Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned

On Friday, February 9, we finished week one with our IDP students. We are teaching at a house in Mae Pa, a village about 6 kms. from where we live. The workshop runs from 9 - 11 am and 3 - 5pm, so we come home during the middle of the day. While our students are shooting assignments, we are trying to stay ahead of them; organize photo files on the computer, photocopy handouts, eat lunch, stay cool, check e-mail. Then it’s back on the bikes. I figured out we will have ridden 240 km by the time this session is over; 20 rides out, 20 rides in. It’s nice and cool for the morning and late afternoon rides, just us and the cows, the goats, the motos. But it’s starting to warm up by the time we head back for 3 pm. This involves lots of ‘tee klee’ (Karen for cold water) when we arrive.

Our 8 students ( one woman) range in age from 19 to 35 and come from different areas inside Burma. They are funny and patient and eager to learn. We are called ‘Pi-Pi’ and ‘Poh-Poh’ (grandmother and grandfather) which we choose to take as a compliment.

One of them managed to bring his wife and 2 kids. Don’t ask us how! Two of the guys have a fair bit of English, but the rest are relying on our former students who are acting as translators and assistant teachers. This has been a huge help; as there is lots of hands on stuff with the cameras, and lots of explanation of camera/flash modes/ISO....you get the picture. We have had to learn to speak slowly and in small clumps of words so the translators can keep up. Do you hear me, Nat? They are all taking lots and lots of pictures which have to be downloaded on our computers as they don’t have access to one here, and it does take a long time . However, being Karen, they are infinitely patient, unlike yours truly who gets antsy after about 2 minutes.

On Thursday the project printer from Karen Youth Organization finally arrived at our teaching place. Printing out small work prints on A4 paper has helped them get the idea of editing, arranging, and adding some text to their images.

Thursday afternoon, one of our students learned that his sister had stepped on a land mine inside Burma. Somehow she was transported to Mae Sot General Hospital for treatment, where her leg had to be amputated. Transport had been arranged to take our student to the hospital so off he went, promising to be back for Monday’s class. We forget what our students face every day as a matter of course.

Then on Friday afternoon 2 of our students came down with what we think is recurring malaria. So we arranged for some medical attention and are hoping that they will be better on Monday. Life in the fast lane!

In the meantime, we met with 4 of our 6 students from the first Mae Tao Clinic photo workshop on Friday at 6 pm to help them with a final edit of photos for the April Borderline exhibition. We had taken the printer along in one of our saddlebags, then set it up and got ready to print. Nothing happened no matter how many times we turned it on/off. Finally Nat opened it up to discover to his horror that it didn’t like being turned on its side for the ride to the clinic and had disgorged its ink all over the inside of itself. It then proceeded to smear ink all over Nat! By 8 pm, we had cleaned it up and headed home for dinner with some friends and Greg and Julie ( from Annapolis Royal). We dined on fresh fish and then had Dunkin’ Donuts and beer for dessert to celebrate one of the group’s birthday. Not a combination I’d recommend. But Tesco and Dunkin’ Donuts are new to Mae Sot so we are all indulging in a little artery clogging.

Greg and Julie arrived from Chiang Mai bearing gifts...and what gifts: real brie, real edam, real foccacia, real olives, real olive oil, and real wine, white and red. Our cup runneth over.

This weekend we are trying to catch up on mail, bill paying, record-keeping, as last weekend we did this killer ride out of Mae Sot, heading east, up the mountain ( think of Parker Mountain but longer and a lot hotter) to find a temple built by one monk about 10 years ago. Unfortunately we overshot the place by about 15 km. That 15 km was a long steep downhill so guess what we had to do when we realized we had gone too far. What had started out as a 2 hour ride was now 4 hours long, so we panted our way back up the hill, then coasted home to showers and cold beer.