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Safe Water

  • Writer: Arlene Bax
    Arlene Bax
  • Jun 8
  • 6 min read


Darkness shields the river. Mist swirls through the air and covers the water. In the blackness, Saw Htee[1] and his colleague lift the water tank from its hiding place beneath the bushes and carry it down to the waiting long boat. Fully loaded, the boat leaves the Thai banks and putts off, down the Moei River, the 327-kilometre snake of water meandering through jungle that forms the border separating Thailand and Myanmar.

 

Myanmar is a beautifully diverse country in both landscape and ethnicity, home to over 135 recognised ethnic groups including the Shan, Kachin, Karen and Rohingya. Unfortunately the country is governed by military rule, and has a long history of subjecting minority groups to persecution leaving over 3.5 million people internally displaced.[2]  To the west of the country, the Rohingya have fled their traditional lands on mass across the western border into Bangladesh, while here in the east, Karen have crossed into Thailand seeking safety from bombs, fighting and village raids.

 

“In my village there was always fighting. At night you could not sleep because you are worried that the military would attack,” explains Saw Htee. “When I was three the military attacked our village. If they saw anyone, they would kill them, women, men, children…  when they entered the village, they burnt all the houses. When the military came, we had to leave, if they caught us, they would kill us and do very horrible things to us.”

 

In the murky dark the team glide upriver and are escorted to the other side where they will either set off on foot or start the journey to roads end via a hired truck, carrying community water filters, containers and tanks to Karen communities situated up along Myanmar’s east. Karen villages are routinely bombed or ransacked by the military, forcing communities to keep on the move, or relocate to other settlements, setting up new camps as they go.

 


“The first night after our village was attacked, we did not get far, maybe a two or three hour walk, then we slept in the jungle. The next day we continued to walk. If we found a place in the jungle we felt was safe, we stayed there, maybe for a week or a month at a time. When the Myanmar military came near, we continued to move. We did this for a whole year. Then we moved to a village and stayed there, but because the Myanmar military were still attacking villages we had to keep moving.” explains Saw Htee. His family were on the move through the jungle for six years.

 

This constant movement and resettling by Karen communities means that safe drinking water is always scarce or non-existent. E.coli and other faecal contamination in water sources is common. Sanitation and hygiene are also lacking with open defecation high and outbreaks of cholera, dysentery and diarrhoea common. “Many children fall sick each year with cholera or intestinal worms because they do not have good hygiene and sanitation,” says Saw Htee.

“This constant battle with dirty water has devastating consequences for children. Frequent diarrhea leads to malnutrition or undernutrition and stunting, which can critically impact a child's brain development”, says Fleur from Safe Water Myanmar.  More severe cases may also lead to death. In Myanmar, diarrhoea is one of the leading causes of child mortality. In 2021, 10% of the deaths of children under 5 in Myanmar were due to diarrhoea (the highest rate for any country outside of Africa.)[3]. Together with other waterborne and preventable diseases this takes a devastating toll on displaced families and communities in Myanmar. Saw Htee’s family were not immune.  “When we were running through the jungle my sister passed away. I think she got cholera, but because we didn’t have any medicine and we weren’t anywhere near a medical centre, there was nothing we could do. Cholera is very quick. “


 

In 2019,  Saw Htee started working with Safe Water Myanmar, a small NGO, supported by Amos, that is working to deliver and install water filters to Karen communities along the Thai-Myanmar border.  “I am the regional coordinator.  If we see that a community, school or clinic needs clean water, we will investigate. First, we test the quality of the water source.”  95% of the primary water sources Safe Water Myanmar have tested along the Thai-Burma border have been unsafe to drink[4].  Safe Water Myanmar then work with the community, to plan the installation, followed by building and testing the water filter in the community, school and clinic.[1] 

 

Safe Water Myanmar installs more than 20 - 30 community filters each year and feedback and testing results have been positive. "The year after the water filter was installed, there were no cases of cholera in the camp and fewer diarrhoea cases”, reported the medic at Ei Htu Hta IDP camp. “The children are not sick and can go to school even during rainy season, when we used to see a lot of sick children and adults."

 

“We are not at 100% yet,” says Saw Htee, of the disease reduction results. ”That is because sanitation is still lacking. Some of the children still use the forest as the rest room, and they don’t know how to wash their hands. My hope for the future is that, with enough support, we can work with the children to change their behaviour, to build their WASH knowledge, so they have a healthier future.”

 

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Mae Sot, a city that spans the river on both sides of the border tethered together by a single two-lane bridge. It is a city bustling with people and entrepreneurs of both large and small scale. The market offers up a tasty array of delicacies, toads and snails to exotic tropical fruits. It is where you can find sticks of the thanaka tree, traditionally pounded and rubbed as paste on faces as a natural sunscreen. The regular city sounds are occasionally interspersed with the far-off sounds of bombing and artillery fire taking place across the border. As we drive, we are stopped at regular intervals by military or police for ID checks and questioning.

 

Karen communities spread across Mae Sot and throughout villages hugging the border. Many people in these villages are undocumented. In Myanmar the 1982 citizenship law[5] introduced a hierarchy of citizenship, essentially ranking citizens in class and excluding entire ethnic groups from citizenship in their own country[6]. “My biggest dream in life is that I want to be a citizen,” says Saw Htee, “I was born in the jungle. I have never known what it is to be a citizen of a country.”  A birth certificate is considered a fundamental human right[7] and being denied one has on flowing repercussions, rendering people basically ‘invisible’ from the state excluding them from access to education, healthcare and social protection. This is the reality for many Karen. In the face of this the minority group show incredible resilience, setting up unregistered schools and medical care for their community and forming watch groups to report on police and military action on both sides of the border. Knowledge is widely spread and resources often pooled and shared.

 

Due to the documentation status of the majority of Karen, schools on both sides of the boarders for Karen students are generally run by the Karen community themselves and function outside of government support. This means all infrastructure, teaching and materials need to come from community resources or donations. Many children travel unaccompanied across the border to attend school and take up board in crowded dormitories at the schools.

 

Tanks and community water filters set up by Safe Water Myanmar ensures that large communities of resident students have an easily accessible source of safe drinking water thus reducing the rates of diarrhoea and dysentery among the students. Safe Water Myanmar staff work with students to understand the importance of proper handwashing. “I want to help improve the situation, the past was very bad, so I want to help it get better.” Says Saw Htee of his work. “If their knowledge can grow, then maybe the next generation will be even better. This is what inspires me.”



Photographs for this article: Aimee Dehaan, Arlene Bax and smaller images courtesy of Safe Water Myanmar.


This article can be found in Issue 8 of the Amos Magazine along with many more great stories.

[1] This is a pseudonym

[4] (according to WHO standards.)

 


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