A refugee from volatile Myanmar (Burma), Kloy Htoo said he felt
like a kid again when he began farming a half-acre of land in Blackburn
Hamlet this June with the help of local community groups.
“He’s so happy, it reminds him of when he was a child, before the war
came,” said his son Shar, speaking as a translator for his father. “He
feels better now and has hope for the future.”
When Htoo came to Canada with his wife in 2009, he left behind a Thai
refugee camp where the family had been living for 11 years with some
140,000 other refugees after fleeing Myanmar when neighbouring farms
were looted and burned to the ground.
A member of Myanmar’s largest ethnic minority the Karen, or K’nyaw,
Htoo’s family couldn’t prevent their farm from being caught up in the
65-year civil war that has ravaged the country.
Now, with the help of a $1,000 grant for farming supplied from Ottawa
chapter of The Awesome Foundation, Htoo and Ottawa’s 200 other Karen
refugees are getting back to what they know best.
Finding a plot of National Capital Commission land with the help of
Just Food, the Karen have planted pumpkins – the plant’s flowers are a
delicacy in traditional Karen cooking- tomatoes, basil, eggplant,
coriander, carrots and they even took a shot at growing sugar cane.
“They love to eat a lot of pumpkin leaves and flowers,” said Coleen
Scott, who has been helping Karen immigrants get on their feet in the
city, “but when they tried to buy them at the store it’s much too
expensive, costing more than $2 for a few leaves and flowers.”
Practicing organic farming as their traditional way of life, the farm
has a few things to teach Canadians, Scott said, including using hot
peppers, garlic and onion skins to deal with pests.
“They really want to keep this farm. It’s very important to them,”
Scott said. “Farming is who the Karen are and that was taken away from
them when they came to Canada. Farming makes them feel that they have a
purpose.”
Source : http://metronews.ca
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