Overview of my Activities in Mae Sot

So , last time I wrote I told you about the situation of Burmese people in Thailand. I described the difficulties. This time I am going to describe a bit of what I do. Thank you for your comments and responses last time, it was nice to hear from you.

English Teaching
Three months have allowed me to have taken much work on. When I arrived here, I was eager to start to work and do things. Couple weeks in bed for couple food poisonings and a cold (!) kept me quiet and allowed me to take a rest!
But I soon started to volunteer teaching English because it is SO needed and wanted out here among the Burmese people since it is a key to opportunities in working with NGO and to enter Thai schools in English. Learning English is more appealing then learning Thai to them.
I also teach English for IRC. I took on this job to have a small revenue to live here in Thailand. It is taking a lot of time. I like that I can use creativity to develop activities to help them learn.


Dance Teaching
I also started teaching creative dance to children in migrant schools. This was a new experience and challenge. Children are used to be subdue to the teacher and to do what the teacher tells them to do; not the best background for creativity. Children were lost and would just copy every single movement I would do. When talking about creating a round shape with our bodies, I showed them an example, and asked them to find other ways. But they stayed still, repeating the same round shape I had shown to them. Thinking there might a translation problem I tried other things, but I soon had to conclude that the children were not used to do their own thing at school. Speaking with other western teachers, I learned that they realized the same lack of creativity at school just in assignments they gave. So teaching dance was a challenge also because children had poor coordination. Step, clap step clap was impossible for most of them. But we are now at a point where we are preparing a choreography to be performed for the closing ceremony. I am still not sure if all students like it, and I guess that for some it is like another school subject they have to take, but I see some others that really love the feel that their body can do new things and I see some practicing after the class some movement we did. To see that joy in a few students was really beautiful. It made me feel happy to see them happy to discover ways for their body to move.

Mental Health
On the mental health level, I am working on an activity book for Burmese HIV women to use to help their mental health. I am also starting a needs assessment for political Burmese prisoners that have been released and who come to Mae Sot, Thailand. I am also part of a team that meets once a month to gather local organizations that do mental health and that want to develop mental health activities. Also, here and there I am asked to do some workshops.

...and more to come?
Some other activities are at a gestation stage and not sure to fully develop such as teaching dance to teenagers and adults and to develop a center for the arts where visual and performance artists could have a place to practice and share their talents. We are researching the subject with Thelma Young whom many of you know.

Here is a little summary of my different activities on the Thai-Burmese border!