It’s early October in Madison County, and the oak
leaves have barely begun their transformation from green to yellow to
red to brown.
At best, a slight jonquil hue has emerged in every other tall timber
surrounding a treeless patch of land off Highway 22 just outside of
Comer.
But it’s enough for Eh Kaw Htoo to build a simile.
“In the fall, the leaves are like different people, just like the
U.S.,” said Eh Kaw, a refugee from Myanmar (formerly Burma), who will
celebrate his fifth year living in the U.S. this February.
He pointed at the distant tree line, remarking on the cultural
diversity found in America as he leaned on the trunk of the car that
drove him and two journalists down the gravel road that leads to The
Neighbor’s Field, a plot of arable land farmed by refugees from Myanmar
living in Madison and Oglethorpe counties.
After 20 years living in refugee camps in Thailand along the Myanmar
border, and seven years before that dodging the guns of a military
dictatorship in his home country, life in America, even rural America,
offers all the culture he’ll need from now on.
“I don’t feel like I have to go to Japan to see Japanese people,” he said. “Or to Africa to see Africans.”
Eh Kaw and his family — a wife and three children — as well as his
father, mother and his two brothers’ families, are part of a refugee
community living in Madison and Oglethorpe counties that numbers at
least 100.
At The Neighbor’s Field, the community grows its own food and raises
its own goats and chickens, and builds structures from felled and
foraged trees.
In rural Georgia, Eh Kaw has replicated the rural existence he would
have lived if not for 50 years of oppressive military dictatorship.
On a recent Saturday morning, two generations of refugees harvested
slim hot peppers, roselle and young daikon radishes — integral
vegetables in the Myanmarese diet. Some drove all the way from
Clarkston, the DeKalb County city that’s home to thousands of refugees
from all over the world. The pepper plants came up chest-high to the
teens walking among them. At The Neighbor’s Field, more food grows than
the part-time farmers who tend it ever could eat.
Eh Kaw’s people farm this way for a reason: to feed friends and strangers, anyone in need.
Just over the tree tops is Jubilee Partners, an intentional Christian
community whose mission includes welcoming newly arrived refugees, and
the place that first housed Eh Kaw and his family when they moved to
Comer from the Atlanta apartment that aid agencies had provided. The
Neighbor’s Field sits on Jubilee’s land.
Refugees from Myanmar are found in all 50 states, especially Georgia.
Outside of metro Atlanta, no county has welcomed more refugees than
Madison.
In Oglethorpe County, refugees congregate at Vesta Baptist Church,
attending English morning services with locals and praying as a people
in the afternoon.
A faithful community in place. A job at a chicken processing plant.
Neighbors he can trust. Eh Kaw now knows well the “free and safe
society” he’d hoped to find in the U.S.
“I never had a home. I never had a country,” he said when asked how
he now explains his identity. “I always had to flee. I feel like I’m not
a citizen of any country.”
If anything, he said, “I’m American.”
A FORGOTTEN STORY, A ‘SECRET GENOCIDE’
Eh Kaw is Karen, a now predominantly Christian people in a country of
135 distinct ethnicities. For the past 50 years, the Karen have fought a
losing battle against a brutal dictatorship run by the majority Burman
ethnic group. Although the Karen were British allies during World War
II, once the imperial power left the country, the Burman usurped total
control in a coup.
The Karen are rural at heart, Eh Kaw said, and don’t think politically; the Burman are more cunning than the Karen.
Among all the ethnicities, the Karen have waged the longest running
counterinsurgency, making their civilians targets of junta aggression.
Unlike other refugees who flee to escape becoming collateral damage,
the Karen and other ethnicities are targeted as part of a strategic plan
by the junta to, at best, quell rebels and, at worst, wipe the Karen
out of existence. If you ask Eh Kaw what he thought of the army’s
tactics, having lived through what he lived through, it’s impossible not
to take it personally.
“Secret genocide,” Eh Kaw said.
Eh Kaw left Myanmar at age 7, fleeing with his family for camps in
Thailand. But political geography did little to stop the Burmese Army
from chasing refugees like them across the border.
Troops hunted down refugees, burning whatever temporary bamboo
structures they found. Eh Kaw recalls never living in the same house,
the same camp, for more than three months at a time. The forests
provided their only permanent safety, as long as they fled with speed.
“If you are fast enough, you will be safe,” Eh Kaw said. “If you have weak legs, you won’t survive.”
Still, memories from life in Myanmar never fade.
Male villagers would climb trees to keep watch for approaching
troops, Eh Kaw remembers. A mere child at the time, he often would play
in those trees, swinging from lower branches.
As troops descended upon the village, the sentry cried out.
The warnings sent men scrambling into the forests. At the time, women
and children were safe from the troops’ violence — forced labor,
imprisonment, death.
Eh Kaw assumes the soldiers saw him drop down from the tree and run
back to his mother’s home. As they entered the village, a soldier pulled
him aside and stuck a gun barrel to his forehead.
“Why did you warn the others?” he remembers him asking.
Eh Kaw’s mother pushed the soldier down, grabbed her son and convinced the troops to leave them be.
Sitting on the laminate floor in his sparsely furnished rented house
in downtown Comer, Eh Kaw and his brother Eh Kae Doh, who lives in
Vesta, clearly have more brutal stories to tell. Eh Kaw hints at burned
bodies and gruesome deaths. Eh Kae points to his heart and says that’s
where his stories will remain — for now.
“Forgive is easy, but forget is not easy,” Eh Kaw said.
If the dictatorship falls, maybe they’ll return home to visit.
Do their memories haunt them?
“No,” Eh Kaw said. “It’s over.”
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