“Don't take my picture. Don't say where I take you. Don't call me my name, call me 'Uncle Sam,' I have enough problems before with foreigners.” Uncle Sam began his life when he was born in Rangoon in 1951. That was before the junta. His mother was a midwife and his father was a health assistant for the government. Even though they were Shan, they had little to fear from the government because of their jobs, and because things weren't so bad then.
When he finished high school and had to choose a career, Uncle Sam chose jade trading. Moving gem stones out of Burma was a popular business. His dad gave him some start-up funds, which Sam quickly ran through. The trade wasn't as easy as he thought, so rather than face his father with the bad news, Sam went to work construction in Bangkok for three years. His father wasn't an idiot. He entreated Sam repeatedly to come home and try something else.
“You don't have a head for business Sam. My friend will set you up with a job in the hospital mixing drugs.” Sam took the job. Although he wasn't impressed with the pay he found he liked being in Health. Eventually he became a health administrator for the government as his father had been. As such he was assigned to government convoys sent to the Shan countryside, forcing development projects along the way. Much of what employees like himself told the Shan about the projects and the benefits was just propaganda. They never got much. Shan nationalism was growing then. The people weren't happy, not with the government, not with the union, not with the starvation. Kun Se's rebel Maung Tai army was getting stronger, really at its peak back then. They had real weaponry, real training, tens of thousands of volunteers. And of course, such a charismatic leader. Uncle Sam began to help them secretly. As a government employee, the son of a government employee, from Rangoon, he was above suspicion. He wasn't counted among the Shan, even while he stole medicine from the government and gave it away.
Things were going fine and he wasn't particularly worried about being found out, until Kun Se surrendered to the Burmese in 1996 and went into house arrest in Rangoon. The Maung Tai army broke into pieces, and in the crumbling Uncle Sam was ratted out. “Betrayed me!” he says. He fled to Thailand.
When he arrived there he found a reunion of rebels. A little disoriented, he served briefly in what was left of the rebel army. By 1997 he knew soldiering wasn't for him any more than gem trading. He learned of the medic training centre in Thailand, further south along the border. The Shan sent him there, where he trained for two years to become something of a rough and ready doctor. He was good at that. And ambitious with it. Before too long he brought his skills to camps of displaced Shan scattered along the northern Thai-Burma border, where the Shan were pushed by a furious Burmese army. Those refugees are still there. Uncle Sam still sends them medicine.
Today he lives permanently in Thailand, fat and loquacious. Canadians bought him a migrant worker ID, and as long as he has that he can stay. He is happy in his young career. He takes Shan teenagers and makes field medics of them. He butts heads with rebel commanders who stew along the border in new villages of displaced ethnic minorities. Butts heads with well-meaning foreign doctors who come to help him train. Can't ever go back. He betrayed the Burmese government, and then was betrayed himself, so he cannot go back and keep his life.
No comments:
Post a Comment