Waist-deep in Mae Sot: NTU students brave weather, overcome barriers to report from Thai border town

Wading through waist-high water during heavy rain, visiting a refugee camp and relying on Google Translate to communicate – these were what some Nanyang Technological University (NTU) communication studies students experienced before they started their final year of studies during their visit to the Thai border town of Mae Sot, which shares a border with Myanmar, this year.

The 13 students were on a 12-day trip from July 26 to August 6 under the Go-Far (Going Overseas for Advanced Reporting) programme, a journalism module of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at NTU. Each year, students under the programme travel to a different overseas location to self-source stories, reporting in different formats. This year, the students travelled to Mae Sot, transiting through Bangkok, accompanied by two school lecturers, Mr Ian Yong Hoe Tan and Mr Samuel He.

Said Mr Tan of this year’s location: “The civil war in Myanmar has been going on for about four years now. There’s been a lot of displaced Myanmar people streaming into Thailand, and Mae Sot is one of the key refugee centres.”

The students found and collected stories on different aspects of the refugees’ lives, and how policies affected their everyday lives. Working in pairs, they had to think on their feet to overcome the language barrier with interviewees who did not speak English as they did not always have translators.

Said a student leader for the trip, Miss Bapat Sara Manish, 22, who worked on a story about access to safe and clean water in Mae Sot: “My partner and I had a very interesting experience of interviewing someone using just Google Translate beside a waterfall.”

The students have since been pitching their stories to media outlets, and a compilation of their stories will also appear in a book to be released by the school in October.

Here are some memorable moments students – currently all in their final year – told TLDR.

Interviewing freedom fighters and their family members

One pair of students looked for Myanmar “freedom fighters” who were fighting against the junta, and their family members in Mae Sot. They were able to speak to about 25 such fighters, of which they interviewed about 20.

Mr Lok Bing Hong, 24:

Originally, I wanted to compare the mindsets of the older generation of revolutionaries to the younger generation. But the story slowly developed when we realised many of them were contributing to the revolution from Mae Sot, sending funds and supplies back home.

We interviewed some of them in a community space. Some even came to our hotel to speak to us. This one guy I spoke to rode up in a motorcycle, got off his bike, and said: “Give me a minute, because I need to put on my leg.” And I was like, oh, what do you mean you have to put on your leg? And I looked, and he had a full metal prosthetic left leg.

Miss Lynn Wen Wen, 23:

We interviewed the wife of a “freedom fighter” who’s fighting in Myanmar. She told me that before she came to Mae Sot, when the military raided her house, she actually had to jump and escape from the third storey of her house with her dog, before coming here.

We were trying to ask, like, “Are you sad that you can’t get to talk to your husband?’ But she’s a super positive person. She said she was glad that her husband is fighting in the frontline because she herself can’t do so as they don’t accept female soldiers.

When I was taking her photo, she just kept smiling. It was just pretty unexpected and it was a very nice interaction.

Visiting a refugee camp

Through their contacts, a pair of students gained access to the Mae La refugee camp, the largest of nine camps along the Thai-Myanmar border. They wanted to report on how refugees there were affected by the end of food assistance from Aug 1 due to

cuts in US Agency for International Development (USAid)

funding

.

The students have since managed to get a report published in the South China Morning Post and are pitching their story to more media outlets.

Miss Janelle Ling, 22:

I was a bit lost as to how I should take my pictures. I like street photography, but I also was worried that this black thing (my camera) I’m holding was eye-catching, and I didn’t want to bring attention to it. We were visitors, and the last thing I wanted was for our access to get cut short. So every time I didn’t need my camera, I would put it behind my back. But if I see something, it’s always on and I’ll take a quick snap. When I saw some kids, I wanted to take their picture, but I didn’t want to make them uncomfortable, so I thought to ask first, but they ran into a shop. It’s a small thing, but it made me think, what is the right way to do this? Do I ask, or do I not ask?

Miss Taryn Ng, 21:

At the end of all the interviews, our last stop was this high school. We spoke to some students, and they also let us speak to their teacher, a regular guy, 31 years old. We wanted to find out if these USAid cuts will affect his job. As we were chatting, we found that he actually entered this camp when he was 13, and now he’s 31, and he’s been working at the same job for 1,000 baht (S$40) a month for the past 10 years. He said: “When I was 18, I had dreams of resettling”. He was referring to this resettling programme where refugees could go to the US or Australia, but have since stopped. So, we asked him, “How do you feel now that it has stopped?” He paused for a while and said, “I have no feelings because it’s been so long, I’m used to living here.”

Afterwards, he told us, “I make these mini donuts to sell to my students.” He opened this big container and there were these small plastic tubs of donuts with glaze and sprinkles. Why is this teacher making these cute donuts to sell to his students? It’s to supplement his income because he’s the oldest of six siblings.

It’s a story of lost dreams. How can someone be in the same place for 10 years? He has been applying for resettlement for the past two years, and he is still trying. How many of us can apply for the same university for two years and still continue applying?

We bought six tubs of donuts. There are two small donuts in one tub. After I went back, I took a bite of a donut and I felt emotional. The donut is so sweet and tasty, but the story behind it is almost cruel.

Filming in a flooded village

Another pair of students found themselves caught in heavy rain and floods when they visited a village in Mae Pa to film a documentary. Wading through water that reached calf and even waist-high at some points, they nevertheless persevered, and managed to capture some footage.

Miss Toh Tian Ji, 22

I was holding a camera, and I had a rain jacket on. It’s my first time witnessing a flood, and it’s also in a village environment, so it was really eye-opening talking to the villagers and asking them how their situation is like, and how the flood affects them. It was really hard to talk to them, because it was raining so heavily, and they’re actually experiencing the flood, and trying to get stuff sorted out as well.

When we were talking to them, one villager pointed out to one of my lecturers that there was a pregnant lady there, and she was trying to get transportation to the clinic. She had a fever and was going into early labour. She was in quite a lot of pain. We had a lorry, so we offered her a ride and followed her. We drove 15 minutes to the hospital. We went back the next day to talk and interview her, but it was not included in our documentary. We chose to leave the interview out as we wanted it to be an observational documentary so we rely more on B-rolls and their conversations between each other to tell the story.

Miss Faith Peh, 22

It felt so surreal when we eventually saw her baby.

For our video, there’s no narration since there were no interviews as well. We put it together from clips from their conversations and the audio from the video. The documentary as a whole just shows these people’s lives to the audience, how we followed them, and how their lives unfold. It’s very “unfiltered”.

For more information:

https://www.ntu.edu.sg/wkwsci/admissions/experiential-learning/gofar