— tapioca world tour

…except for tomorrow, when I have to leave Thailand and the Burmese people. I don’t know where to start — HRE has been so awesome. HRE president Htoo Chit is going to win the Nobel Prize someday. He’s an amazing man (student activist leader turned 12-year jungle-dwelling guerilla fighter turned human rights CEO) who’s created an incredibly well-functioning development org for other Burmese refugees here in Thailand, and his staff are young and smart and awesome and almost all undocumented. “Ever been to the US?” I asked one of them. “No,” she giggled, and then I realized why she giggled: she can’t leave Thailand. She’s not even supposed to be in Thailand. She doesn’t have a passport, or even a birth certificate. And yet she’s teaching women’s health programs to migrant worker families, and her colleagues are running nurseries, taking care of orphans, adopting other children, and offering us oranges and Fantas and homemade bracelets before we leave. I felt like a total idiot.

Tonight we were invited to a dinner with all the staff and teachers. They played games, acted things out, danced, and sang: did you know “Dust in the wind” was actually first the melody for Burma’s song for democracy? Well, it was and still is. And when they sang it tonight — twice: once because they wanted to, once because we asked them to sing it again — they raised their fists and closed their eyes and wrapped their arms around each other and I realized how powerful and terrible it must be to love your country so much but not be able to return without getting abused or killed. “Are you homesick?” someone asked one of the new staff members, recently arrived from Burma. “Yes,” he said, “But I think we are all homesick, all the time.”

“Htoo Chit should run for office,” I told M. “When Burma is free, he probably will,” she said. And then it hit me how important this whole trip is.

That said, we begin the journey home — four flights in 24 hours — tomorrow afternoon. Thailand, and Burmese, you rock.

We got off plane #3 to find two young girls waiting for us at the Phuket aiport. Turns out they’re both experienced coordinators at HRE Grassroots, the Burmese partner NGO we’ll be working with for the next two days. We jumped in their friend’s suped-up pickup and one of them, whose name I should have written down, started telling us about the issues of Burmese refugee migrant workers as well as she could in English.

And then she put her arm on my leg and her hand on my knee while she was talking. Just, you know, like it was no big deal, like we were sisters. There was something delicate about this unquestioned intimacy which made me want to cry (yeah, I know, it’s a boring recurring theme now) but this time the sentiment stemmed from my sheer love of humanity. (BB, CR, you understand.) We sped along the beautifully-paved Thai backroads which left rural Indonesia literally in the dust, and arrived at this super cute hotel place with a simple wood-based aesthetic I can’t even begin to describe. In short: I love Thailand and I’m not afraid to admit it.

Ok, so I’ve only been here a few hours. I think it’ll continue to be great, though. Tomorrow morning we meet up with the girls again for a long day visiting day care centers and schools and other programs for Burmese migrant workers and their families. The Burmese are so incredibly in trouble in Burma and out of luck here, and there’s so many human rights violations going on I can’t even begin to explain it. Maybe tomorrow.

PS: Weird bugs in Thailand. Something that looks like a flying mini-scorpion! No, I’m not kidding!

I’m in the airport. I’m on a Bangkok stopover between flights from Jakarta, Singapore, and now en route to Phuket. Thai guys have really cool haircuts, that’s for sure, and Bangkok is full of Dairy Queens and weird cell phones and tons of tourists. We’re going to Phuket to meet a new partner org that advocates for the rights of Burmese refugees. Have just gotten used to traveling, just, of course, as its end is in sight. Asia is fascinating, though. I love my life.

This is Haslah, from the village of Paya Bili, East Aceh. Her village was completely burned by the army two years ago. Since the ceasefire agreement (MoU) last August, the violence has subsided, but only 7 families out of 58 have returned here. They have nothing, but they’re starting the slash-and-burn process to begin growing crops again (watermelon, chili, soya beans, green beans). Haslah had her face kicked repeatedly when the army came. She wrapped her arms around their legs and begged them not to kill her chickens or burn her crops, but they kicked out her teeth and burned everything anyway. She really wanted her photo taken, even though she was crying telling me the story, because no one has helped this village at all. She wants the story to get out, she wants her face to be seen. Her friend Zainabon kept rubbing my skin to see if it would rub off. I was a big party favor in this little village. A very powerful visit.

In Jakarta now, feeling much better, enjoying air conditioning and showers and toilet paper and running water in general. Off to Bangkok, then Phuket, Thailand tomorrow.

And, briefly, DOUGHERTY’S INDEX for March 2006:

Number of times a man walked in on me peeing in a baday, then screamed: 2
Number of times I’ve used the duct tape S. insisted I pack: 5
Number of power bars I’ve consumed in the past eight days: 12
Number of elephants spotted on the side of the road: 1
Number of wild monkeys: 14

“Ka! Ka!” the kids yelled to me. You, hey you…

Indonesia is hard. I’m not tough enough. I can’t endure the intense heat and humidity, the Palang food (apparently), the lack of toilets and running water. It’s just hard. If it were, I dunno, 30 degrees cooler, I think I’d be fine. But it’s like 90-something and it’s just very difficult.

After our four-hour drive, during which I saw an ELEPHANT and a MONKEY on the side of the road, I spent half of our partner visits yesterday sleeping in the back of the car with the motor running and air conditioning on. I’ve restricted my diet to power bars and Sprite. But feeling sorry for myself isn’t very satisfying, especially when I go to small rural villages and befriend swarms of Muslim children who survived the tsunami at their doorsteps last year, and who chase me through the unpaved streets until I photograph them. The older girls wanted to see their pictures on the digital camera LCD, but hesistated. I had to notice that they wanted to be photographed because they wouldn’t ask. These two were inseparable. Behind them you can see how much land was destroyed when the water came in, and the houses being (re)built to the left.

Ok, we’re in Banda Aceh now, which is the capital city of the province of Aceh, where the tsunami hit. What I’m learning is how huge the socio-political issues are — the tsunami just shined a spotlight on an already volatile situation. Aceh has seen 30 years of violence and political unrest; they’ve tried to become independent, finally winning psuedo-automonous status after a peace accord in 2003. But that also meant enforcement of Sharia law, a strict Muslim code which requires all women to wear jibabs (head scarves), no alcohol to be sold, all the cinemas to be closed down. Aceh has a matrilineal inheritence rule — women inherit family land — but now, post-tsunami, there are a lot less women and less enforcement of that rule, so many women are losing their land. Also, a lot of women aren’t present at the table when reconstruction discussions happen. Also, there’s lots of opposing political forces still here — GAM, the separatist group; militias, funded by the government; and the police. Forunately the Helsinki peace accords in August 2005 drafted a ceasefire agreement which all parties have adhered to. This makes Aceh less violent, but tons of gender discrimination issues still loom, plus all the crap that goes along with all the white Westerners who plowed in, threw lots of money at tiny grassroots NGOs to rebuild, then left. It’s a fascinating place to be right now, and I’m here, getting bitten by mosquitos without mercy.

We almost didn’t make it. The plane from Jakarta skidded to a stop seconds before ascending into the clouds — turns out the engine didn’t have enough juice — so we had to evacuate (casually) and, two hours later, board another plane. Now we’re in Banda Aceh, which, might I add, is a beautiful place, and the voltage converter has just exploded on the surge protector, which means when this laptop dies, I won’t be able to write again til we return to Jakarta late Friday night.

Tomorrow we head east to visit tiny tsunami-affected villages. More mosquitos, GAM intimidation, bottles of hot coca-cola, and all in long-sleeves and pants (I’m a woman in a Muslim country, remember?)…

This world, people, is fascinating.