Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
the pilots think it was they who were signaling and not insurgents
shooting? They settled on lighting fires day and night at the campsite
and stoking them to create billows of smoke.
The group went to Black Spot to ask him to enlist the tribe’s help
in finding more rocks and fuel, certain they would be grateful for
American ingenuity. But instead of exuberance, Black Spot looked
resigned. He had to tell them now. “They cannot be helping you.
When the soldiers are finding you, they are finding the Karen people,
too,” he said. “Then they killing us.”
Oh no, my friends assured them, no one would blame the tribe for
the tourists’ getting lost. It was the bridge that fell down. That was
plain to see. And when they were found, the group would be sure to
say right away that the tribe had helped them and were wonderful
hosts. Maybe they would even get a bonus from the tour operator.
“Tell them that,” they urged Black Spot.
“They are not believing that,” Black Spot said. He again tried to
explain to his guests that there was a reason these people lived in No
Name Place. They had come here to hide. To the SLORC soldiers,
they were like goats, animals to be hunted and slaughtered. They
would keep hunting them until a SLORC leader’s dream had come
true: that the only Karen you could see in Burma was stuffed and in
the glass case of a museum.
“That’s a terrible thing to say,” Roxanne agreed, while thinking
that the tribe, like many other uneducated folks, had taken things so
literally. “But it’s an empty threat. They couldn’t possibly do that.”
Black Spot put his hand over his chest. “This here empty,” he said.
“We all empty.” Sweat poured down his face. “If the soldiers then
finding us in No Name Place, we already dead people. We better be
jumping into big hole in the earth.” He paused, and then decided to
tell them why he had brought them there. “We cannot helping you
leave No Name Place. We bringing you here to help us.”
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