Thursday 8 July 2010

4am in Mae Sot

Cannae sleep! Guess the time difference is maybe catching up now. It's 4.30am and I've been awake for 2 hours so decided to get up and use the quiet time to get on the hotel's limited internet. The morning chorus of dogs has just started so don't know how I'll ever get back to sleep cos the monks'll be round singing their morning alms songs at 5ish.... the joys of this noisy town.

Put the time to good use though, of course, by doing all my emails... including replying to my eager East Lothian HR Adviser's emails. You better be impressed, Lisa. Workaholic? Who me? Hee hee.

As Campie teachers said earlier, we are going to CDC school once we've collected our 6 bikes in the morning and hope to work out a programme for next week with them. We have a lot of plans but we need to make sure this fits with the school here. They have such a lot of pressures on them.

Lisa Houston works with Dr Cynthia in the Mae Tao Clinic (and comes from Edinburgh)and has helped set up our partnership with CDC school. CDC is the school attached to the clinic (www.maetaoclinic.org). Lisa and her family met us tonight and we went to Canadian Dave's for tea. She was telling us that they support 3,000 children in boarding houses around Mae Sot. These children are here without families. In Scotland, we would call them Looked After and Accommodated and they would be well supported by the authorities. This is a very different story for these children. There is scarcely enough food to feed them, never mind take care of their emotional needs, which are great. Many are here because their parents have died at the hands of the Burmese military. Others have been sent here to be kept safe from being recruited for the military or forced labour. So the schools here keep them in boarding houses. Recently Lisa explains that they have had to cut their food rations because of a lack of funds. We'll find out more about this and blog it later. Sheila

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