Naw Maylary Htoo     

Kaw Thoo Lei is the name given for our homeland. There are three major Karen groups namely Sgaw, Pwo and Bwe. The largest group is the Sgaw and I belong to that group. I was born in Tauggyi in 1969. My father was a Reverent, before that he was a soldier in Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and my mother was a nursery school teacher. I did my primary and metric in Burma. My name is Maylerry Htoo. I have five children and a loving husband. He has lost a leg. Now I am working in Nursery school as a teacher and also teach the keyboard to young children. I am also a housekeeper and a mother at home.

In March 1989. I left Rangoon leaving most of our belongs behind. I came with my parents, my four sisters and their families. We came by bus to Own Chit Koae and with 13 family members and 17 coolies (porters). We started our long trek. My father could not walk so he had to be carried and my nieces and nephews were also very small and needed to be carried. Again, we had to leave behind most of what little we had brought from Rangoon because we could not carry much. But we did not mind.

It took us over 2 months to reach our destination. We were slowed down because of the children and the old folks. I got malaria and I was very sick, so sometimes we had to stop. We carried our mosquito nets, which we used at night to get rid of the mosquito, and at daytime we caught fishes. We did not carry rice and so we depended on the villages. We came across buying food. We reached Wallei in June 1989 and stayed there. It is a small village along Moie River. The other side was Thailand and the village extended up to there. I already finished my metric there. Around this time the Burmese military operations came close to our place. They captured the nearest stronghold in Pale. We had no defense and so we moved to Thai village.

We moved here in1992. When we came here there were only 3 or 4 thousand people in the camp. The building and houses were very small. Now something had changed but our life was not betted. We heard our people inside Burma and their situation was too bad as the enemies killed, murdered, burnt the house, and destroyed their rice. So they had no food to eat. We hope and pray the situation will change. We hope too that the International community will help. As human beings, we want human rights; freedom to have education, freedom to move another place.

On 17^th December 1993, I married. Before marriage on 16^th October 1992, my husband was injured by an enemy mine. His right leg was broken and left foot was lost. Now he runs the artificial limbs workshop in the Maela camp. 

I have my Peace Music Group to play the keyboard. I started this group in 1993 with 10 pupils and now I have 52 students. We have keyboard competitions every year but for the last two years we could not because of our situation. But still one day I hope we will have a good opportunity to have education. I also teach nursery school children. Their ages round about 3 to 5 years. The school starts at 9:00 am and finished at 2:00pm. We have a nutritious meal at lunch, which is supported by an NGO group. By the way, I thank God to use me in this place. He chooses us for His Glory. Now God gave me my lovely five children. I don’t know about their future. As a mother I worry about their future. But I really believe that they are in God’s hands. God created them. He will guide them.

So at the end of this all, I want to say that, “Our life is like a boat sailing the ocean.” Our long trek is not finished yet.