Face Masks & Indigenous People: Am I - Are We

I must concede that my first reaction to the question when I read it this morning was a serious industrial-level Dutch Eyeroll, followed by a muttered rant before coffee that might have gone something like this: "Freakin' entitled little white-boy keyboard warriors need to get out beyond their sanitized nomad coffee zones and see what's really happening in the big wide dangerous world."

What was I reacting to? This question from @atma.love on my blog from yesterday about my work with displaced refugee indigenous Karen people here along the Thai Burma border.

i am curious why all the pictures are of people wearing masks. it appears to me that these people (you included) are supporting the narrative by doing this. Perhaps i am wrong, but its the impression i get.
Sat Nam
Atma

Missed my important blog? Shame. 😆 Here is the link: Providing The Basics For A New Refugee School Community At Parahita Htoo. It contained obviously controversial images, like these:

Yes, that's me @artemislives - the tired looking blonde chick on the right, along with my refugee-supporting colleague Johny Adhikhari and one of the indigenous displaced Karen mothers receiving food aid and emergency clothing. Yes, we are all wearing face masks.

As I pondered and planned my witty retort to @atma.love, I realized that reacting isn't spectacularly helpful most of the time (even when it is understandable) and that I welcome the discourse that Hive enables and allows. I choose to live in a world where there are no stupid questions, only people who can't fully appreciate the scenario. So this seemed like a glorious opportunity to let people understand the bigger picture behind what they perceive to be sell out or compliance.

The first thing to understand is that facemasks are often worn here in Asia in the cooler months, out of respect. It's normal, and has been for decades, for Asian people to don a facemask in flu season, when in crowded public spaces like trains or doctor's waiting rooms and it has nothing to do with Covid 19 per se. You see them on trains in Tokyo all the time, airports in Singapore and in banks and worn by servers in restaurants as a politeness to the customer and fellow traveller.

Which leads us to consider privilege, of the medical and employment kind. Covid19 may be well be "just another version of the flu" but if you have no access to sick pay or a doctor, or don't have any medical insurance should it be more than the flu, then passing on anything is a karma that most people choose to sidestep in this Buddhist culture. Where the greater good and the making of merit continues to matter more than a momentary personal discomfort.

Let's consider for a moment that indigenous people have far lower immune systems than white privileged people who travel - they simply don't have exposure to the diversity of bacteria and viruses that we do, having been socially and geographically isolated, and so they are far more susceptible to becoming seriously ill or dying from Covid 19 than you or I might be. It's only a couple of weeks since American Thanksgiving but how quickly we have forgotten the disease the white people brought with them to the New World and how it destroyed indigenous cultures with lower immunity.

Let's add into that mix the question of tuberculosis. Missed my incisive blog about TB and its massive disease burden in this part of the world? Damn. You should spend more time reading your news feed!! 😆 For the slow people at the back of the room, here it is again: Tuberculosis, Refugees And Coming To Terms With My Aversion To Knitting

Both Myanmar and Thailand have significant burdens of TB. Myanmar had an estimated incidence of 365/100,0004 in 2015, and Thailand’s was significantly lower at 172/100,000. The migrant population in Mae Sot comes mostly from Kayin State, which had a notification rate in 2013 near the average of 256/100,000 for Myanmar. However, the notification rate in the township of Myawaddy in 2015 was double this rate at 579/100 000. In 2015, IOM reported a TB prevalence of 479/100,000 among all refugees, of all ages, in Thailand screened by them for resettlement. In refugees from Maela Camp, however, TB prevalence has exceeded 1% in some years. Late presentation of advanced disease, HIV,and multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB are all known to complicate TB control in the border area. Source: World Health Organization Global TB Control Report, 2016. WHO, Geneva.

TB is tragically common among the refugee communities and those of us who interface regularly with displaced people are aware of that. As are they. The first "Covid death" in Thailand was actually a Bangkok taxi-driver who had an active case of TB.

Did someone say Bio-Warfare?

The Karen people are profoundly aware of the Burmese military's desire for them all to quietly die of Covid19 so their mineral wealth can be sold off to the Chinese. Covid is far cheaper than the 70 year old civil war with its snipers and US produced landmines and doesn't carry trade sanctions that way. May 2021 saw the Burmese military actively destroying Covid 19 checkpoints in indigenous Karen controlled territory and burning-stealing-destroying PPE.

Source

Most Karen refugee people view the right and privilege of having and wearing a protective facemask as an indicator of their humanity.

If that wasn't enough, the Karen people who are receiving food and material aid on the Thai side of the border are mostly stateless people. Meaning they have NO PAPERS FROM ANY COUNTRY and therefore no inherent right to exist anywhere. The Thai law currently mandates a facemask in all public places at all times and carries hefty fines. For a stateless person to appear in a photograph without one would be suicide. I too, could be heavily fined and have my next visa refused.

Perhaps what troubled me most is the idea of "the narrative". The idea that there is only one and that we all share it.

For a Karen indigenous person there is one primary narrative: genocide.

No, it is not a narrative shared by white Hivers with opinions, News flash: "the narrative" is an entirely subjective idea.

I have lots of opinions about Covid 19 and the global agenda, but they're simply not relevant in my here and now. I'm not remotely worried about Covid 19 per se, having already caught it in Burma in March 2021 before the western world even knew what it really was. I am worried about the right to continue my work creating organic, sustainable employment for refugee people in this part of the world, and the right to be able to continue caring for my half-Thai daughter as her sole legal guardian in Thailand.

What worries me more is the "narrative" that people buy into everyday and rarely question: buying from amazon and nestle, fast fashion, iphones, chemicals and environmental devastation. Perhaps mostly what worries me is the western bullying culture which carries one heck of a lot of judgement, usually with little understanding where "black lives matter" but Asian factory slave workers don't.

@smallearth it is into THIS headspace that your kind and thoughtful gift arrived today. Bless you and thank you. You will never truly know how much this solo-mama needed a few things this weekend and will sleep easier tonight.

@atma.love - I hope this shines some light onto my choice to only publish photographs of me in a facemask, and to wear one when I am face to face with refugee people. They LOVE that we give them that respect and accord them a level of humanity that deems they, too, are worth protecting. From the flu, TB, Covid or whatever.