Dr. Ulrich Hulhne & Acupuncture

An Interview with Dr. Ulrich Hulhne of Germany, at the Mae Tao clinic on the Thai-Burma border. Hulhne worked at Mae Tao as an acupuncture instructor.

How many patients do you have?

About 30 in a day. 600, 700 patients in a month.

What's your background?

I'm a GP. That's does everything and knows nothing. My medical studies were in Colombo in Sri Lanka. I came to know a Sri Lankan professor of rheumatology, that was when I was 44 years old. And I said 'I would have liked to do medicine, but now it's too late.' And he said 'why? You are young enough and dynamic enough. I'll help you to get in.' So I went to Colombo to do my studies. I finished the studies and became an MD, only for the Commonwealth. I'm not supposed to treat in Germany.

In between I went to China for 9 months and studied acupuncture because this professor had been sent by his government to China very much earlier to find if acupuncture would be a good alternative for a third world country like Sri Lanka. And it was. And he said 'you should go to help me se this up.'

Is it more common in Sri Lanka now?

Absolutely. See, you don't need any medicines. It doesn't have any side effects and the way of treatment is in many ways much more successful.

How does it work better than Western medicines?

You know that is a question which is not solved until now, though Western scientists as well as Chinese scientists are trying to find out why acupuncture works. And they can't come to any conclusion. The fact is that it works, and the Chinese have developed that over 4,000 years. So it is not something that can be cracked.

Can acupuncture be used to treat the pain around the wound of an amputee?

Yes, even phantom pain. We can treat that and cure that phantom pain. And we can also anaesthetize for big operations. See, I have written a book called Acupuncture. This was taken in a hospital in Colombo, during a hysterectomy in Colombo. See, she is fully aware of what is happening, she is drinking and she is talking to the nurse. There is no pain during or after the operation.

Is there any trial and error?

There are 10 per cent of all patients who do not respond to acupuncture, and you do not know before who. We treat patients and we do not realize until after three or four days there is no reaction. We tell the patients we are sorry, you are one of these ten per cent and we cannot help you. See that is another open question, nobody knows why it doesn't work.

When you came to the Mae Tao Clinic three months ago what was the state of the acupuncture clinic?

It was down more or less to zero. There was a lady from that organization, there, see it? North American—something. She was here only for short periods and she was teaching the basics of traditional Chinese medicine, and some that she was teaching were absorbed in the clinic later. For example here in the surgery. When I came here and saw that only one gave acupuncture I thought that this would be a good opportunity to build up an acupuncture board. We had a gathering of all those who were trained and I said 'would you like that we continue that?' And so there were eight fellows, two girls, six boys, and I was teaching them in the afternoons and in the mornings we started treating. We started with two or three patients a day, and now you see there are 30.

Is it a very precise practice?

There are very precise points. Every point is identified, and they have to learn that. I have taught them about 350. Now, see how we do it. This is the name of a patient that we treat, and we compose a so-called cocktail of points. These are the abbreviations which everybody here should understand. This is the DU channel. This is the urinary-bladder channel. This is extra points, stomach channel, gall bladder channel and lung channel and the numbers. So if I write this cocktail they have to know where to find these points.

Do patients ever protest against the pain?

No, there is no pain. If you sit here and watch for a while you will see. You saw how thin the needles were.

How far in do they go?

It depends on the point were you put it. For instance the point on sciatica. You put it in the buttocks, and the point there is this deep about (he holds his fingers about six inches apart) to the sciatic nerve. See these are the longest needles. They go right in.

Can you buy these needles here in Mae Sot?

In Mae Sot nobody knows about acupuncture. I went to a pharmacy at the beginning and asked 'do you have needles?' He said 'needles? For what?' I said 'acupuncture.' He said 'acu-what?' He's never heard anything. So we see that we get donations. I get them through donations.

The first set through that organization, but they stopped supplying us, so the next lot I got from an Italian organization because they have an NGO here. And we treated a lady from this NGO for migraine. You know what migraine is? The most terrible headache that you can imagine. This woman, this young lady had one attack every week. And when she had it for two days after she could not work. Be it for the side effects of the terrible pain killers she had to take, the highest doses and the strongest doses you can imagine for migraine. Paracetamol and such nonsense does not help.

And she came here and she turned 'round and she said 'I feel vomitious.' And I said 'better do that outside. And she came in and we gave her the needles and after five minutes she fainted. That was needle shock. We have that off and on. Especially when patients get the first time needles and we give three or four needles. The average they get is 15 needles.

She laid down for five minutes and she got up and said 'miracle, my headaches have gone.' Totally gone after five minutes of treatment. So she said 'I will go back to office and if I can continue working I will phone you.' Because normally after an attack she goes home. And she phoned me from the office and said she's so well she does not have to go home. And that was since the beginning of February and in that time she has not any attack. So the boss was so happy that he donated us 15,000 needles. This is how we replenish our needles.

Do you have any desire to go into Rangoon or work within Burma legally?

No, here I can work much better, much more.

The Inefficiency of Aid

Inefficiency driven by ignorance is driving Dr. Lopita mad. She came up from dinner to the room this evening hopping to tell me something Deryl said that made Lopita blush. Lopita got an 8-year-old patient today who may have a congenital heart defect. She wanted to know how the organization could raise money for the girl should she need an operation. The girl had been told before she could only have the operation overseas, which Lopita said was wrong—complicated surgery can be performed in India. Actually, India is a hub for Westerners coming for affordable quality surgery. We can send the kid to Calcutta for this. Deryl had no idea this could be done in India.

There are many things people on this trip are doing that are a waste of time and money, and which seem born of a stubborn ignorance in our group. They treat this place as if it's the ass-end of the earth, which from our perspective it is but from the locals' it's the other way around. If you look at it one way it's primitive as hell and half the people live in bamboo-wall houses. But look at it from another angle and we would see everyone has a TV, a camera phone, a fridge, an email address. While we eat they take pictures of us on their phones. They're not the end of the earth, just the other side.

Clinic on the India-Burma Border

Our first day working the Zakawthar clinic. Why is that important? Because Zakawthar is separated from Burma by a narrow river. In fact the town is contiguous with the Burmese one on the other side, and the locals cross back and forth all day without getting hassled. We can't go though, whities restricted.


Half the patients crossed the border into India to get treatment from the foreign doctors. As we began there was already a 15-year-old girl lying on a bed suffering a major anxiety attack. A few minutes after Dr. Myron began treating her the entire clinic could hear her hyperventilating until she passed out and they carried upstairs to rest in the doctor's bedroom.

The people coming in from Burma truly are in much worse shape even than the Burmese Chin who have migrated to India and live here full-time. two women came in with great big goiters, there was a man with a bandage over his deformed face who had been mauled by a bear years ago and couldn't afford to have reconstructive surgery in Rangoon. So, his face healed askew and he's been walking around ever since with a bandage taped over the part that won't heal at all. Also a little girl pale with malaria,and all kinds of undernourishment and infections.

Everything they have is something they just can't afford to avoid or fix. Simple things that we all get, but that we never see bet out of control.

The worst thing by far was the birth. In the morning a young man and his pregnant wife came in. Dr. Lopita wasn't sure if anything was wrong and hoped it was just a bladder infection. Later, we were called to their house on the hill because the girl had gone into labour. She was lying on a blanket on the floor, well attended by midwives while the anxious father (who could easily be under 20) waited in the other room. Lopita thought the midwives were doing an excellent job so we left them to it.

About an hour later they called us back because the baby had been born. We came in congratulating the mother, but there was a bad air in the room. The mother was resting, wrapped up on the floor, and the midwife sat on the bed. We couldn't see or hear the baby, it was bundled up completely in the midwife's arms.

She called us over and unwrapped the child to show us. When I saw it I thought it was already dead. it was born at least two months premature, and it was the size of a skinny little guinea pig. It's skin was grey, it's eyes were shut and its mouth was dry and open. I thought I was looking at a dead body.

Outside the room Lopita said she couldn't tell if it was alive or dead, but the midwife assured her it was breathing, a little. Dr. William, the Burmese Chin physician we're working with at the clinic, brought a steroid injection to force the baby's lungs open. When he stuck the baby's thigh, it flinched, just a little, giving us hope it might survive the night. But Lopita said there was no hope it would last longer than that, and maybe William only gave the injection to make us feel better. It did indeed die in the night. 

Mizo Orphanage

Today was the eight-hour drive back to the capital of Mizoram. The road just went around and around...and around. The curves and bumps would never, we were exhausted and the drivers floored it. All drivers in Mizoram floor it, and that's not a generalization. They also like to pass, and since the entire road is a curve, on a cliff, that's dangerous driving.

At 3:00 we stopped at a roadside orphanage that takes in the abandoned from all over Mizoram, and even a few states nearby. The place was hopping by the time we arrived, with children running around outside and doctors running around inside. This is a terrible orphanage, the worst I've ever seen. But the staff try.

The entire place smelled of urine, the children were filthy, and disabled and retarded people abandoned by their families hobbled among the crowd of orphaned children. Inside one big room near the entrance was a child, maybe 12-years-old, laying on the floor and propped up on its elbows, with its crippled legs twisted uselessly behind. I couldn't tell if it's a boy or a girl, and didn't find out later that it is a little girl. The name is Rua, her hair is cropped short.

Rua was excited to see us and tried to pull herself closer when we walked in. Her arms seem strong enough but she doesn't have any means of getting around beyond the distance she can drag herself. She is just left to lay on the concrete floor in that room with splinters of wood to play with. She can't talk either, all she can say is "bee," and the meaning changes with how loudly and excitedly she can utter her word. It seems terribly lonely in there for her, in that dirty concrete room. I knelt down and began taking pictures of her face to turn the camera around and show her the photo, which she loved.

"Bee? Bee! Bee!" I couldn't take enough to satisfy her. Finally I had to leave to photograph the doctors and other orphans, but I felt terribly leaving her alone in that dog kennel, still wanting company and unable to follow. "Bee? Bee?" I went back in again and again.

There are others there as tragic as Rua, and others who are smart and healthy, eager to practice their English, and just as tragic for being thrown into the mix. The youngest is a preciously stunned four year old in a crinoline dress. The oldest is in her 80s. the old ones are the retarded ones. Too ill and embarrassing for their families to keep. One old woman, barely four feet tall, wanders around with a doll strapped to her back the way women strap babies on. A man with Downs Syndrome groans and points to a rotten black tooth at passers by.

Since there were too many volunteers to work the clinic, I got to photograph the entire time. It didn't take long for the abled children to get the nerve to ask for a picture, and of course to immediately go nuts to see how it turned out. Kids are always beautiful , but I felt sorrier than usual for these ones. They're so poor, and with only three staff members surely they really only have each other. They were dirty but obviously dressed in their best for our visit, with all the little girls' short hair pinned away from their faces.

Those who could speak English did, even if only to tell their name in a complete sentence. Those who couldn't strained to show how excited they were. They crowded in, led me around, sat me down and petted my hair and arms. Then they noticed my white skin against theirs and hurried off to find the darkest-skinned man there, and held our arms together in comparison. They unbraided and rebraided my yellow hair, thanked me, hugged me, lined up to give me five and get their picture taken all over again. It was terrible, because we had to leave them. 

When the doctors were finished checking everyone, the staff begged us to stay for supper. Dr. Myron refused repeatedly, and told us it was wrong to stay because we were in a hurry and the children needed the food that would be served to us. He was right on both counts, but once we saw the banquet they prepared we all knew it would have been another tragedy for that place if we turned our backs on them without eating.

They didn't eat. The children were sent away and the staff watched us. What a spread. They gave us food we hadn't seen since we left Canada, and much too much to feed the 11 of us. Apples, pineapples, pudding, fried chicken, sliced bread, cheese, nuts, chocolate bars—they had everything, for us. It was a terrible meal, knowing how much anticipation had gone into it, and how much they should eat it instead and how much it would hurt them if that happened.

Two ancient women had their beds behind the table. As we ate they petted our shoulders and motioned to their mouths for us to share with them. At the end we had cleaned our plates but the food left on the platters barely looked touched. We gave the orphanage some money, and the clothes we could spare. The pastor who runs the place told us about his ambitions to add a chapel, which is the last thing the orphans need. We drove away in the dark.

Dr. David

Dr. David has a soft business card with his entire Burmese name on it and his parents' address. He is 26 years old. He became a doctor about a year and a half ago. The rule in Burma, if you become a doctor, you work where the government tells you to work for three years. Then, I think, he can apply for a passport. Where the government tells you to work can easily be someplace horrible, for (I think) a horrible wage. Dr. David didn't want to work where they said, and began to look for a job with an NGO, of which he says there are many inside Burma and they pay well. Against the odds he decided to go to the fringes of his home state, working for a Canadian NGO on the India side of Burma's Chin state border. 


He's the only medical staff in the clinic on this growing border town. It grows because it's contiguous with Burma's town across the river. Burmese refugees are still relatively welcome in this part of India, so they cross the border to contribute to the population, and as traders, casually smuggling Burmese goods all day long (especially alcohol, since the Indian state of Mizoram is dry). 


Dr. David is very soft, shy. He is tall, and still young-looking even for a 26-year-old Asian. Asians on the whole look young for a long time. They just do and we all know it. He is tall, thin, his hair is cut flat on top and too short on the sides, and he doesn't gel and spike it the way a lot of the others do. He wears glasses. If you know what Frank Grimes looks like, he looks like Frank Grimes. He's a difficult man to joke around with because he is so shy. Teasing makes him nervous. Spies make him nervous. Sometimes he crosses the bridge to shop in Burma, sometimes goes a little further in to treat people in the countryside. He hasn't had trouble yet. If the Burmese stop him he lies and says he's a government doctor. But he's worried about the spies. They cross into India as easily as he crosses out. They visit his clinic, ask questions, watch him and tell on him. They suspect him and he doesn't know of what or what's going to happen. He wants to go to Canada, or Australia, or back home to his parents in Burma. Somewhere away from this place. 


“What will happen if you go back to Burma?” “I don't know. Maybe nothing. Maybe put in jail. Maybe a few years or 20 years. I don't know because there is no law. It depends on the government.” He has a loft above his clinic, but he's too lonely to sleep there. He sleeps on the couch at the next door neighbour's. His way of talking is to smile and squirm. He's self-conscious about his nasal English because he so rarely speaks it, but his English is really quite good despite his agonizing. He gets this story out with difficulty. Not language difficulty, but shyness. Dr. Lopita tells him if he can come to Canada she'll give him a job in her clinic. Eventually he's brave enough to say something to his Canadian bosses. In all he does say to them there is an air of grasping for excuses to leave this job without angering them. He wants more money. True, he deserves more. He only makes about $400 dollars a month. Good enough in this town but not good enough to send any home to his retired parents, and not as good as he could have made with an NGO on the inside. The organization can't afford to pay him like a Canadian, but he deserves at least $1,000 a month, even if that is twice what other professionals make in town. They give him a raise, $500 a month. Next, he says he doesn't feel qualified. He's such a new, young doctor. If only he could return to his home town for another two years of training. Then he will come back. He knows other doctors from his graduating class who might replace him. They tell him wait, bide your time, it took long enough to find him. What if you don't come back? Just stay a little longer. Maybe they were on to him.

Elaine

Elaine is 71, a Canadian. She looks, acts, as though she could live in a bungalow with dachshunds. She has a grey bubble-cut, speaks no other languages, can't take spicy food, and walks very slowly over rough terrain. However provincial her personality, she has come to the Thai-Burma border and worked on either side of it with her husband every year for 18 years. If she acts old now remember that she got old waiting for Burma to change. 


What Elaine said: She is tired of watching the struggle in this struggle. Watching the unchange. “It just makes you weep when you see the inhumanity...I think a lot of people in North America feel helpless, but if you join an organization or write letters it does make a difference, even if it just makes you feel like you've made a difference. But some people I think just think about their next golf game. The ones who have any real power to do anything.”

Beekeeping with the Karen at the Global Neighbours Farm

The Karen people are packed up along the border, fill huge refugee camps here, sneak in to work illegally throughout Thailand, wear traditional brass rings meant to elongate their necks in the hopes of attracting tourist money, even though the practice had nearly died out before the tourists came.

Their language is quite different from Thai, making it harder for them to blend in and disappear than for the Shan, whose language is closely related to Thai. The Karen are as persecuted in Burma as the Shan (and Mon, Arakan, Rohingya, Chin, Wa...). Like the other ethnic groups they have a rebel army fighting vicious ambush warfare against the Burmese military in jungle.

Here in Mae Sot Karen trickle in from the Burmese countryside, cross the Friendship Bridge from Myawaddy town, take boats across the muddy river, and escape the Mae La refugee camp not far from here. They come for work and help.

A young NGO from Saskatchewan called Global Neighbors has a farm on the edge of town meant to train Karen migrants and make money to pour back into Mae La or other refugee aid projects.

The Karen staff's temporary living quarters on the farm is a typical raised bamboo longhouse, thatched with layers of dried leaves. Chester explains a slideshow about beekeeping to a group crowded around his computer. Through Henry Tha Won Phirachenchei's interpreting, the group ask if the bees sting, why do beekeepers blow smoke into the hive, how to extract honey. They laugh at pictures of a beekeeper clipping the queen bee's wings, saying they don't think they could be that careful. Outside the hut geckos, chickens and dogs compete for sound space.


The Karen are dark, with angular faces accentuated by strong jaws and high cheek bones. Their teeth are filed straight and often stained from chewing betelnut.

"So," Henry asks, "we need to plant many many flowers?...So, I will plant around the stream here, flower flower flower... Now I will try to call someone. Behind the house have a very big hive." Henry is all action. Already he's on his cellphone, still watching the bee video from the corner of his eye.

The crowd grows in the hut as young men come in for lunch. When Henry's finished on the phone they start asking questions again: How do you catch a swarm? Do bees sleep in the day? Should they look for the big bees that live in the trees, or the little ones in the ground? How big should they make the hive boxes?

The air becomes thick with the smell of betelnut once men fill the hut. They wear longgyis or faded jeans.

Interview with Global Neighbours Founder David Heppner, February 2010

Tell me about Global Neighbors. What is it, how did it get going? 
Heather (Heppner's wife) and I travelled to Thailand in 2004 and we were introduced to the situation on the borderline. We actually visited a small school, Saw Thoo Lei, I don't know if you've visited that school or not. We decided we couldn't change the entire world, obviously, but we did think that we could make a difference in this one place. So Heather and I decided to help the one small school. And we came back to Prince Albert and started talking to business people in the city here and people rallied behind us and they joined in and we bought some land and built a school for Hsa Thoo Lei and then after that we bought the land where the school was built and we built a dormitory for 200 kids right next to the school. And after that we built a day-care for abut 80 kids and so it just kind of kept on going. We just finished our last dormitory, as far as the education goes we built a dorm for 200 kids. The old dormitory is going to be used for future training and offices for the Burmese migrant workers association.
So that's basically how we got going, and from that point we branched out into two agricultural projects. 
We bought 79 Rai (30 acres) in Krep Lo, which is just outside of Mae Sot. We've had it for one year, and that's the farm we bought. We have title to it. And there's another agriculture project we're working on as well which is the school of 360 kids in the area and they are and were in extreme need of funding. So instead of funding the school we set up an agricultural project there as well. We bought about 40 Rai in that area, which is probably around 20 acres or so (approximately 16 acres), and we built a hog barn for them there and set up an irrigation system. And hopefully we'll help them into self sufficiency within the next couple years.

Who introduced you here?
What happened is, the reason Heather and myself went is my daughter and our son-in-law were hired to set up a program in Thailand, an experiential program with a university. My son-in-law couldn't go so the director of the program and my daughter went and they asked us to join them. And while auditing and eating with a member of the Chiang Mai University and the International Justice Mission - the International Justice Mission works with getting kids out of the sex trade, and so at the end of the meeting, which was actually quite graphic, they said there's another issue that's more pressing and that's the migrant situation on the borderland. After hearing that said we need to basically check it out. We rented a van and we picked up a Karen translator in Mae Sariang and then we drove down to Mae Sot. He showed us Mae La refugee camp, and then we also went to Mae Sot overnight and just before we left in the morning we spent about 15 minutes at the school. And so that's basically how we got to Mae Sot.


So you were hooked on the Karen?
Yes I was. We were very much engaged. After, we wanted to help them. There were some very very good people with a very difficult past and a rather bleak future from the way it looks right now. But hopefully things will change in Burma so they can go back to their homeland.

Tell me about your plans for the farm. Henry (farm manager Henry Tha Won Phirachenchie) took us out there the other day, now I'd like to hear about it from you.
Well first of all I'd just like to say that Henry is a gem of a man. We're just so privileged to work with him. He is a positive, energetic guy, who's just very happy to be helping his people.


Did Henry give you the story of what he did before? Yes, he said he was a caretaker with his family for a bunch of orphans in Mae La, but not too too much.
Well, basically what happened is he started a school (in Mae La refugee camp) there's about 200 odd kids there and he started the school, and he funded the school entirely on his own. He worked for Princess Cruise Lines. And he has had Hep B since birth, lots of people in Mae La camp have it. They did testing after about four or so, four or five years of him being with Princess Cruise Lines, and they tested for hep B and he had Hep B and therefore he could no longer work. And so here he was left with the dormitory and the school and no funding. And this is where we kind of intersected our lives. I was very impressed with him when he was translating for us and I asked him if he would like to be the manager of our farm. And he was very very excited about that and he still is to this day. So that's kind of how we bumped into Henry.


So what we've done now is it's one year of operations, it's been a fairly intense year because it's a large farm, by Thai standards, and everything is basically done by hand. We do have a tractor there and we do have some automated equipment like the rice planter and we also plant beans with like the big rototiller, the iron ox I call it. But we've got plans to grow fish. We've got probably around 30,000 and 40,000 fish. We had bought just 10,000 catfish for the four little ponds you saw there. And the bigger pond is supposed to have 30,000 fish in it, I'm not sure how many are there actually.
We're learning as we go. There's, I think there's some serpent heads in there that et fish and so we, what we're planning on doing is just leave them as they are, pull them out and then we'll drain the pond and clean the bottom out and make sure there's no predators in there. So we can be more effective in that particular pond.

We've got a sort of makeshift irrigation system going right now. Obviously for the dry season we need to irrigate, and we'd like to set up a permanent irrigation system. Now they're just kind of hauling pipes around here and there and keeping things wet. When there's excess water they'll just flood the rice paddies and then they irrigate that way as well.

So our plans for the farm, we're building a workshop, storage area and a small office in the front of our property. They're putting footings down right now. So we're vying to do a workshop where we're hoping to train students in some vocational training like wood working and welding. Also, when we bring our teams over we'd like to do the construction of desks onsite as well. And we'll be working with an organization called Youth Connect, they're in Mae Sot. and they work with kids once they've got out of school. And some of those that don't succeed in school, like if there's a 17 or 18-year-old fellow and he's in grade 5 for example and he's not going to make it we'll try and get him trained up with welding or some of the other trades, electrical  or whatever, And so they can use our facility, and then we're going to store our equipment in the warehouse as well, and then we're hoping to, there's an organization called Compassion International, and they have excess materials in a warehouse in Victoria. Like when manufacturers have overproduction they get materials from them. So we can have the materials for free if we pay for shipping. And so we'd like to have a distribution centre there to be used for distribution out of the building as well. So those are our immediate plans. We'd like to have the farm as a profitable entity and we can use all of our profits in the borderline area.

What made you decide on starting a farm out here? Was it that you wanted to use the food, or to use the money out here and train people up?
Well Heather and myself have been on the grain farm out here for 30 some odd years, so we're familiar with farming. We also thought it would be something that would keep on giving if we, once we were gone, or not here anymore in a few years time. The farm will still be operating and still be generating income for people in need over there. It's just a sustainable kind of a thing where we can either provide food or we can provide funds for projects. And I think we're probably going to be doing both. We've planted fruit trees, and hopefully in a couple years we'll be producing a fairly large quantity of fruit that we can either sell or we can bring to the kids in the camp. There's no problem getting rid of food.

How long did it take to raise funds? This sounds like a big project for a young NGO.
We are a fairly young NGO, we registered in 2005. We've been very fortunate with some of the people who travel with us. Some of the business people really like what we're doing and they've joined in with us. So we've got large number of supporters in Saskatchewan, mostly. We've got a few in Alberta, but mostly in Saskatchewan. And some of the supporters will take on entire projects. The hog barn was built by a retired fellow from Roster, actually he lives in Hague, his business was in Roster, and he raised all of the funds to build hog barn. And so he was out there supervising the job with the local people, and he funded the netire barn. So we've had some very very good support. A lady from north of Pié, her husband farmed for most of his life, and he passed away a couple years ago and on his death bed he told his wife that she needed to share some of her funds with people that needed help. Their family donated a tractor and rototiller. It's just been that kind of thing where people have joined in and helped out.
How much does it all cost? 
The equipment, that's the tractor, it's a 70 horse power with a blade on it, we've got a rototiller, we've got a disc, and we've got something else, a corn planter, and I think that was around $37,000 for that. The land cost us around $200,000. The warehouse will probably be around $30,000, that they're building now. And Propera was around $30,000. So yeah, there's been a lot of contributions. (totals nearly $300,000)
And this is dollars, not baht?
No, we're talking dollars here... Part of the reason for our success is that all of our funds that we raise go right over to Thailand. We have less than one per cent is what I would say is going into accounting fees and stationery and that sort of stuff. Up to this point we have raised - 100 per cent of our money is going over to Thailand. I'm not certain we can continue doing that, but it will be very close to 100, it will be in the high 90s. For some organizations, and I don't criticize them because you do need to have full time staff when you hit a certain size, but we're small enough that we don't have any paid staff. Everyone pays for their own way, and all of the money that we raise goes to Thailand.

Do you or your wife have any development experience, or did you just take the plunge?
No we didn't. Actually we didn't anticipate it growing this quickly. But we've never done this kind of work before. So it's not just my wife and myself. At this point we've got a board of directors who've done a good amount of work when it comes to fundraising, so it's not just my wife and myself.

How many people do you expect to employ at the farm, and who are they going to be?
They're all going to be local workers. The amount of workers we employ varies. Like, during the harvest time everything they do is by hand, there's no swathers. So everything, all the beans are cut by hand. We have about 25 workers that work on the farm during harvest season. Then it cuts down, I think he's probably got about five or so. He's got roughly five working now, they're just putting on fertilizer and there's something they spray on the soybeans to get them to set nitrogen. They do that just by hand, by hand sprayers. So everything is done pretty much by hand.

Have you had any successes so far you'd like to tell me about?
Well, our rice harvest was quite successful. We're growing jasmine rice, that's for export. Henry is the one who decides what we're going to plant and he's very keen on trying to maximize our return. So he went for an export quality rice. We don't have it hulled yet, we're buying a rice huller within the next month or so. There's 280 bags and they weigh about 200 pounds each. They're really huge bags and they're all full of rice. We don't really know what we're going to get until it's been hulled. It's like an oat or a barley seed, it needs to be hulled before you can see the rice. So we're going to hull it and bag it and sell it. And the price has been fairly good, I think we would have had at least an average crop of rice.

The beans were, the green beans were fairly good. We had some issues with, there were some annual grasses or perrennial grasses growing in the field and they took away some of the yield. We've since found out that if you put Roundup on it it kills that quite significantly. So we've put Roundup on the piece that was grassy and it's quite nice and clean right now. So next year I think we're going to anticipate a bit better yield with the green beans, but the prices were really high this year.

Do you find that you're learning a lot about the difference in farming out here in the tropics and that in Saskatchewan?
Yeah there's a huge difference, there's no rest over there. In Saskatchewan when you finish the harvest you do your fall work, you basically put your equipment away and you wait for spring. You anticipate and you prepare for spring and do your planning. But over there you're already planning and doing your next crop before your crop is harvested, and as soon as you've got your crop off your working on getting another crop planted. So there is quite a difference there. Also with irrigation it's something that I'm not familiar with but and I'm not familiar with growing rice and some of the other crops there. But I do have some experience with some of it.

What is your background?
I'm also in real estate. We have some real estate properties that we still own. And I've done some land development. So we're self sufficient at this point, we're not needing to take income from donors for doing this kind of work, so we're self sufficient that way.

What are some of the problems with the project? Henry said when locals found out the farm was a foreigners' project they raised their prices, is that true?

Yeah the land prices all around us have quadrupled since we bought, so if you want to buy another piece of land you have to pay four times as much. And we were wanting to buy a small piece of land to put the warehouse and office on there, but we've since decided that the prices are too high now, so we're just going to put the warehouse on our own land. We do have a little bit of problems with the authorities, but not a lot. We're trying to work in conjunction with the Thai people, so we do have Thai people that work alongside us as well. It's not just foreigners and people from the migrant community. We do have people working with us and we're trying to work in conjunction with the head villager and – Apataw is his name and it's kind of like the district manager. So they're quite aware of what we're doing and we're trying to work in conjunction with them.

What did you do here during your February visit?
Well we had to make some decisions. We did the final design plans on the building at the rear of the property. Henry's going to live at the back, he's going to have residence there. We're going to have workers' accommodations, we want to be able to have four rooms for workers. We're going to have two rooms for kids from Mae La refugee camp. There's 12 kids who'd like to go to higher education next year so we're going to put them and a dining room and staff rooms there in the back.

Do you want to become firmly established as a Mae Sot NGO, or are you willing to help out in other borderline areas?
We would consider other locations. Right now we're quite fully engaged in this project. We're planning to do the sow operation at the Mae Tao farm, we'll be starting the sow barn within the next month. We'll be building the sow barn in Mae Sot and then the hog, the finishing barns in Saew Ki and Propera. Then taking the weanlings from the other barn and then we're hoping that they'll learn how to butcher hogs and then we don't have to sell them into the market, we'll actually butcher them. We'll butcher them in Mae Sot and in Propera. And just try to create as much industry as we can and employment for these people. So we want to have a value-added kind of proponent for it.

What is the big problem for the Karen?
The big problem is they need their land back. Until that happens we're really in a tough spot. These are stateless people. If they go back to Burma they're in serious trouble because of the political issues there. What needs to happen, and we've talked to the Canadian ambassador in Bangkok on a number of occassions, we're working hard to try to get some political solution to Burma. If we can do that then we could build on something that would be more predictable. Right now they do need education, but they do need their homeland is what they need. That's a tough thing, but for myself now if I were trying to farm in Sasksatchean and somebody would burn my house and chase me off the farm, and then put me in another country where I wasn't really appreciated then it would be very tough for me. The solution would be for me to get my farm back. It's the same for them.

Before the first time you came here did you know much about the Burmese situation or the Karen?
We knew absolutely nothing. That was one of the shockers for us. We thought we were fairly well acquainted with the issues in the world, but we had never heard of the 50 or 60 year civil war in Burma and the plight of the migrant people in the area. And it's more than just Karen too, there's many different ethnic tribes. There's the Shan and the Mon and there's East Indians and the Muslim community has also been removed from Burma, so they're in a plight as well.