Pwe Htee, 14, said, “I want to go to school very much, but I can not. I have to look after my two younger siblings while my mother works in the rice plantation. I want to study in the refugee camp”.

She is one of the many Karen people who are hiding from the Burmese Army in the east of the Tenasserim jungle after they were forcibly moved out of their villages to one of the various army controlled relocation sites. However, many villagers refused to move to such places and escaped in the forest. The army branded these farmers as “enemies” or “rebel supporters” and constantly searched them, terrorized them and uproots their rice plantations.

Pwe Htee and her mother are currently hiding in the area known as Ler Mu Lah Township, in southern Burma. Her father died of sickness in the jungle while her mother was pregnant with her second child. They fled from their village about six years ago. In 2001 they were captured by Burmese soldiers and taken to a relocation site nearby. Then, they escaped to this hide out.
While hiding, her mother was raped by a man causing her to become pregnant with her third child.

Lack of School

There is no school near where Pwe Htee is hiding. There are two informal schools in this remote jungle but they are too far away for her to walk there everyday.

Many children hiding here are in a similar situation. They have to support their parents. Although most parents are eager to send their children to school, they also fear Burmese troop movements. Going to schools represents a big risk for those children.

According to the latest assessment on the education of internally displaced villagers in 2001 by the Karen Teacher Working Group (KTWG - a teachers group which provides education among displaced Karen people), poverty, lack of food, insufficient security due to military activities and disease contribute to the fact that students are not attending school. }

Te Saw Nor, father of three children in Ler Mu Lah jungle said that because of the difficulties of insufficient food and clothing, he could not send his three children to school.

P’doh Lah Say, head of the KNU Education Department confirms that situation, “lack of security is a major problem for the displaced people wishing to go to school, because they often have to flee”. The KNU or Karen National Union is an ethnic Karen group which has been fighting for self-determination against the Burmese military government or State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) for over five decades. Currently it has reached a verbal cease-fire agreement with the SPDC.

A seventeen year old, Saw Eh, said “The Burmese troops search to kill and destroy our homes. Now I am like a blind man. I would like to read and write like others do. But there is no time left for me”.

This is typical of the lack of basic education that has been affecting thousands of Karen in conflict areas. The rate of illiteracy is high. There is no exact data available, but Saw Ehdoh Wah, KTWG Documentation Coordinator, has said, based on his own experience working with the communities, “In a village, only about nine to ten people are literate”. He estimated that about 80 percent of Karen in the war torn areas are illiterate. 1

Jungle School

Schooling is often disrupted by army offensives, forced relocation and military operations against displaced people. However, many people have the courage to face the challenge of survival and to provide basic education to their children.

In Karen areas, even without security or a stable residence, parents who arrived in the jungle are trying to encourage their children to learn so that at least they would be able to write and read their own language. In some hiding sites parents manage to set up temporary makeshift schools under the trees, using rocks, plastic sheets as blackboards and whatever other material is available.

P’doh Kwe Htoo Win, a member of Committee for Internally Displaced Karen People (CIDKP), said that for the displaced children to be able to go to school properly, a long term solution is needed. There must be a peaceful solution to the civil war so that the displaced people can start new lives. “In the short term, we can bring to them school materials and books which allow them to learn for a month or two, but if the Burmese troops come, they have to move again”, he added.

Endnote:
1 Burmese Border Consortium (BBC), a relief NGO for refugees and displacement in Burma, estimated that over 100 000 displaced Karen villagers in Karen State and Tenasserim division were in hiding in 2002.

Peoples Stories: Acute lack of Teachers for IDPs
By Saw Ehna and Sunday Htoo

When I was inside Burma’s eastern jungle, I met my friend Theh Ray Paw Neh, who arrived from Thailand to help the people. She stayed in a bamboo house that the people had built for the teacher and students. She told me, “Sister, I arrived yesterday; I took a bath and dried my sarong behind the house; then I lay down for a rest. I heard children talking to each other whilst they were approaching. They said ‘look, do you see our teacher’s sarongs hanging over there. She comes to teach us.’ One said to others, ‘I am happy that our school will start and I will come and stay with my teacher. Let’s go and have a peek!’ Then I stood up to look and they all ran away.”

But neither my friend nor I are here to teach. We have come here for health relief and training for the displaced people.

This is a place where people who have fled Burmese troops oppression are in hiding. It is in the east of Mergui-Tavoy District (Tenasserim division), Ler Mu Lah Township. They survive here through farming, planting sugar cane, and collecting wild honey to sell in Thailand. There are about ten families and they live very far apart from each other, in order to remain safe and hidden from the Burmese patrols.

People here are eager to send their children to school. They built a house for the teacher. For more than three years they have been waiting for a teacher. And they are still waiting…

At another displaced hiding site, which is about a half-day’s walk away, they are lucky enough to have a teacher since last year. It is the only school the displaced people living in this area have. Unfortunately this school must move to another place because of the unstable security situation.
While I was at this hiding place, I met the only teacher named Paw Poh. She has just returned from the refugee camp for a teacher-training course. She looked sick and weak. Since couple of days, she had been waiting for the people who help her to carry her schoolbooks. There she told me about her teaching.

Paw Poh, 23, is from a Karen village in Burma. She fled to Thailand and became a refugee in 1997. She had only reached grade five standard and went to the bible school in the camp. In 2003, some Karen leaders from Ler Mu Lah Township came to her and requested her help to teach to displaced children. She accepted and left the camp.

“During the 2003-2004 school years there were 18 students. We used black plastic sheet roofing as a black board” said Paw Poh. “Parents were enthusiastic for their children’s education and they looked after me. Students themselves were disciplined and they work hard.”
She said that some children wanted to come to school, but they couldn’t. They had to help their parents to survive.

“When I saw these parents and children, I wanted to help them, but I was belittled because I don’t have adequate educational qualifications. In addition I get sick regularly, and people had to treat me and find medicine for me.”

Disappointed, Paw Poh said, “when I was in the camp I asked many friends to come with me, but nobody was willing. Some people wanted to come, but their parents forbade them; some said their health was not good enough, and some said they would come with me next time. Some people asked me how much I earned for this job. Frustrated, I returned to teach alone.”

There are many reasons which contribute to the lack of teachers. The assessment by KTWG showed that teachers did not have time to work in the paddy fields, so they depend on the displaced communities for food and financial support. When the communities cannot provide a teacher’s basic needs, it becomes difficult for the teacher to remain in their teaching job. The Burmese Army destroys paddies and livestock, making it impossible for the displaced community to provide enough food for their teachers.

P’doh Lah Say, head of KED agreed on this reason, “Finding teachers for internally displaced children inside Burma is very difficult” He said that some teachers from refugee camps returned to Karen state to teach. They found it very difficult to survive because they could not get support. They need some support to be able to do the job”.

He further added that the lack of qualified teachers is another problem. Teachers who have been teaching in the jungle areas are mostly people who only completed primary school-grades four and five.

KTWG also reported that teachers in the jungle school have little or no formal training. They also don’t have educational texts to rely on. Even though they do their best, their lack of skill and experience adversely affects the children.

Responding to this, KTWG has trained a group of mobile teachers who are traveling from place to place to provides support services to teacher who are living in the jungle. They also train them about basic teaching skills.

Confronting all the problems that hinder the fight to eradicate illiteracy among displaced Karen people, Paw Poh said that, “it is time for young people to get involved to fight the illiteracy that is overcoming our people. There is no parent, sickness, mountain or river so great as to stop us loving and helping our people. We need to dedicate ourselves to help the people, to join hands, to be victorious in justice and fill all our people with the hope they are longing for.”