Migration - Caitlin McLaughlin

Mum and Dad are a little jaded, a little nervy. The daughters are bursting with excitement. After seven years of living in a refugee camp this little family is headed for Texas. Mya Boe (59), his wife  Hee Thaw (57) and daughters Day Mu Shi (24) and Kae Ler Paw (20) are at the end of a long process of health checks, cultural awareness training and interviews, and will soon be leaving Thailand for a new life.

 In August 2005 Mya Boe took the decision to  get out of Myanmar, fleeing through the jungle and across mountains, with a bag of rice on his back, a wife and two teenage girls in tow. Now he and his family are the latest of over 80,000 people to pass through IOM’s Thai resettlement programme over the past five years.

 “There was no rule of law in our village,” Mya Boe remembers with a sad sigh. “Different sets of soldiers would come at different times and we would have to give them the rice or the beans we had grown. I couldn’t support my family, so we fled. We didn’t know where we were going, we just asked in every village which way the border was. I had to drag the girls at one stage.”

  After a week they arrived at Mae Ra Mah Luang camp in northern Thailand and when the opportunity to emigrate presented itself, the family decided to take it. “The situation is getting better (in Myanmar),” says Mya Boe. “But we have decided to settle in the US. My daughters need to know what the world is and they need an education. For me it’s too late, but I will find some job to earn money to support them and secure their future.”

The youngest daughter, Kae Ler Paw, doesn’t hesitate when asked what she wants to be. “A doctor,” she says. Her sister is more guarded. “While I am excited about going to a country which has enough freedom for us, I’m also worried about the level of education. Can I get up to standard? But I know I want to be a humanitarian worker, a teacher or something like that so I can help my people.” There’s a long pause. Mum, Dad, IOM international staff, translator and logistician sit and quietly think. We are already proud of these young women. Apprehension, optimism, a will to make sacrifices and to succeed. This is the real face of migration.