In Comer, refugees apply old traditions

COMER, Ga. (AP) — Refugees living in camps along the Thailand-Myanmar border heard cock crows each morning.

Refugees living in apartments in DeKalb County hear the siren crow of cops and ambulances all night long.

Eh Kaw Htoo's family, refugees from Myanmar living now in Comer, wake to the rumble of the CSX line that rolls through town just two blocks from their front door.

"Train crow," Eh Kaw calls the locomotive horn blasts.

On a weekend morning, Eh Kaw's children watch cartoons on a 20-inch TV, slurping up rice and vegetable broth prepared by their mother, Pa Saw Paw, 31, who is washing metal bowls with her mother.

Pa Saw places a fly-deterring plastic cover over leftovers sitting on the 2-foot-tall circular table they often sup around. Although she mounds clean cookware onto a drying rack, Pa Saw offers breakfast to whomever enters her kitchen. She met Eh Kaw when she was 9, but said she didn't fall in love until 2000, the same year they married. Two of her children, the oldest boys, were born in refugee camps in Thailand. They are citizens of no country. Jessica, the youngest daughter, was born in Georgia.

If everything goes according to plan, Eh Kaw, Pa Saw and their children will become American citizens early next year.

For someone who calls himself "stateless," finally attaching a nation, a name, to his identity is life-changing. Without "United States Citizen" printed across his official papers, "they will call us refugees always," Eh Kaw said.

For Pa Saw, citizenship means earning her GED and eventually becoming a nurse. A jobless life in the camps, she said, was frustrating. But "the hardest part is that I worried for my kids," she said. How can a mother support, educate and maintain her children's health when she is waiting in line for bowls of rice? Now Eh Kaw works double shifts at Pilgrim's Pride, and Pa Saw stays home to raise the kids. Life in America eases her fears.

Students at Comer Elementary School, Jubilee, Jack and Jessica are becoming American, preferring pizza and hamburgers to the turmeric-heavy Karen diet. But Pa Saw hopes they'll keep the Karen culture close to their heart.

"I want them to be good Americans," she said, "but still remember their people."

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A HOME RECREATED

The community that Pa Saw, her family and friends are building in Madison and Oglethorpe counties is so distinctly Karen, Pa Saw's children stand a strong chance of cementing their ethnic identity while growing up in Comer.

Pa Saw's in-laws live just a 20-minute drive from Comer deep into the unpaved parts of Oglethorpe County. There, Eh Kaw's mother, father and two brothers live in trailers separated by less than 50 yards of forest. Independent structures built from downed pine trees and deconstructed chicken coops interconnect each family's trailer. Near Eh Kaw's youngest brother's trailer, an arbor of skinny pines stands erect for squash vines to grow up and through. Handmade rabbit and squirrel traps segment a 2-foot-tall fence that runs along a clearing.

Built without power tools, save for the odd chainsaw cut, and seemingly without fasteners, the constructions employ skills the Karen people learned in their childhoods.

"Everyone knows how," Eh Kaw said.

Even deeper into the forest, nearing a tract of land owned by a member of the Baptist church Eh Kaw's family attends, a cinderblock foundation is under way for another structure to be built using felled pines and chicken shack parts. Soon, the Karen church, currently in the basement of Vesta Baptist Church, will relocate here.

Eh Kaw said the church's construction will not cut ties to their fellow American worshippers in Vesta. He envisions a place to keep the Karen language and culture alive — on their terms.

Just 1 mile from Eh Kaw and Pa Saw's home, foods common in Karen cuisine grow at The Neighbor's Field, just off the gravel road that leads to Jubilee Partner's Christian community.

Walking through the field, Eh Kaw explains each crop planted there. Bitter melon. Chinese okra. Asian eggplant. Roselle greens. A reporter jokes that the Karen are even cultivating pokeweed, pointing to a lone plant sticking up near a gate. Eh Kaw, like any smart naturalist, knows he can cook pokeweed's young greens. He bends down, picking a micro-grass just sprouting out of the soil, one most people would've stepped on. He'd cook it, too.

Karens know how to forage, Eh Kaw said. Back in Myanmar and Thailand, the Karen people also are known to spread seed along the forest floor, leaving food for the next wave of refugees fleeing their villages.

Eh Kaw urges the Karens he knows in Clarkston, the DeKalb county city that's home to refugees from many nations, to drive to Comer to harvest fresh instead of imported food. And he hopes they'll stay.

"I try to encourage my folks to move out of the city," he said.

"In America, if you choose to live in the city, it can feel like prison. You don't own anything. You have no freedom. I prefer the countryside. It is freedom."

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COMING TO AMERICA

Jubilee Partners, the intentional Christian community that owns the land where the refugees farm, helped give Eh Kaw his first taste of American-style freedom.

In 2008, Eh Kaw and his family spent a few months living at Jubilee before returning to Clarkston.

After living off others in rural camps, long-term Jubilee staff member Russ Dyck said refugees arrive in urban settings where they don't speak the language.

The effect is isolating.

Refugees often are settled with their own people, which is good, Dyck said, but that makes it hard to befriend North Americans and learn the culture.

Refugees come to Jubilee through the International Rescue Committee and Refugee Resettlement and Immigration Services of Atlanta. Through Jubilee's rural pace and intensive English language education, refugees get a glimpse of America that's easier to digest, Dyck said.

"The land is a place where refugees are teachers," Dyck said, noting all the shepherding and agricultural skills he's learned from Myanmar refugees. "My hope is that this is a place of healing. It's been amazing to see how Karen and other refugees connect with this piece of land."

At Jubilee, refugees garden, raise and kill goats and practice other traditional skills. Dyck can't count how many times he's heard guests say, "This place reminds me of my village."

From Comer, the typical Jubilee graduate, after a stay of two months or so, returns to Atlanta to live in an apartment and find a job.

Atypical is how he describes Eh Kaw and his brood moving to Comer in 2009.

Eh Kaw and his brother, Eh Kae Doh, have spearheaded the Karen's integration into the Northeast Georgia community. Eh Kaw possesses strong language skills, making him a valuable go-between with English speakers. Eh Kae pioneered the Karen's employment at Pilgrim's Pride in January of this year, which has led to many jobs for Karen who live in Madison County and metro Atlanta. Eh Kaw plays cultural historian for his new bosses, teaching anyone willing to listen about a refugee's struggle.

The U.S. has everything, Eh Kaw said. You can work hard and get it. But its people lack the "fruit of the spirit," he said. They are kind, they know the world, but not their neighbors.

"We are very blessed from God," he said. "We have a lot of American friends."

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