hit them on any part of the body, the bamboo used in an often-vain attempt to deflect the hurtling path of said projectile away from collision course with soft body tissue.

My (unknowing) old classroom, which bit the dust a couple of months back now, on the eve of its final farewell. I found out about its imminent disappearance but the day before - so rushed down to snap some last snaps of the big old education-horse as the sun made its final pass over its spacious dimensions (great for doing physical stuff to re-energise flagging lessons), flaking leaf roof and often absent - or at least repair-neglected and seriously dangerous - floor. The classroom was the last remnant of the old Yaung Ni Oo, moved to Pwe Bo Loo because of the landslides that saw half of it unexpectedly tumble down the side of a mountain in the first rainy season at the camp.

And here's the new classroom - the school office: compact, multi-purpose (housing the school's computer, the new English library and the NGSO's bumpf, acting as a malleable meeting place for all manner of gatherings) yet stable in its transformation into the site of my lessons day in, day out.

Early in February came the 16-hour flying (his entrance and exit was by dirtbike, so this is pretty accurate) visit of Jamie - a training EMT (Emergency Medical Technician, think extra-well-trained paramedic) from Canada, over here with MMC (I forget...) but eager to experience all that the border had to offer. Reading his record of his life since leaving the camp, he is certainly doing that, and is currently working and learning at Dr Cynthia Maung's famous Mao Tao clinic for refugees in Mae Sot. As with all foreigners who stumble in Yaung Ni Oo's direction, I was quick to enlist Jamie in a lesson for my Pre-Intermediate students - the experiences, perspectives, accents, confidence-boosts and opportunities such folk can bring to the class is unmeasurable. Here he is in the midst of a question and answer grilling.

On of the best books to arrive curteousy of Walter has been a picture dictionary, replete with nearly 4000 more-or-less instantly understandable pictorial definitions. Sometimes it's a little hit and miss, and drawings of emotions can often be easily and dangerously misinterpreted. The page on 'hazardous occurrances' (or something like it) is particularly morbid or humourous, depending on your point of view. This particularly distressed soul is in the throws of a heart attack. I do hope things turn out okay for him. Any guesses what happened to C?

The Pre-Intermediate class proudly displaying the result of our Valentine's day special lesson. A real eye-opener, the men were waxing lyrical with love creativity (perhaps the best being 'love me or I will kill myself'), the ladies showing much greater restraint and at first (before they really got into the design of their cards) seemingly bewildered by the customary happenings of the day. Tradition has it (and thanks to Beth for unearthing this insiders information) that it's always the blokes who write a letter to those twinkling their fancy, and get their particular odes delivered through an inconspicuous third party - hence the girls' initial hesitancy at entering the heady world of love vocabulary.