In the third and last in a series of prize-winning entries in the IOM’s Media and Migration Competition, first place Magdalena Vaculciakova spends a pleasant afternoon with the Khupsawns - one of many Burmese families who have made new homes in central Europe
‘Burma, No! No!” Mr Khupsawn was repeating when I asked him about Burma. Eventually it came out ¬– there is no Burma anymore. It has been the Union of Myanmar since 1989.
It is difficult to get information about the country. “There are very few sources available,” says Ludmila Sovova, the social assistant of the Khupsawns, a Burmese family that lives in Vsetin. She is accompanying me to my meeting with them, and I am eager to find out how their life is after two years in the Czech Republic.
Two different worlds
Burma has been under the rule of a military junta since 1962. However, there have been various attempts to change the regime. Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi is the most widely known face of this change. But except for this information, there is little news you can get about Burma in Europe. Different reports of NGOs and international organisations say that there is no freedom, only poverty and famine. And there are only two seasons a year – the rainy one and the dry one.
The Czech Republic is an EU member state in central Europe. It declares freedom of the press and it guarantees all human rights to its population. Life in central Europe definitely sounds better than in south east Asia, in spite of the fact that there are four seasons – one of them snowy and freezing.
It must be a significant change when a person comes from the middle of a green jungle where everybody grows their own food, to survive to a concrete jungle where people need money to survive. How is it to be cold during the winter when for the first 30 years of your life you knew only sun and rain? Or from the other point of view, how is it to leave the place of fear and come to the one where freedom is essential?
Ludmila tells me that the Khupsawn family smiles all the time, but to be honest I cannot imagine it, as I know nobody like that here in Europe. Their front door is locked, so we wait for Siang – Mr Khupsawn – to open it for us. He comes to the door with a wide smile on his face, holding his son’s hand. He greets neighbours with their dog in the hall and makes his son smile when playing with the pet. Gideon is two-and-a-half years old; he was born in Malaysia in a refugee camp.
Siang invites us to their flat with two rooms, the living area dominated by a large flat-screen television. “We have just bought it,” he says. “Finally I got a job last year in July, so everything is good now.”
Later on, he repeats the importance of having a job many times. And it is not only because of his poor knowledge of the Czech language. He works in a local factory, day or night shifts. The factory is just next to the block of flats where they live in.
Siang Peng Lian Khupsawn, the father of the family, tells the story of how he came to leave his homeland. “There is a very bad government in Burma,” he says. “I was forced to enter the military service although I did not want to. I lasted one month. All the soldiers were drinking alcohol all the time. I had to run away. Consequently, I could not stay in Burma anymore, because they would arrest me.”
Siang went to Malaysia, where thousands of Burmese refugees are still living. “In Malaysia, you can work, however it is illegal,” he says. “And when there is no work, you just pay and they find you some.” He worked as an electrician.
Prospects in Malaysia were slim, he says, noting that he could not claim asylum –because if he told them he was a Burmese refugee, they would surely have sent him back to Burma.
Then a chance to go the west came up. Siang registered with the UNHCR and hoped to go to Canada or Norway. “The best would have been moving to the USA. My brother lives there and you do not need a certificate of apprenticeship to find a good job. But now we also have a job here in the Czech Republic, so it is okay.”
Starting over
At that time Siang had been alone in Malaysia, his girlfriend, Tawk Men Tiol, remained in Burma. After an interview with the UNHCR officer, she had to come to the refugee camp where the couple had a wedding – allowing them to leave Asia together. While waiting for plane tickets and all the administration to be done, Gideon was born. So there were already three of them when they came to the Czech Republic in February 2009.
After a couple of months in the asylum centre, Vsetin town offered them a flat. That was the moment when Ludmila Sovova arrived to help them with the troubles they had to solve.
“Mr Khupsawn, I will come on Friday and we will fill in the form together,” Ludmila says. Siang checks his working hours in March and agrees on the appointment.
“When we came here, we could not understand Czech so it was very difficult to manage communication with offices and filling in the papers alone,” he says. “Ludmila helped us a lot, and she also did shopping with us and showed us the town. She accompanied us to the hospital, too.”
At the beginning, the Khupsawn family spent every day with their social assistant. However it is not necessary anymore, although she still assists them regularly.
Recently, Ludmila set up a garden where the Burmese can grow their own vegetables and fruits. As they say, the town they come from is very small. There is only a post office, a police station, one school and a hospital. Very few people can work within those services, so the rest are farmers. There are big shops and offices only in Rangoon, the biggest city and former capital before the government moved their power base deep into the jungle in 2005.
“A friend of mine has a garden, so he will tell what to grow. But we would like to have tomatoes, celery, carrots,” says Tawk. “They even grow their celery and carrots plant pots on the window,” adds Ludmila.
“It is better to have your own vegetables. You do not have to spend money on them,” explains Siang logically.
His wife can cook four Czech meals she learnt from the Czech language teacher that she befriended. But mostly they eat rice with vegetables like they used to eat back home.
“And we also eat bread,” says Siang. “Now I have bread for breakfast and a snack when I am at work. But it has taken us some time until we got used to it.”
New lifestyle
Ludmilla says the Khupsawn family has integrated into Czech society quite well. Last year, the Burma Centre in Prague conducted research on how the Czech population perceives Burmese families in towns and villages where they live. According to the results of the survey, Czechs expect immigrants to have working qualifications necessary in the country and to adapt to the Czech lifestyle. Practically, for the immigrants there is no other way: they have to change their eating habits, family traditions and even their religion.
The Khupsawns plan to have three children, because it is very expensive to have more in Europe. “However, in Burma, I know a couple that has 12 children,” says Siang. “Usually, it is about six to eight children. But we cannot afford them out of our country.”
They also had to adjust their religious beliefs as their church does not exist in the Czech Republic. “So we joined the Baptist church in Vsetin,” Khupsawn explains. “Every Sunday we go to the mass. But it is still different from Burma. There you meet the whole group of families and you go to church together. Maybe the reason is that I don’t speak Czech well enough to have more friends here.”
The language barrier seems to be the biggest problem within the integration process. Tawk speaks very little during my visit. She wants to speak perfectly so if she is not sure about the grammar, she prefers to be quiet. She brings bananas on the table and pours sparkling water into my glass every time it is empty. At some moments she understands better my Czech than her husband.
“When I am at their place, talking to Mr Khupsawn and he does not understand but she does, she always translates to him,” says Ludmila. “However, I would say she is a bit servile. I remember when we went to see a doctor she was walking about three meters behind us. Well, she is servile, but only at public places, not at home.” Ludmila smiles.
The Khupsawns do everything together. They walk in a park or the long way to supermarket. Tawk only goes to the maternal centre with Gideon when Siang is working. Family means everything to them.
“We call to Burma very often through Skype,” says Siang. “My father is already 70 years old, but he is healthy. The only problem is that my brothers and sisters live in Denmark, the USA and Malaysia. We are not together.”
Snow is no problem
After two years in the country, Siang finally got a job and found more friends. He and his wife proundly show me around the small but very cosy flat. They even open the fridge for me. They are still smiling.
When I ask about how they perceive Czechs, they compare them to Burmese. “It is the same here and in Burma. When I greet anyone on the street, there are people who reply and some that do not do so,” Siang says. “I just cannot talk to the people here more, because I do not understand.”
He expresses his disappointment about the difficulty of the new language. Yet “dobre dobre, dobre” – Czech for “good, good, good” – resonates in the small living room at the beginning of each answer to my questions. Indeed, they seem to be really satisfied with life in Europe.
“Yes, you have snow here, but 35 degrees in Burma is too much!” Both spouses laugh. “We have everything we need for a life in Vsetin. The policy in the Czech Republic is good. The [health] insurance is very good. Comparing it to Burma, there is no insurance and neither can you draw benefits. Comparing it to the dream USA, you do not have to pay huge money in hospitals. The policy is important.”
Now I understand that when someone lives in fear with no freedom or the status of even an asylum holder, he just tries to adapt to the new environment and is happy about every little thing that is taken for granted by those living in the same place all their lives.
“I cannot say whether the situation in Burma will change,” says Siang. “If so, I would like to go there again. But I cannot go there now; they would arrest me.
“Now, it is important that our Gideon goes to school and that I have job. It is the most important thing. And another very important thing for us is to learn Czech.”
He smiles, and offers me a banana – or it’s better to say he does not want to let me leave without taking one. All of them stand at the door and wave. Their smiles are infectious.
On reflection as I walk away, I am disappointed that there is no ‘journalistic’ topic in their story – it is too positive, with optimistic characters. But after a while I change my mind. It’s not only negative stories that deserve to be published, after all.
This is an edited version of the first placed entry the International Organization for Migration’s Media Competition, published with the permission of the Migrants in the Spotlight project. For further details visit www.mits-eu.org
