Is Home Where The Heart Is?

After journeying through eight unique lands and completing a full circle around the globe…

Venturing thousands and thousands of miles via crowded planes, rickety trains, and crazy-ass-midnight-departing busses with drivers high on yaba…

Spending hundreds & hundreds of pristine British pounds, weighty European euros, mysterious Burmese kyat, lofty Swiss francs, unpretentious Thai baht, and at the very end, as a layover-hating, desperately hungry, tired and overall pissy chick…. Japanese yen…

Gazing in awe at the world’s most celebrated, exquisite works of art by the Renaissance masters and Mother Nature herself…

Breathing in the humid breezes of the Mediterranean sea, the refreshing air atop the Swiss Alps, the pungent stench of an open air fish market in Yangon, and the damp aura in the heart of the Northwest Thai bush…

Experiencing invaluable, life-altering memories with those who have nothing and everything at the same time, and those who are wounded yet resilient…

I am home.

Or am I?

By now I am more or less recovered and time-adjusted after a 30+ hour ride back to JFK from Chiang Mai, an exhausting voyage where I felt full of both anticipation and distress the whole time and hence unable to sleep. With my seatbelt securely fastened, my tray table locked and all electronic devices shut off, the jumbo jet descended back into a world that was simultaneously comforting yet somehow alien. A familiar awe overcame me as I saw the coast come closer and closer and finally the majestic buildings that scrape the clear azure sky above. I watched as the white wake streams behind the yachts cut through the water of the Long Island Sound. I obviously couldn’t see this closely, but could imagine the salmon-colored Lacoste polo’s and whale printed shorts worn by the sun-tanned business men aboard, drinking ice cold Budweisers without a care in the world other than the performance of their stocks. To come from deep in the Southeast Asian jungle witnessing daily hardship amongst innocent children to the most famous concrete one in the world, brimming with wealth and opportunity, has been a bit of an adjustment. Obviously it’s not that hard to climb into a big, soft bed with clean sheets, drive around in my newly-leased Honda Accord, and be able to have internet access at literally any time, anywhere, but it all just feels a bit different for me now. I can’t look at anything material without mentally calculating how much that one thing would make a difference to so many people overseas.

A door has been opened in my heart and my soul and my perspective has been forever altered on what truly matters in life…yes, sounds philosophical and cliché but I can’t lie. I think anyone else who tagged along with me would likely feel the same. My mind’s eye will always hold dear to me the adorable kids as they excitedly grasped the coloring books and crayons I gave to them upon my last visit to the Orphanage in Mae Sariang. I also brought some medicine and clothing given to me by a local blood donation center, which was extremely generous of them. All very much appreciated and will go a VERY long way. I only wish I could have done more.

When I first arrived this time, of course after bouncing around the old jeep for a couple hours, I went directly into the youngest kids’ dorms to say hello to some of the children I had bonded with initially. Many of them were sleeping; others were scattered about the camp, splashing around in the puddles. Except for Emu, a gorgeous tiny 6-year-old Karen child, reed-thin with pin straight black hair and striking eyes. She was feeding a bottle to a teeny tiny baby all on her own on one of those wooden bunk beds. Nurturing and wise beyond her years at only 6 years old, you could see the love and compassion exude from her as she cared for her baby “sister”. I was happy to allow her to be a carefree child again, if only for a few moments, by giving her some of her own coloring books and taking over the care of the infant. I later learned after chatting in broken English and Thai with one of the teenagers there that the infant, 7 weeks old, had a brain deformity (I don’t know details of what kind) and that they named her “Beauty.”  I had gotten pretty frustrated with the language barrier by now (even though I’ve been trying to learn Thai, I haven’t absorbed as much of this challenging language to really communicate effectively other than basic conversation…) because I desperately wanted to sit down and chat with the caretakers of the Orphanage as well as the older kids to perhaps hear the stories and where they specifically came from, but alas, I was unable to do so. Maybe next time (I’m trying my best to keep up what I’ve learned and expand my Thai as I am figuring out my next move…)

I’m beholden to have had this opportunity to gaze directly into the eyes of an innocent, budding child and see nothing but a deep yearning for love and affection. It was in those types of moments that I silently berated myself for ever worrying about the trivial things that I used to…all my good ol’ First World problems. Anyway, I left my heart with them and truly will miss them…but I do know I have not finished my work there specifically, nor in the general arena of humanitarian work. I would have taken them all home with me, especially that little Emu, but since all the kids are from Burma and are not Thai nationals, they are ineligible for adoption (FYI, only Burmese citizens are allowed to adopt Burmese children).

Driving back through the magnificent, succulent green jungle as a sea of raindrops fell on the thick, impermeable trees, I could almost hear the disturbing whispers of the inexplicable horrors and tragedies that was occurring only miles from there across the border in Burma.  The dichotomy of the beauty and the calamity was simply too much to get my head around.  I’ve become captivated and unnerved by the situation that the various ethnic minority groups along the Burmese borders still have to endure at the hands of their own government’s military. The specific group that I am determined to help are the Karen, who have been involved in a Civil War with the government for over 50 years and are fighting for the creation of a Karen homeland state within a Federal Union. This unique culture continues to desperately survive despite the continued strife they must endure…I’m talking heinous things like burning of villages, rape, torture, murders, sexual abuse…all of the above. Yes, this shit still happens today. I had the opportunity to become involved in an agriculture project within an IDP camp aimed at teaching the Karen farmers alternative and more effective methodologies as well as crop variety to improve nutrition amongst the camp. That project is still in the process of taking off, slightly delayed due to the safety and security risks of the volunteers.

So here I am, a world away from all that in my comfortable little Fairfield County bubble, typing away on my iMac and sipping on ice-cold diet ginger ale. What a life-changing whirlwind this has been…and to be honest, the journey has just begun. In my first post, I wrote, “I want to see new things, new places, new people…and just experience a new perspective of this crazy, beautiful world.” Well, I can check that box. But I’m not done. This is only the beginning…

Strange is our journey here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men.

 - Albert Einstein