Burmese migrant lifestyle choice: a Thai town dump

Tuesday, 21 September 2010 11:04 Albert Guzman

Mae Sot (Mizzima) – The air is harsh, hot and humid, with an oppressive odour that initially assaults the senses. Mounds of refuse, decaying waste and cast-offs – evidence of the Thai-Burmese border town of Mae Sot’s lunge at prosperity – glisten in the occasional sunlight. However, it does not invite closer inspection. A narrow dirt road parallels a long, high mound, while on the other side a large, dank pond is covered with some form of algae. A boatman on a rickety raft floats in the pond looking for something.

A short path leads upwards through the main garbage mound. It reveals several ramshackle structures, built in the form of rice-field huts and festooned with varied, if useful, pickings from the town dump. Some 30 or 40 Burmese people live in these particular huts, while elsewhere in the dump and surrounding area there are many more inhabitants – at least 100. There is a well, not far away, to provide water for the inhabitants, who are all Burmese migrants, though one guesses that leeching from the mounds affects the potability of the water, unless it is boiled, as well as the taste.

The town’s dump and its residents receive visitors from time to time. These range from media and aid or advocacy groups to the merely curious or the local authorities who have, at least once, cleared the inhabitants out. Often the impression is one of utter degradation and destitution, of people down on their luck and who have either given up or been thrown to the wall. “I can’t believe how people can live in such conditions” is a sentence commonly heard afterwards in town among foreign visitors. And to be sure, seeing a man in one hut on his back and suffering from tuberculosis did little to detract from a very negative first impression.

Yet even here, and in the broader migrant community, something far more nuanced is going on; and since many migrants work in large factories within closed gated compounds, here, albeit in stark conditions, one can see people weighing the odds and making what to them are rational choices under the circumstances.

“We are from Mawlamyine [Moulmein, capital of Mon State] and have been here about two years,” a tall, thin man, Min Swe*, said. “I had several different kinds of jobs but now there is nothing more, so we had to come here.”

Min Swe, 40, and his wife, 35, have four children. The youngest is a three-month-old boy who was born inside the hut with the aid of a traditional midwife. There are three daughters. The youngest, eight and four years old, respectively, attend a nearby primary school for migrants, financed and operated with outside assistance. The eldest daughter, 10, works with Min Swe in the dump. They work about three hours in the morning before taking a break for lunch, and continuing for four hours in the afternoon.

“We look for things like this,” he said, holding up a discarded plastic children’s school bag. For enough items such as this, brokers will come from the town and pay the scavengers. Other discards, such as PET bottles, are also wanted but slightly less valuable. Migrants bring these and other wanted items a short distance to collection points. Working together, Min Swe and his daughter can average 70 to 80 baht (US$2.30 to US$2.60) a day. Over a month, provided they work daily, it adds up to the very low end of a single migrant factory worker’s salary.

At first, the family scavenged for food as well. Tins of fish or bits of chicken were among the recyclables used in meals, but that has stopped. They can now afford to buy rice, fried eggs, vegetables and bamboo. Ironically, no one appears dirty and most family members’ clothing, while basic, is noticeably clean.

About 10 metres away is another family hut, the one with the TB patient, where another family of six live. One of the sons has found work at a nearby factory, making 2,400 baht a month. So, with other members looking for things to sell in the dump, the family has effectively doubled its income.

The Burmese migrant situation is a complex and fluid phenomenon, one indicator of utterly failed politics in what should be a rich land. Still, some observations can be made.

Many types of work available to migrants in the borderlands favour the young, the strong and the single. The hours are very long and tiring. Those in the dump are families. And while many Burmese families live and work in Mae Sot, in the town, there is always rent to be paid, however much families double up in small, inconvenient living spaces to reduce the burden.

Further, why were some huts built upon the garbage mound, rather than further away, and on soil? The answer might be that refuse offers, in such a rainy environment in which such huts could be quickly washed away, a more stable foundation allowing for drainage.

Accessibility of the settlement to outsiders offers a small side benefit. While media are not supposed to pay for stories, other visitors, shocked by what they see, have made small donations to the families (and larger ones to the school). A generous Japanese group had been by the week before. These can provide useful supplements to family incomes.

To be sure, the environment of the dump is not healthy; in fact, it is largely the
opposite of healthy. Nor is the possibility of a sustaining income guaranteed; the pickings may decline in value or amount or the authorities may move the people out.

Children not working in the dump can receive some education, valuable for the future, but only up to Fourth Standard. Yet, those people living in the dump were not ones who had given up, dying day by day and merely hoping to stave off the inevitable. Rather, they appeared to be survivors, dealing with the hand they had been dealt and calculating they could master the environment (to the extent that they knew how unhealthy it was) and move on before that environment mastered them.

*Min Swe is a pseudonym.