> tapioca world tour

…except for tomorrow, when I have to leave Thailand and the Burmese people. I don’t know where to start — HRE has been so awesome. HRE president Htoo Chit is going to win the Nobel Prize someday. He’s an amazing man (student activist leader turned 12-year jungle-dwelling guerilla fighter turned human rights CEO) who’s created an incredibly well-functioning development org for other Burmese refugees here in Thailand, and his staff are young and smart and awesome and almost all undocumented. “Ever been to the US?” I asked one of them. “No,” she giggled, and then I realized why she giggled: she can’t leave Thailand. She’s not even supposed to be in Thailand. She doesn’t have a passport, or even a birth certificate. And yet she’s teaching women’s health programs to migrant worker families, and her colleagues are running nurseries, taking care of orphans, adopting other children, and offering us oranges and Fantas and homemade bracelets before we leave. I felt like a total idiot.

Tonight we were invited to a dinner with all the staff and teachers. They played games, acted things out, danced, and sang: did you know “Dust in the wind” was actually first the melody for Burma’s song for democracy? Well, it was and still is. And when they sang it tonight — twice: once because they wanted to, once because we asked them to sing it again — they raised their fists and closed their eyes and wrapped their arms around each other and I realized how powerful and terrible it must be to love your country so much but not be able to return without getting abused or killed. “Are you homesick?” someone asked one of the new staff members, recently arrived from Burma. “Yes,” he said, “But I think we are all homesick, all the time.”

“Htoo Chit should run for office,” I told M. “When Burma is free, he probably will,” she said. And then it hit me how important this whole trip is.

That said, we begin the journey home — four flights in 24 hours — tomorrow afternoon. Thailand, and Burmese, you rock.