Excited to share!

Okay, so this is pretty exciting for me...  My friend, Oddny Gumaer, has published her second book!  It's entitled, "Picking Flowers on Dusty Roads" and it's available through Partners and Amazon.  I just ordered several copies for my family and am excited to read it, as it was her other book, "Displaced Reflections ", which inspired my involvement with Partners and my trip this past Spring. 

Oddny has a very approachable writing style, which makes it feel like you are having a conversation with a friend.  Granted, I don't have a lot of friends who eagerly discuss the issues facing isolated ethnic groups in politically volatile Burma, but when she weaves her thoughts about being a mother, being a woman, being a Christian, and simply being human...it becomes easy to understand her compassion for these beautiful people.

As I said, I am really excited to receive my new book, I am really excited for my friend Oddny for completing her writing, and I am particularly excited about the publication because that beautiful image on the front cover is mine!  I snapped the shutter one time as this stunning young girl walked past us down the dry creek bank...and it is one of my very favorite images (an almost life-sized one in canvas in my dining room, that is how much she stayed with me, those eyes...).  Hauntingly beautiful...and very telling of the amazing people whose lives and futures Oddny tells us about in her book, "Picking Flowers on Dusty Roads."

 

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A few of the Karen children we met along the way...

I feel as if I have this burden and I don't really know what to do about it, or how to deal with it...not just yet anyway.  My burden is this...that I want you, because you are reading this, to care about these children as much as I have learned to care about them.  I want you to worry with me; about their health, their education, their families and their future.  I want you to see them as your own children, or grand-children, or nieces and nephews, and see that they deserve so much more than what they currently endure.  I want you to empathize with the life they are living; in such poverty it is almost unimaginable to those of us with full bellies and full closets, with the freedom to go to school and to go to the store and to sleep peacefully every night. 

And yet, I am without adequate words to explain to you what it was like to meet these children; to hear them sing and laugh, and to hear them speak in a language I didn't understand but yet could easily comprehend with their smiles and giggles.

It was heart-warming and heart-wrenching all in the same breath.

These are a few of the Karen children we met, living in refugee camps and hide sites along the Salween River...

Overwhelmed. Part Two.

I have been home for over a week now. Ashley and I attempted to cook a Thai dinner last night for our family...and, well, we might need to go back to our Thai cooking school! But, it was fun to be able to share some of our experience, stories and photos with our family.


It is hard, though, to convey what we felt while sitting with those proud, beautiful people, the Karen people, refugees of their homeland. I am still processing our trip and probably will be processing it for quite some time. And, frankly, I am a bit anxious about trying to sum up our experiences...because it has become so important to me... and I want to provide it just the right words...evoke just the right emotions in you, the reader... Today, I've finally figured out that if I don't start writing, no one will ever know...and people should know…so...bear with me as I try to put into adequate words my experience with the Karen people of Burma.

I met this woman in one of the camps we visited. She, and another woman, had traveled days in the jungle in hopes of getting an opportunity to tell us her story. In hopes, I think, of not feeling alone in the world.  I hope I can at least give her that...a voice...in the world.

She is nearly my age.  She has 6 children, including the littlest one leaning against her.  She cares for her children the best that she can and they are clearly the focus of her life...she smiled when she talked about them.  She worries about their health, as all moms do, she worries about their education and their future.  She worries about her own future too, I am sure, but her biggest worry is for her children.  She likes to sew.  She made the traditional Karen top she was wearing...it was beautiful; intricate and colorful.  I felt a connection with this woman.  She was really lovely and strong...and, though we didn't speak each other's language at all, there seemed a moment or two when we both recognized that perhaps, in different circumstances, we might be friends.

She came to tell us her story. She walked through the jungle, with her baby on her back, in flip flops, for five days, so that we could hear her, so that we could validate her…and perhaps that we might give her hope, that she is not alone.

Her story follows next, give me a day or two to find just the right words.

Overwhelmed.

Ashley and I returned safely from our adventure abroad!  While I am still in a bit of recovery mode from jet lag, thus the 2 a.m. blog post, I promise to write soon, and plenty, on the subjects of long flights, eating and learning to cook authentic Thai food, tuk tuks and other adventurous modes of transportation, earthquakes and tsunamis, finding chocolate waffles in Chiang Mai's busy Night Markets, standing in front of ancient Buddhist temples, and, mostly, affectionately, about the culture and situation of the amazing Karen people, and other ethnic tribes, of Burma.

It was an eye opening, awe inspiring, sort of out-of-body experience, to walk amongst these heroic people, the Karen villagers, who are literally fleeing for their lives on a regular basis in the jungles of Burma, their home country.  And to walk with those who are doing such great work helping them was an honor and a privilege we will never forget.  I promise to try to do it justice, to do them justice, by telling their stories, and mine.  Stay tuned.

But first, let me introduce you to this lovely young lady.  We share the same name.  I always knew I had a good name....