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The Shan: Refugees Without A Camp - An English Teacher in Thailand and Burma

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"A few years after `Migrating with Hope' was published, Charm Tong's women's group, SWAN, published `License to Rape,' which detailed sexual violations of Shan women by the Burmese military, including the 2001 rape of a girl whose arms and legs had been tied spread-eagled to a bed. Her parents came home from the rice fields and found her there, bloody and weeping. She was five years old." p.28

Did that get your attention? That's the world Bernice Koehler Johnson travels to every year to teach English to Shan refugees who have escaped the persecution of the Burmese military and were able to cross the border into Thailand. In her book, The Shan: Refugees Without a Camp, Bernice chronicles her travels to the other side of the world telling heart rendering stories of her students and the sacrifices they went through just to go to school.

Bernice Johnson, an incredibly young seventy-two year old woman, grew up on a farm in Minnesota. She found a way to avoid Minnesota winters by teaching English in warm climate countries. In 2001 she was going to add Thailand to a list including Mexico, Spain, Indonesia, Ecuador, Turkey, to name a few. But something different happened in Thailand, and that something is eloquently told in a first person narration about the plight of the Shan people. It's those stories that have brought her back every year (except one when she had to face a Minnesota winter because of knee surgery). Bernice talks about herself in a very honest way, not sugarcoating her biases and prejudice. She readily admits her errors in judgment making her human rather than portraying herself as a hero. But to the Shan children she truly is a hero. It's the stories about individual children that is the focus of this book and gives it such a touching and personal feel.

What struck me throughout the book was not only the hardships that so many of the children faced, and the risks they were taking just to be able to attend school, but the hope and optimism so many of them shared.

"What I had thought was a rascally smile reflected simple joy. He was happy to be among his peers, to have three meals a day without going into the streets to beg, to be learning English. Perhaps more than any of the other students, Sai Sam wanted the world to hear his story. If people only knew what was happening in Burma, he thought, they would help the Shan." p.77

The second half of the book, at the request of her students, Bernice crosses the border into Burma. They want her to see, first hand, their homeland (and a homeland where they cannot return).

"In Burma, opposition political leaders and journalists who publish articles derogatory to the regime are imprisoned for years. That knowledge may be the reason most backpackers travel in twos, and here I am alone. And I have a secret to keep: The government would not look kindly upon my involvement with Shan refugees in Thailand. My stomach is fluttery with excitement, anticipation, and fear." p 116

But it's not all doom and gloom. In all the trepidation (at times she was followed by military personnel) there is humor.

"At five-foot-one and one hundred ten pounds, I am a big person in Shan State. I try on a coat labeled XL. It is too small." p 128

So why does she do it?

"I did not come to Thailand to help others. It just happened. I fell in love with a group of young people, not only those in this room, but an entire classroom of men and women who reminded me of my sons and my granddaughters and who seemed to love me as they do." p.228

Bernice ends the book with a where-are-they-now section. Some of her students are successful, some are not.

As stated in my title, The Shan: Refugees Without a Camp was hard to read, harder to put down, and nearly impossible for me to review without sounding like I'm shouting from a pulpit for everyone to get involved - that YOU can make a difference (in the back of the book there is an address to send donations). But this book can make Sai Sam's wish come true - the world can finally hear his story.

This is a heartwarming book on the soul-sinking stories of the Shan refugees at the Border of Burma and Thailand that the world needs to pay serious attention to.

In her own unique way, Bernice Johnson tells the stories of the Shan Burmese refugees in the backdrop of her own life story as a woman growing up in the Upper Midwest--Minnesota. The switching back and forth between East and West makes the story very interesting and educational for Easterners and Westerners alike.

The Westerners, especially those who have not been to the East, or not yet familiarized with the Shan tribe in Burma, will have a better grasp of the lives of the oppressed in this tantalizing territory of the orient. In the same way the Easterners reading this book will benefit from Johnson's descriptive introduction to a woman's life in the West.

Overall, the book is like a beautifully woven mosaic of a traveler's journal, a peacemaker's witness of injustice, a sojourner's poetry, an English teacher's memoir, and a soul-searcher's soliloquy. Most importantly, it is a voice for the voiceless, or maybe, it's more of an orchestra for the voiceless.

I also think this book can make a great movie under the hands of an artistic director interweaving East-West cultures to bring attention to a hidden holocaust.

I was flattered as well as apprehensive when Bernice Johnson requested that I should write a review on her book. Flattered because it is such an outstanding and important book, but apprehensive because I may not be able to be objective about it, being a Shan, and knowing the suffering of the Shan people, and of my own family, my grandfather being Sao Shwe Thaike, the first president of Burma and the Sao Hpa Long of Yawnghwe, who was arrested and killed in Insein prison.

However, this is a book that needs to be read by anyone who cares about other human beings and the survival of peoples, peoples victimized, persecuted, and cruelly and diabolically killed, raped, tortured, and that even in war torn countries there can be hope and goodness if we all care enough.

`The Shan: Refugees without a Camp' by Bernice Koehler Johnson is the story of Bernice Johnson's repeated trips to northern Thailand to teach English to Shan Refugees. Bernice returns year on year to see the children grow in confidence as the years passed and finds a warmth and mutual respect that continues to this day. The stories of many of her students show us the plight that Shan youth face; some as orphans, others having fled forced relocations and persecution by the Burma Army in Shan State; and their continuing struggles to find acceptance in Thailand, either in gaining recognition as refugees, or in gaining access to any but the lowest paid employment.

The book also addresses the relevant key issues that concern the Shan refugees of Burma, the most shocking human rights abuses, the sex trade, and many other problems that they have in Thailand.

Although one may not know Bernice Johnson, the book reveals a lot about her nature, which I feel is down to earth, but that she cares deeply for the welfare of each and every one of her young Shan students. She mentioned that the girls she taught were "no ordinary girls", but one feels that Bernice is no ordinary person herself, devoting her life to work for the disadvantaged Shan.

A Finnish-German American, and brought up by a loving and wholesome family on a farm in Minnesota, Johnson knows the importance of being part of a loving family, and she has an understanding of the Shan country life, the villages where her students lived. With her valuable guidance and love, the students blossomed to become people with self esteem and beliefs in their talents and abilities.

The book also details Bernice's travels to Burma's main cities and to Shan State; she meets Burmese and Shans who live under the repressive regime that she has heard so much about from her students in Thailand; she sees the grinding poverty in which many ordinary people are forced to live because of a stagnating economy and an uncaring corrupt military `elite'.

She tells us about her visits around, Maymyo, Hsipaw, Yawnghwe, Mandalay and Yangon, and met the Burmese whom she got to know as kind hearted people who live in poverty, and she also discovered the cunningness of the Burma regime, especially in keeping the arrest of ten Shan leaders a secret, while she was in Hsipaw.

This is an honest and compassionate account of a woman who is open-minded, interested and perceptive about people, their way of life and experiences, no matter where she finds herself.

This is a book about people who face suffering and their fight to overcome the difficulties they face in life. It shows the warmth, helpfulness and inner strength of the people she meets.

Review by Feraya Nangmone