A Journey From The Farway Land
(Shatagan’s Story)

On the Thai side of the northern border between Thailand and Myanmar sits a small village of people of a particular ethnicity from Myanmar (Burma). This village had its beginning around twenty five years ago when these people were granted refuge from political persecution in Burma. Though the Thai government still restricts the movement of these people within Thailand and across the border, a small discreet path has been worn through the mountains across which occasional other people of the same ethnicity from Myanmar make their way to this village.

Shatagan shares some of the story of her life, starting with how she came to be in the village.

“When I was about 17 years old some men came to talk with my parents about sending me to Thailand to work. I would have the opportunity to work and send money back to Burma to help pay for the education of my younger siblings. My parents paid these people some money to arrange it for me. Not long after that I was on the back of a truck with many other youth. I knew three other boys and one of the adults. A soldier was driving.

The truck took us to the border. That night, when it was very dark, they led us along a footpath through the woods. I remember many fallen trees. By morning we were in the village. It was arranged that I would stay in the home of an old woman in the village. I was sick for the first month I was there. After that I went to work in the peanut fields making 40 to 60 baht (approx. $1 – $1.50 US) a day. I worked there about three months. A young man in his twenties kept trying to get my attention in the field, but I was not interested and felt much burdened by my work.

After three months I was told by the old woman to be ready to go to the city to work. The village head held a list of names of the people who could legally live in the village. But some of these people had disappeared. After paying them some money, I was able to assume the name of one of these people who had disappeared. For legal purposes, I still have that person’s name.

When traveling to the city, I paid 1,000.00 baht to the driver to tell the soldiers at the check point that my name was on the list as someone who could legally travel. My future employee also had to pay 500 baht, which she deducted from my salary.

My employer was not a kind woman. I lived with her and worked sometimes until midnight preserving mangos. She scolded me for not working fast enough. She showed me what I could eat each day. She would tell me I could have one egg for lunch and she would check each day if I had eaten only one egg, or if I had stolen another. She did not trust me at all. I couldn’t speak Thai, so it was difficult communicating with her, or even understanding her sometimes. I felt discriminated against while I lived at her house.

The man in the field who kept trying to get my attention was friends with the woman who found me the job in Chiang Mai. He got my employer’s phone number from her and started calling me everyday. My employer did not like this at all, and I told him to quit calling. He called anyway. He learned, though, that I did not like working for this woman. I think he told his friend, the one who had gotten me the job, to come to my employer’s house and get me. It wasn’t long before this woman came and picked me up and brought me to her home in Chiang Mai.

There were many women of my own ethnicity living at my new home. Because the owner of the house was also the same ethnicity as me, I thought I could trust her. Several weeks after I was there I wanted to go to the Loi Kratong festival with my friend. When I told the old woman, she insisted that she would take me herself. Though I really wanted to go with my friend, I left the house with her instead. However, she did not take me to the festival. She took me to a guest house. There at the guest house was the young man, the one who had met me in fields and persistently called me at my former employee’s house, waiting for me in a room. I didn’t know enough Thai yet to call out for help. He forced himself on me. No one was there to help me. I kept asking why he did that to me. Before he raped me I had never before thought about committing suicide. But for many weeks after that I wanted to commit suicide. I felt so alone.

I was forced to go back to live with his woman friend. I wanted her to get me another job. But this man would not let me get a job or even leave the house. I felt desperate. There was no way to resolve this situation. Finally I gave in and decided to agree to marry this man. I was Catholic and wanted to get the church’s approval for our marriage, but my husband forbade it. He was Baptist and did not approve of anything about me that hinted that I was Catholic. After that he wouldn’t let me go to the Catholic Church, say my prayers as I did before, or even see my Catholic friends. I liked eating alone so I could say my prayers before I ate. If he found out I had done anything at the Catholic Church that involved prayers, he beat me. If we argued about religion and he couldn’t prove his point, he just hit me.

Six months after we were married I found out he had another girlfriend from a different hill tribe ethnicity. I don’t know whether he had this girlfriend before we got married, or he had just met her. I was miserable when I found out. I wanted to go somewhere, but where could I go? He would be out until 10 or 11 p.m. every night. One day his girlfriend sent her friends to my house to threaten me. They told me if I spread the rumor of her husband’s affair they would hurt me, or even kill me. I wanted to pretend my husband just didn’t exist. But I thought a lot. Then I got pregnant with my first child. I wanted to get an abortion, but I was Catholic. I knew I had to do the right thing.

During my whole married life I was never happy. When my oldest daughter was five she talked a lot. One day she told my husband we had been to church. He threatened me with a knife. My youngest child was 10 months old at the time. My husband’s health was not so good, so he forced me to go to the city to find a job. He said my baby was old enough that I could wean him from breast milk. I found a job cleaning a guest house and worked every day for a month before I asked for a few days to go visit my children. It was the cold season, and when I returned I found my youngest son very sick, but my husband had not taken care of him. He was wearing only a small t-shirt with no coat. He was very thin and had a fever. I asked my husband if he would help me take this sick child of ours to the hospital, but he refused. When I got to the hospital I found out he had asthma. This confirmed my fear that my husband would not take care of the children if I left.”

Some missionaries in Shatagan’s village referred her to Wildflower Home. When we first interviewed Shatagan, we learned that her husband was quite ill with asthma and he was unable to work. She told us that she had come to Chiang Mai without her three children to find work because it had fallen on her to support the family. Shatagan had been there a little over a month when she got word that her husband and mother-in-law were both too sick to care for the children. Her husband was looking for a boarding house in which to place them. While talking about it Shatagan used the Thai word, “ting”, the same word one would use regarding the trash. “He wants to throw the children away!” She was deeply distressed and hoped to find a way to remain with her children and provide for them at the same time.

Wildflower Home accepted the four of them, and Shatagan’s children spent their first months here clinging insecurely to their mother. They were fearful that she would leave them again. In time and with the care and stability that our staff and facility provided them, Shatagan was able to lay their fears to rest.

Shatagan entered very fully into our program. While she had arrived with almost no ability to read and write Thai, within a few short months Shatagan was making great progress. She was just as eager to learn English, and capitalized upon every opportunity outside the classroom to practice the phrases she’d learned inside the classroom. She knows that those who are able to communicate with foreigners have an edge over others in finding a better paying job. Then, after six months of study, she enrolled in an informal, government-recognized class on Saturdays in order to acquire the primary education she’d never had a chance to receive before in Myanmar. As a vocational skill, Shatagan chose to learn sewing. After two months, she proudly modeled to us a professional-looking sweat suit she’d made for herself.

Shatagan is very vocal about her appreciation for Wildflower Home. Our acceptance, assistance, and guidance have given her a chance to study formally for the first time in her life. She is attentive to the advice she receives from the staff, admitting that with no parents, brothers or sisters here in Thailand, she is most grateful to have someone with whom to discuss the problems she encounters in her everyday life.

Thanks to her intense interest in learning languages and her fervent desire to acquire new skills, we at Wildflower Home are convinced that Shatagan is justified in her conviction that she will soon be able to support her three children well. Her documentation issues and her son’s asthma is a source of challenge for Shatagan. However, we view her year with us as a time for her to recoup her energy, refocus her life and reinforce her resolve to start afresh. She is successfully making the transition from an abusive dependency to a life of self-sufficiency as single-parent with three children.

It is our privilege and joy to work with such women such as Shatagan. Her resilience and determination renew our own resolve to serve those who remain in crisis, needing only time, space and a helping hand to overcome the adversity they have been dealt.