Jack

After planting ourselves at Urban Fuzion's hip little sidewalk bar, across from the Hua Hin Police Station, we heard one customer ask, "Hey, where's Jack?" This was a question that we ourselves would later ask every time we stopped there, but this time, one of his Thai coworkers replied, inscrutably, "Jack no work today."

Interesting. Moments later, a compact young man appeared, grinning and personable, at our table. He posed the usual greeting about how we were doing. I was fine, but Bill was feeling less than perfect. "Whassup?" says the lad. After Bill shared the sad news of a hangover, the boy empathized, saying that he felt much the same and, in fact, had a headache to boot. The guy seemed delighted to hang around chatting with us between his other bar duties. I began to suspect that this might be exactly the sort of person customers would inquire about and go out of their way to visit--a customer magnet like his Irish boss, Dave, in other words.

"Are you Jack?" I asked.

Thus began a long-running conversation at Urban Fuzion. While traveling, one sometimes meets an unforgettable character like this.

Jack is a server/bartender at both The Admiral Bar & Grill and its two-doors-down sister establishment, Urban Fuzion. He has a sweet smile, a Marilyn Monroe birthmark, and charm out the wazoo. He makes one of the best Bloody Marys in town.

His real name means something along the lines of "deserves to be king." Thus he is also a tribute to resilience and perseverance.

Jack can say "thank you" in about eleven tongues and speaks excellent English, though he will modestly deny it. Otherwise we would have been unable to discern nearly as much of his story as we did.

Born the youngest of seven brothers, in a village in Burma, Jack is a member of the Karen, the largest of several different hill tribes in Burma, Laos, and Thailand. Among these tribes are the more visible Hmong, or Miao, who can be found hawking their wares on the street, far from home, throughout Thailand.

This young lady, selling trinkets that are completely alien to her own
native faith, is Hmong, from the far north of Thailand.

The Karen reportedly have a population equal to Switzerland's, though they are now so scattered throughout the area that no reliable census has been taken since 1931.

Each Burmese tribe speaks its own unique language, and none supports the ruling government of the newly named Myanmar.  A few still pursue a centuries-old slash-and-burn lifestyle, subsisting on wild game, planting crops, burning their fields, and moving on as needed. They also grind up their own cosmetics from roots. Jack has, in the past, shampooed his hair--traditionally mid-back-length but swept up in a soft swirl atop his head--with this sort of stuff.

Beginning in 1988, the Karen people rose up against the Burmese dictatorship and were systematically crushed. As many as 160,000 Burmese Karen were relocated from their destroyed homes into refugee camps along the Thai border.

A 2013 Bangkok Post article claimed, "Nearly a million hill peoples and forest dwellers are still treated as outsiders--criminals even, since most live in protected forests. Viewed as national security threats, hundreds of thousands of them are refused citizenship although many are natives to the land." The Burmese government initially portrayed their way of life as destructive to the environment; now their active resistance has made them total outcasts.  As recently as four years ago, Karen people were tortured, raped, conscripted as child soldiers, blackmailed, taxed, and rendered homeless.

A Burmese official once accused Jack's uncle of sedition and possession of illegal firearms, a complete fabrication. He then suggested that the man purchase a gun so that the official could seize it and then, having proved his point, leave Jack's uncle alone.

In 1997, a Burmese Army general trod on the flag of Jack's tribe, announcing that in twenty years Karen people would be found only in a museum. The same year, Jack's family were relocated toTham Hin Camp on the Thai border, where they still live. Conditions there are kept purposely rudimentary, with only rickety bamboo structures and thin plastic roofing allowed, lest it catch fire. The camp is a small town in itself, many of whose residents have never seen the hills and forests of their original homes, and half of whom have lost any desire to return. But somehow, some of them, like Jack, survive and thrive.

The resilience of the people at Tham Hin Camp will 

win your heart, as it did Angelina Jolie's.

Tham Hin Camp has its own primary and secondary schools, as well as Ternawthari Junior College. Jack learned English here from a Californian teacher, completed its two-year college curriculum in one year, and now feels committed to passing on his knowledge to others in the camp. All of his relatives look up to him.

But he is one of very few who are bold enough to venture away from the camp. One 2013 study--Invited but not (always) willing to go: Refugees in Tham Hin camp ..., by Susanne Walter--cites camp dwellers' reluctance to split their families by relocating or exploring opportunities elsewhere.

Case Study: A 44 year old married woman with six children has not considered resettlement. She prefers to remain in the camp and see if the situation in Myanmar, where her father [and] siblings still live, will  improve.

Complicating matters, people at the camp receive inconsistent information about resettlement or even how to register for resettlement. This, combined with fear and reluctance to leave the relative security of camp, makes cases like Jack's rare. For Jack or his brothers, back at the camp, to emigrate as far as Europe or the United States would require what would, for us, seem almost unimaginable courage and luck.

Jack is partway there, in that he is working in a wealthy Thai resort town. The rest of his journey will depend on his own strength, good fortune, and ability to overcome continuing discrimination against the Burmese.