Handicap International (Burma), 1-8-08, Thai/Burma Border Trip

by Jodi

Handicap International's name is disconcerting: The word "handicap" is so politically incorrect in our society. Its prostheses, too, are disconcerting and old-fashioned. You won't find the slick titanium legs that Americans are using to run marathons. Handicap International's fake legs are ugly plastic things.

But both the name and the prostheses do the job--remarkably. The name--with the subtext "Vivre Debout," or Live Standing--is helping mostly landmine victims walk again. It serves about 1,000 people a year. And the prostheses help them get around the uneven terrain, which turns to mud in the rainy season. Our high-tech versions just don't work here; HI tried them, but they fell apart in months.

Unlike the other groups we've met with, HI has legal status in Thailand because it's Thai based, with Thai staff, though it serves people from Burma from the refugee camps and surrounding area. Legality makes operations easier, less dangerous, and less expensive--no paying off the government. Like other groups, it trains the people of Burma ("capacity building," in NGO lingo), so in the end it's the Burmese people who are making the prosthesis; rehabilitating the people; and showing the people how to spot landmines or the markers used when the landmines are set, to mark the area to indicate danger, and to tell others to no one sets them off. That last part is especially important for the people who go back to Burma to visit family, farm, or hunt. Yes, it's illegal to leave the camps, but it's done.

Perhaps the most disconcerting fact about HI is its root cause: the people are maiming themselves. The military junta as well as the minority armies plant the landmines. It turns out that most of the blind men we saw at Maela refugee camp, those men who sang so sweetly to us, were former soldiers who crafted homemade ordnances, which blew up accidentally in their faces when they planted them.

Action Steps

• Celebrate mine awareness day on April 4.
• Volunteer with HI through its international headquarters in Lyon, France.