Shan Culture - Social Life
A family in a tin shack, a struggle in the big city
Salween News
http://www.salweennews-english.org/
Written by Thanwa Sirimetee
"..Even a good education doesn’t guarantee a good job like the Thais get because we’re only migrant workers. One of my friends can speak English very well, but he’s only been able to get work as a security guard, which is no different if you’re uneducated" |
“Dad, Mom is home!” shouts the three-year-old Shan boy. His father Noi is lying in bed nursing a leg broken in a car accident three months ago. Noi, 27, gets up and hobbles out to greet his wife Pon. The 23-year-old is covered in grime after another day spent driving around a pickup truck full of construction workers.
She smiles at her husband and embraces her son, then goes to shower before cooking dinner for everyone.
The family lives in a long tin shack that houses 20 other construction workers’ families, their individual living areas divided but many of the labourers sharing rooms. Small foldable tables are produced at dinnertime, then taken away to make room for a mattress so the exhausted tenants can lay down and watch some television before they fall asleep.
A t six in the morning the daily routine begins anew. Parents quickly prepare lunches and get their children ready for school, then head out to hop on the trucks when they come at 8. They’re ferried in groups to a new gated construction site where they’re building million-baht houses.
WHERE IS HOME?
{The workers are coming home in the evening}
“Dad, where is our home?" Aod keeps asking his father every time they move to another job, another building site, another string of shabby lodgings. His father doesn’t answer. It’s too complicated for a toddler to understood.
If Aod asked where their “hometown” was, he could be told about a rural village near the town of Mong Pan in central Shan State. That was home before everyone was forced to relocate into areas controlled by the Burmese military.
“My family were farmers,” Noi says. “After every harvest we had to divide what we grew between the Burmese army, the Shan army and the family. Some years we hardly had anything left to eat.
“In 1993 about 50 of us decided to go to Thailand to find jobs. In 1996 the Burmese relocated the rest of the villagers to the city. My parents became labourers in the city, but their income was so low that they could barely afford food. I sent them money and went home every two years, but I haven’t been back again since my parents passed away five years ago.”
His co-workers all have similar stories. The Burmese government has intensively suppressed Sao Yodsuek’s Shan State army, relocating the residents of more than 1,300 villages into urban areas, displacing at least 300,000 people. An estimated 10,000 young Shan migrated to Thailand for work, mostly in adjacent Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and Mae Hong Son provinces.
Many work on plantations along the border, such as in Chiang Mai’s Fhang district, but the pay is low – maybe 60 baht per day – and the pesticides they use are toxic, so a lot move to the cities if they know someone who’s connected.
The Shan construction workers who live on or near their building sites are likely to come from the same hometown, forming a satellite community of their own, augmented by others who have married in to the group. It’s a community that helps it own whenever someone’s in trouble.
Noi and Pon met and stated their family in Thailand. Noi is from Mong Pan, Pon from a town called Mong Ton. Both have done many kinds of job since crossing the border. Pon was working in a restaurant when Noi met her and they began dating. They called their families at home and had a simple wedding ceremony in Pon’s room.
Pon gave up her restaurant job to give birth to their first son, Aod, and then became a construction worker because otherwise the contractor wouldn’t let them stay together.
Aod has spent his entire three years in the same tin shack – it’s relocated along with the labourers after every project. Every time he sees the workers gathering their possessions ready for another move, he asks where they’re going. Noi and Pon don’t know either. They just get on the truck and see where the contractor takes them.
SMALL LIVES IN THE BIG CITY
“You owe me 155 baht,” food vendor Mala Kraiwongdeun tells a regular customer. She’s got it all written down. The 40-year-old lives close to one of their old work sites, but she doesn’t mind the 10-kilometre drive to their new base because the workers are good about paying their debts.
“If they haven’t been paid yet I’ll feed them on credit. They pay me back when they get paid. I always check with the contractor about payday, so if someone doesn’t pay after that, they don’t get any more credit. If they pay me on time, they have unlimited credit. This is only for the workers on the big construction projects, the ones that take a year to finish. Anything smaller and it’s difficult to get my money back.”
Mutually reliant, Mala and the Shan workers would have more difficult lives if either disappeared. Without Mala’s credit, the workers often couldn’t eat. Their money, on the other hand, helped raise her children and put them in school.
Female workers normally earn 120 to130 baht a day, and the men 170 to 200 baht. They’re paid fortnightly if the job stays on schedule. Single people who don’t drink and are careful with their wages can save the most. Noi bought a motorbike, a refrigerator and a television on instalment, but since his accident can’t afford any new purchases.
If they do have the money, migrant workers like to buy gold necklaces, rings or bracelets because they’re easier to keep safe than cash and can be pawned sold if the need arises. This usually happens every year when they have to renew their labour licenses, which costs 3,800 baht.
They start out with a small necklace and gradually get bigger ones. Sometimes a group of trusted friends invest together, splitting the cost of one, saving for the next, until everyone has a necklace.
Noi used to own a necklace of five baht in weight but had to sell it after his accident. The hospital bill was 70,000 baht; the Thai car owner who hit him refused to help pay it.
“The hospital told me I’d have to sue the car driver if he didn’t pay or I’d have to pay it myself. My friend had an accident and it was the same problem – they know we’re migrant workers who don’t have the money or power to fight them in court. I still don’t know what to do because my wife is the only one who works and we barely have enough money for daily expenses."
So, with Noi unable to carry any heavy weight, Pon keeps working, seven days a week for 120 baht a day, and she’s four months pregnant. The last day off she had was on Children’s Day – half a day, in fact, to take Aod out for some fun. All of his friends were being taken out by their parents and she couldn’t let him down.
Working every day is common for the construction workers. They can take days off if they’re worn out, but they won’t get paid. The Shan migrants like to enjoy the same traditional Buddhist holidays together, though.
CULTURAL RELATIONS
{The food vendor is noting down regular customers' debts}
In April last year Pok and Roon, neighbours and co-workers of Noi and Pon, watched proudly as their eldest son Htun took part in the annual ordination ceremony at Chiang Mai’s Wat Pa Pao. The 10-year-old and other lads were dressed as a Shan princes, with colourful ornaments from head to toe, and carried in procession on adults’ shoulders. Their parents had each saved up 20,000 baht to have their sons participate in this important Shan ritual.
“For my son’s ordination I’d saved 4,000 baht and got some more from relatives who worked in
Thailand,” Pok says. “When their son gets ordained we’ll have to help them in return. Shan people in Thailand are usually related – we lend a helping hand when anyone needs it.”
Pok’s second son is now four, so the family is planning for another ordination in a few years. Poor or now, he says, the Shan want to see their sons dressed as a little prince before they don the robes of a novice to learn the Buddha’s teachings. When they’re older they can decide for themselves whether they want to be ordained as monks and pursue the faith more seriously.
The Shan migrant workers also attach great importance to Buddhist lunar days and the other such occasions. Each month at the full moon they prepare food as offerings to the Buddha images they keep at home. On the more important days they make merit at Wat Pa Pao and Wat Ku Tao, the old Shan temples where many Shan monks stay.
On the Shan Lunar New Year Eve there is an overnight celebration at Chiang Mai’s Pa Pao and Ku Tao temples. These wats host all the major annual Shan gatherings. They arrive with offerings for the monks and enjoy live shows at night. Shan products are sold – novels, comic books, music cassettes and traditional costumes.
"We both have Shan costumes for the New Year festival at Wat Pa Pao,” says Deun, seven-year-old twin sister of Dao.
“I keep my Shan costumes at a relative’s place in Fhang because I’m always moving around for work,” says Khong, 19, who recently married.
The temple gatherings serve as a place for young single Shan in Chiang Mai can meet. They’re places for everyone to ease the homesickness over food and conversation, to keep their culture alive.
NO LIGHT IN THE END OF THIS TUNNEL
“I’ve been in Thailand for five years already,” says Khong, a 24-year-old from Laika. “My husband came from a different city, and we met in Fhang here in Chiang Mai. We have one child, who my parents still haven’t seen. When I got married I could only call them up to tell them. It’s really expensive going home – 10,000 to 20,000 baht per visit – and I can never save enough money because of my living expenses here.”
“Actually the bus fare to the border is relatively cheap,” Noi explains, “but travelling in Burma is very expensive because you have to pay a charge at many military checkpoints, like at the entrances and exits of every village and crossing every bridge. If we’re lucky and the bus doesn’t break down on the way, we can get home in three days. Otherwise you have to pay for accommodation and it can take a week to get home.”
“Most of the workers just call their parents on the phone,” Pon says. “It’ 30 baht per minute, and they pay 1,500 kyat to have someone let their parents know there’s a call coming for them. Most people there don’t have a home phone because the connection is very expensive.”
“I always cry when it rains because I miss my mother,” says a lonely 19-year-old. “I’d love to go home but it costs so much, and I don’t know if I could find work there. We might have to stay here longer.”
“I want my children to have good education,” says Noi, “but I’m not sure how much I can support them. And even a good education doesn’t guarantee a good job like the Thais get because we’re only migrant workers. One of my friends can speak English very well, but he’s only been able to get work as a security guard, which is no different if you’re uneducated.”
The other big worry for the Shan is the legal status of their children who were born and raised in Thailand. They speak Thai, keeping their Shan conversation within the family, but will they be able to adapt and integrate? Will they be able to visit or live in Shan State one day? The Burmese government might not accept them as citizens because of their parents’ long absence and their lack of birth registration.
So the children’s future is unclear on both sides of the border. And if the political situation in Burma worsens, the chances of any of the migrant workers returning to their homeland diminish. In the meantime there will be more generations of Shan people migrating to Thailand and leaving their elders behind to wait and worry.
“If we could go back and farm – with no fighting again – we’d want to return home and spend our lives there,” says one of the labourers. “Even though there’s no electricity and no water supply, we still feel a warmth in our hearts for that place – those are our hometowns. And then we wouldn’t have to keep moving like we do today.
“But if the situation there stays the same, we have to live and struggle here.”
Translated from the cover story in
Salween Post Magazine Vol. 36( January 1 - February 15, 2007)
http://www.salweennews-english.org/index.php ?option=com_content&task=view&id=38&Itemid=31