These photographs feature 9 of 36 families that arrived at what is now a new internally displaced persons site in Dooplaya District, Karen State, Burma. Each family is holding the few things they fled their homes with. All they would come to own. Below is a personal account of being there to capture it.
Burma {Internally Displaced} Talking With The Village Headman
It would be nearly six hours of human pinball inside the cab of a pickup before we reached our destination. The asphalt had forfeit long ago to rutted mud and what was left of that had choked to a trail impassable any farther by car. Not a minute after the truck doors liberated us, my fellow Karen passengers were spitting Betel nut and watering the nearby trees with a revealing nonchalance. Somehow I had made my way into a dark, soupy puddle deep enough to get the rolled up cuffs of my pants a little wet. Lucky for me, I was still in my sandals. I had brought my boots but they were stowed among all my other jungle toting paraphernalia in back. No one ever tells you how to dress for these things.
It had been just that morning that the higher ups on my team received word about an attack via satellite phone. The voice on the other end said fighting had escalated between the Burma army and some armed Karen resistance groups four days earlier, prompting an exodus of villagers in the hundreds. I didn’t know what to expect but I was prepared for the worst. Despite feeling less than tip top and ship shape, I couldn’t complain about the commission. Reports of battle and civilians bearing the burden. It was no question a camera needed to be there and this time, I was the chosen courier. Just a couple weeks earlier, I had returned from a long spell in the jungle but that was hours north from here. I knew this would be much different. With the intel nebulous at best, there were a few things however, I could begin to put together. I knew the Burma army dominated these parts and I had a feeling, as I climbed in the back of a tractor, that this road would be the one less traveled by camera wielding documentarians.
Almost two hours of stunning sunset had passed and the five of us had spent our time mostly in the monotone silence of the engine’s hum only interrupting with an occasional grunt from our labor, hopping out and pushing the tractor through the steeper inclines. Now it was time to walk. This is what I had expected, this is what I was ready for. My pack mounted and my canteen brimming, my anticipation was met with another surprise as I was instructed not to bother donning my boots. After just a few minutes of a largely flat traverse, we emerged from a bamboo tunnel to see what looked like a whole village right there before us. Employed in a variety of tasks from bathing in the creek to bamboo machete hacking, we were what they had been hoping for. Not because we by ourselves were of any importance but just as I was the courier of the camera, so my traveling companions were the deliverers of relief. Relief in this case took the form of 2400 kilos of rice and enough tarps, clothes and blankets to give families something to start over with.
“When we heard the mortars fire,”
the village headman shared, “it was the middle of the day and I had just started to make lunch.” He paused for a moment and spoke slower, “we knew we didn’t have much time.”
For anyone who keeps up with the situation in Burma and the wealth of documented human rights abuses spanning the last six decades, these kinds of soft spoken statements are not at all shocking. I was not surprised, his story confirming what I had expected even before I pressed record. Reflecting upon my notes, I started to disassemble the microphone. My revelation was still another ten minutes out. I finished packing the gear, carefully wiping everything as it had been lightly raining the duration of our interview. My translator finished his concluding remarks with the headman and gave me a questioning eyebrow lift regarding our completion. “Yeah we’re done I said,” but then spurted one last question almost involuntarily to the headman. I asked him if there was anything else he wanted to say. We were standing up now and sometimes with all the equipment hiding, people confess that last line of raw journalism glory, after they’ve had a minute to sit and marinade in everything they just spilled. He offered no such moment but instead inquired as to a simple request.
With our translator adjacent, he stood in front of me, his shoulders square to mine. He stared me straight and humbly asked if he could get his hands on a printed copy of the portrait I had quickly snapped of him upon finishing the questions. I, of course agreed, replying with an instantaneous and up-beat “yeah sure.” It was in the stillness of the seconds that followed when I sobered. He thanked me for the conversation, asking me to forgive the many villagers that had been difficult to film as they were absolutely awestruck in the presence of a foreigner. Most all of them had never seen someone who spoke English he went on to explain. Our hands met, shook and let go. I took a knee to sling my pack around my shoulder and he shuffled back, dragging his sandals as he stepped. Back down the trail a hundred meters or so to where he and the other families had cleared jungle and taken up residence. The same trail he had followed a relief team down less than a week ago to the relative safety of what a little distance and some dense jungle cover could afford.
This was the trail that, the other way, led back through heavily mined wilderness to his home, his farm, his animals and everything he owned.
I stood there with my backpack on, watching him go back to his one room shelter, freshly constructed two days prior. The bamboo that made its entire composition was still bright green and wet from the rain. He was one of the fortunate ones who had an old, weathered tarp for a roof. Many others were not so lucky and not so dry. I reflected upon his request, the images of him carrying everything he now owned on his back swirling through my mind. I imagined the photograph reaching him and him holding it proudly, his family admiring it. In my mind, I could see his young daughter puzzled at the sight of this strange new thing, probably having never seen anything like a laminated 8x10 before.
I could not comprehend the depth of his request. A man with no more food than what will last him a couple days and now no longer any livelihood to provide for his family. A man not overwhelmed in sorrow or incapacitated with anger but a father and a farmer, hopeful enough to thank me for my time spent with him. He walked away satisfied and grateful. I believe the photograph to him represents something new for himself and his family, a sort of starting over for his village. The intensity of his eyes looking into mine, the sustained embrace of our shaking hands, the meekness of his wish, the villager disclaimer and the sincere expression of gratitude. These things tell me that the photograph will remind him of a day when relief and opportunity found him in his hardship. A day when his voice was given a megaphone to be heard by more than only the people in his village. That picture is a reminder of when he told his story and spoke not for himself or even his family. Not even for his village but for his people and the struggle they endure. The struggle of a suffering nation battling an oppressive, military regime year after year. He entrusted his testimony to people he knew cared to listen. People who had led him to safety. People who had arrived with food for him to eat and clothes for him to wear. People who had made their way to the place he sleeps and stayed the night with him where he was at. People who came to hear his story and who promised in truth that it would be shared and not forgotten.
The next day right after I took these photographs, this man and another would again thank me for my arrival and ask that I
“tell the world what is happening.”
I nodded with both agreement and an overall lack of any articulate answer, bid them farewell and walked in the direction of the tractor. Once on top, the pull start ignited the engine and the same meditative rumble as the day before returned to the air. I sat back feeling strangely satisfied and in restrained amusement as the sun again made its decent, painting the sky with hues of fire.
