Three months in a place I never could have imagined calling home. It’s SO crazy how quickly the time has flown. One of the most beautiful parts of these past three months has been watching my students and this community slowly invite me in and integrate me into their lives with such open arms. Shortly after I wrote my first blog, my students started inviting me places, and letting their silly, goofy sides come out around me. I knew I had been fully accepted when my students made me a Karenni CapCut edit and gave me a Karenni name, “Ka-nya-mo,” which means “Karenni Angel” <3
It has been such a good reminder that transitional periods (both emotional and physical) take care and time. No relationship is going to blossom overnight, and no village is going to feel like home overnight. You can’t force yourself into belonging. You just have to give it time. And how beautiful that, somehow, I feel so integrated and established now.
I struggled to choose what to include, given how much has happened over these past few months. Nonetheless, here are some of the moments, experiences, and thoughts that have stuck with me most:
Teaching and Relationships with Students
There is a certain dissonance at KSDC because the students think very highly of us teachers. They look up to us, honour us, and are constantly caring for us. And while I continue to respect this as a deeply rooted cultural aspect of the community, sometimes it feels a little ridiculous given how much more they know and have experienced compared to me. Yes, I will soon have psychology degree. I can write an APA paper and talk your ear off about the human mind. But these humans have real and practical skills. They have grit in ways that I’ve never seen.
They can make fires, fish with bamboo sticks, navigate mountains in slides, build, fix, carry, cook, improvise, and figure things out with whatever happens to be around them. They have learned to live through displacement, war, uncertainty, and loss. Some have grown up moving between countries and communities, watching pieces of their families, languages, and cultures disappear along the way. They have learned things you simply cannot teach in a classroom or at university. And yet they their jaws still drop when I run circles around them in an online words-per-minute typing test. I am a fast typer, but they will forever be the ones I look up to.
Because of this, I’ve wanted to find ways for us to simply exist together, rather than always interacting as teacher and student. Playing Uno, playing guitar with students, cooking together, painting our nails, going into Nai Soi for groceries, or just hanging out have all helped us build trust in ways that aren’t centred around language or the classroom.
I also feel much more established in my teaching role. Lesson planning can still sometimes get the best of me, but I really, really love teaching. And I think having a better understanding of my students (their personalities, interests, humour, and the things that make them excited) has made such a difference too. I showed them “The Croods”, and they LOVED IT. Something about the romance and the physical humour completely hooked them. Usually, discussions about movies trail off pretty quickly, but they could talk about this movie forever. They still bring it up and reference it in our everyday conversations haha.
The Karenni Baptist Church
I grew up in an agnostic and atheist household, so I never really understood why people went to church. Somehow, I’ve found myself going with some of my students. I don’t understand the service because it’s entirely in Burmese, and some of the prayer songs are in Karenni, but I’ve loved being able to participate in the community. The music, the singing, and the sheer sense of collectivism gives me the chills every time.
I don’t think I’ll ever identify as Christian, but being here has finally helped me understand why people go to church and what they find in it. For me, it isn’t necessarily about understanding the words or even sharing the same beliefs. There is something really beautiful about showing up on Sundays, singing together, and belonging to something bigger than yourself.
Dee Ku
Dee Ku was also celebrated multiple times this month, and I was lucky enough to take part in two of the celebrations. Dee Ku is a celebration of Karenni unity, and the number three seems to be everywhere. The Dee Ku (also the name of the sticky rice dessert) parcels are folded into triangles with three sides and three points, then traditionally tied together in bundles of three. This represents the unity of three Karenni groups: Kayah, Kayan, and Kayaw.
The exact date of Dee Ku isn’t fixed as elders determine the date through chicken-bone readings. I still don’t completely understand how the different communities coordinate the dates, but I do know that celebrations happen across KSDC, Mae Hong Son, Nai Soi, and different communities within the refugee camp.
Both Dee Ku celebrations I attended involved traditional Karenni dancing, singing, and lots of cooking. I learned how to fold the Dee Ku parcels (SO much harder than it looks haha), helped boil them, helped unwrap them, and then, most importantly, ate them with sugar, shredded coconut, and coconut milk. It was an honour standing alongside my students and the wider community as they celebrated their culture.
Learning Burmese
For the first month and a half, I was so busy settling in that I barely tried to learn Burmese. Lately, though, I’ve been trying really hard. As someone who grew up speaking English, Japanese, and French, learning a fourth language as an adult has been a completely new challenge. And I am TERRIBLE at it. I can’t read or write Burmese, and my pronunciation is questionable at best. I’ll confidently say something I think means one thing, only to be met with fifteen students laughing their butts off. But they always correct me and teach me patiently. And I think it’s shown them that it’s okay to mess up, laugh at yourself, and put yourself out there too.
Some of my most-used Burmese phrases so far (shout out to my student Veronica for helping me write this out in Burmese :P)
- မင်္ဂလာပါ = Mingalar ba = Hello
- မင်္ဂလာနံနက်ခင်းပါ = Mingalar nan-nat-khin ba = Good morning
- ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ် = Jay-zu tin-ba-de = Thank you
- Halalalala = an expression used when you mess up, feel exhausted, or are generally feeling defeated/deflated.
- A personal favourite <3
- ငါပျင်းတယ် = Nga-pyin-de = I’m feeling lazy
- (One of their favourite phrases to say in English is “Teacher, I am lazy,” so naturally I had to learn it in Burmese.)
- အရမ်းကောင်းတယ်= Ayata-gaon-de = It’s very good/delicious
- မြားမြားစား = Mya-mya-sa = Eat a lot/keep eating
- မြားမြားသောက် = Mya-mya-tot = Drink a lot/keep drinking
- မဟုတ်ဘူး = Ma-ho-bu = No
- ဟုတ်တယ် = Ho-de = Yes
- ေလးကွ = Lay-quoi = Slingshot
- နင့်အလှည့် = Nin-a-le = Your turn
- Particularly useful when playing Uno.
- And perhaps the most important vocabulary of all: အသဲကွဲ = A-te-kuway = Heartbroken
- Obviously. Our students love giggling about love, boyfriends, girlfriends, and heartbreaks.
Ajahn-Bo
On a random rainy Thursday, I was exploring the outskirts of Nai Soi when I pulled over at what looked like an abandoned temple to escape the rain. Little did I know I was about to meet Ajahn-Bo, someone I can now proudly call my monk friend. I climbed the stairs and immediately all the dogs started barking. Naturally, I assumed I was trespassing and started retreating when I heard, “Hello?” followed by, “Oh, welcome, welcome!” He waved me inside, made me a coffee, and somehow we ended up chatting for four hours.
Since then, I’ve tried to visit Ajahn-Bo about once a week, and recently Callum has started joining me. We talk about religion, politics, Buddhism, the Pali language, and life in general. He teaches me Thai phrases, tells me Buddhist stories, and shows me his collection of prayer books. He has been a monk for nearly twenty years and has lived alone at this little temple for almost twelve years. TWELVE YEARS IN SOLITUDE. He has one hell of a life story and somewhere along the way, he found peace in the mountains, in his life as a monk, and within himself.
I think Ajahn-Bo has also helped me develop a greater interest in what is around me. Before coming here, I was perhaps too busy with life to really stop and notice the plants, trees, food, and history of the place I was living in. Now, one of my students regularly tests me on the names of plants around Nai Soi, and I find myself constantly asking questions about the things I encounter. Maybe it’s because everything here is so different from home, but I’ve caught myself wondering: Why didn’t I do this sooner?
In Victoria, I sometimes felt like my attempts to learn about the land around me were things I did because I should know them. Here, that knowledge feels much more woven into everyday life. People know which plants they can eat, where food comes from, how it is prepared, what grows around them, and the stories connected to those things. It isn’t separate from daily life. It simply is daily life.
Being Without My Phone
Since being at KSDC, I’ve made a very intentional point of staying off my phone. I don’t scroll, I barely use social media, and most of the time I don’t even know where my phone is or what time it is. And I’ve been loving it.
It has made me wonder how the hell I’m supposed to bring this home with me, where we’re almost socially required to have our phones on us at all times. Here, though, life doesn’t seem to revolve around them in quite the same way. Our students might doom-scroll at night, but when they’re working, doing chores, or participating in the community, their phones are usually nowhere to be seen. Back home, sit alone in a restaurant or stand in an elevator with a stranger and suddenly one minute of silence feels unbearable. God forbid we have to just… stand there or strike up a conversation.
When you don’t have a phone readily available 24/7, you suddenly realize how many hours there are in a day. TWENTY-FOUR OF THEM. And it’s surprisingly uncomfortable. You have to decide what to do with that time instead of letting it disappear in ten-minute chunks of scrolling that somehow become two hours. Sometimes it’s lonely. Sometimes it’s boring. And sometimes you’re forced to sit with yourself.
And through all this, I’ve realized that silence is an intimate thing (with strangers and yourself!). There is always something to watch, someone to text, somewhere to be, or something to consume. Here, I’ve had much more time with myself, and I’ve had to face pretty much all of the demons in my head. I’m proud to say that at least they’re MY demons now ahaha. Ultimately, this time away from my phone has given me ownership over myself. I get to be bored. I get to think. I get to notice where I am. I know I’ll always have a phone, but I want it to be a tool in my life, rather than letting it become my life.
Aung Sun Myint’s Funeral
The first week of September, the funeral for Aung Sun Myint took place. He was the co-founder of KSDC and General Secretary of the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), a man who devoted his life to human rights, democracy, and the people of Myanmar and Karenni State. His death was a huge loss for this community and for the broader fight for democracy.
School was cancelled for the week so the students could mourn and help prepare. And there was A LOT to do. For four days, I watched the entire village of Nai Soi transform into one enormous, functioning organism. The younger boys slaughtered a cow and dug a six-foot grave. The aunties stood over the biggest woks I have ever seen. The uncles carved a wooden cross by hand. The girls made decorations, village leaders organized drums and dancing, and students served food and washed what must have been hundreds of dishes. Two people also stood guard beside the casket at all times, many of them former or current members of the Karenni Army, as Aung Sun Myint had been. They weren’t simply guarding a body. They were standing beside one of their own.
The funeral brought together government officials, soldiers, resistance groups, political leaders, elders, and people from across Karenni State and Myanmar. A wall was covered with letters from NGOs, political parties, liberation forces, armies, and embassies around the world, including the United States Embassy. Standing there reading them, I began to understand just how far Aung Sun Myint’s life and work had reached. His death was felt far beyond the people who knew him personally.
And somehow, in the middle of all of this, I was there. Helping students scoop rice, eating snacks with people I had never met, chewing betel nut mixed with fish sauce and tobacco, laughing, and sitting alongside people who are incredibly wise. It was an incredible honour.
What confused me most was how different the funeral felt from my very Western understanding of what a funeral is supposed to be. Because it was sad. Obviously. There was grief everywhere. But there was also so much life. There was food, music, dancing, laughter, and stories. Some people even stayed awake through the entire night, simply so the family would not have to grieve alone.
In Canada, funerals can feel very contained. A day, maybe two, followed by a ceremony, some food, condolences, and everyone goes home. Here, grief was given time. Days and nights. There was no rushing it. You could pray and then laugh, sit beside a casket and then go outside and dance, spend the night and wake up the next morning to start cooking again. Somehow, it all made sense.
And most of all, people showed up. Not because they were obligated to or because they had been invited, but because someone had died. And when someone dies, you show up. Aung Sun Myint spent his life fighting for a future for the people here. In the days after his death, I watched those same people gather around one another, cooking, digging, singing, praying, laughing, grieving, and carrying on.
It was a funeral. But somehow, it also felt like a celebration of everything he had spent his life trying to protect. And maybe that is what stayed with me most. Not simply that a great man had died, but that for four days, an entire community stopped what it was doing and said: You mattered. And then they showed it.
The Dichotomy of KSDC
When Robyn (our program manager) came to visit Callum and I, she talked about the duality of KSDC. I’ve been thinking about it since the day I got here and I think it’s something that deserves to be explored. Geographically and in terms of community, KSDC/Nai Soi is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever lived. But none of that takes away from the fact that, at times, it is a hard place to be. For me in small ways, but for my students and this displaced community in ways I am still learning to understand.
The night before my first visa run to Kuala Lumpur, I was sitting in the outdoor classroom with one of my students, Su-Reh. For the first two months, I had wondered how he lost his leg, but I never felt it was my place to ask. That night, our conversation turned from school and homework to politics, war, and world history. He told me about friends he had lost, weapons he had handled, and eventually showed me videos from September 2024; the day he stepped on a landmine and lost his left leg. I’ve been around death, trauma, and medical emergencies through my work in Victoria, but that video still haunts me.
What gets me most is that Su-Reh is my age, 23. While I’ve spent the last few years worrying about university, relationships, jobs, and what I want to do with my life, he had already spent four years fighting a war. And somehow, he ended up sitting in an outdoor classroom learning English with me.
That conversation made me painfully aware of how relative everything is. He and his friends are still fighting for basic human rights while, thousands of kilometres away, someone my age in Victoria might be walking along the beach with an iced oat latte, listening to their newest favourite album. There is no judgement in that comparison, I was there only three months ago. It just made me realize how easily places like Myanmar can bleed quietly enough for much of the world to look away.
I’ve had many similar occurrences. At the funeral, I met two Karenni Army soldiers, Oo-Reh and Li-Reh, who casually talked about being shot at, rockets, grenades, and nearly dying. Li-Reh showed me a massive scar and hole across his back. Oo-Reh joked about carrying him up a mountain for four hours after he was injured. They both laughed, raised their glasses of Karenni wine, and cheered to it. I remember standing there thinking: What on earth do you even say to that? I’ve heard teachers and elders talk about travelling through the jungle to get here and casually mention avoiding landmines along the way: “When I have to pee, I get out of the car and just make sure to watch my step”. They say it with the same tone I might use to say, “I’m just going to stop for coffee”.
One thing that has struck me is how openly people here can talk and joke about experiences I can barely comprehend. Not because those experiences aren’t serious, but because humour seems to be one of the ways people carry them. I can spend an afternoon laughing with my students, eating with people I’ve grown close to, or sitting on top of a mountain feeling completely at peace, and then hear a story about something incredibly horrific. That is one of the hardest parts of being here. Not because this place is sad, it isn’t. It is full of laughter, food, music, chickens, mountains, dancing, dogs, motorbikes, chaotic classrooms, and some of the warmest and kindest people I’ve ever met. It’s hard because all of that exists alongside things I had previously only ever read about in the news.
The beauty and the hardship don’t cancel each other out. They exist simultaneously. I can be incredibly grateful for where I am while also feeling deeply unsettled by what the people around me have had to endure to get here. This place hasn’t made my own problems disappear, and it hasn’t made me immune to homesickness, loneliness, or frustration. It has simply made my whole world much, much bigger.
Someone once told me that Southeast Asia is like Pandora’s box; once you experience it, you can never really go back. They were probably talking about backpacking, but standing here now, I get it in a way that goes far deeper than travel. My world has grown immeasurably bigger. Pisi is three times the size she was when we arrived, rainy season is slowly beginning to clear, and my students are speaking English with increasingly beautiful confidence, and I continue to be stretched in ways I couldn’t have imagined before stepping into this village. With whatever time I have left here, I want to bask into every remaining second. I want to embrace the quiet mornings, the giggles in class and the remarkable people who have shared their strength, their grief, and their lives with me. Until my next blog!!!
