I have a friend who is currently trapped inside Thailand. He accompanied his sister, who's there on a government mission. Just prior to the headline-grabbing events in India, Thailand was racked by similar explosions. Protesters shut down the Bangkok Airport and my friend's "exit strategy" wasn't working. Still, he sends me email dispatches full of high humor and fond feelings toward the Thai people. His wife and three kids, on the other hand, are living in abject terror with every breaking news story.
Welcome to the world of late 2008.
His latest dispatch says, "This is awesome, not only for its action-movie vibe and expression of democracy, but because all of the Western world's gap-year bongo lovers, sex tourists and dull retirees have been grounded. It's all gold. I'm loving the Yank fresh from sporting tiny Speedos in front of little boys in Phuket telling the political activist, 'Have you any idea of the tens of thousands of people whose plans you have screwed up?' Or the overweight Aussie using the international method of patronizing foreigners, speaking in English slowly while making semaphoric hand gestures: 'Tell your boss [point] to tell the people [point point] what's happening [karate chop].'"
He had no bone to pick with the protesters: "Some people believe visiting a foreign country is like the long version of Epcot Center, complete with all the niceties the spoiled bastards have grown accustomed to.?This is their country and if we happen to be inconvenienced during a fight for their democracy, too bad! I can't blame people for circumstances they can't control.?I think the average Thai is very upset with the airport takeover no matter whose side they are on. Please note that the beef the people have with the government is not directed towards us, like in the India situation."
Oddly enough, I just read Guy Delisle's brilliant new graphic novel/memoir of his own recent year of living dangerously next door in Burma, Burma Chronicles (Drawn & Quarterly). Delisle accompanied his wife, an administrator for MSF (France's Doctors Without Borders), and their infant son. His genial but endlessly curious take is not unlike the one he used in his eye-opening volume about North Korea, Pyongyang (D & Q). Like my friend, he sees the humor and humanity in the grimmest places. They live by Mencken's maxim: "One horse laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent."
As the Burmese refugees who've flocked to Waterbury and Hartford can attest, the lives of the poor over there are no laughing matter. The Delisles were assigned to a house in Rangoon for a year. They lived a few blocks from Aung San Suu Kyi, the duly elected president of the country, who has been under house arrest for 20 years. She can't leave her home and is not allowed TV, Internet or newspapers. The only contact she has with the outside world is via radio waves. But she can leave her country any time she wants. As its rightful president, however, she refuses to leave.
Burma is not Thailand, of course, but the disparities between the rich and poor are similarly stark. In Burma, the poor get electricity two hours a day. AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria are rampant. The non-poor live in barricaded houses surrounded by barbed wire. Surveillance cameras are everywhere.
The military dictatorship has sucked all the wealth from the teak, oil, jade and rice, and allows NGOs to come in and provide the services that it should be providing as the government. The zones outside government control have no health systems whatsoever and most of the country has no education system. The government doesn't care if the people are addicts and illiterates, because it's a great way to control them. Hope is something that has been killed in Burma. Doctors Without Borders is the only thing keeping vast numbers of people around the world alive because their governments have failed them.
Maybe Thailand will be next?
To donate, go to http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org.
