With no clear answer on what to do, Dave prayed for a way FBR could help.  Minutes later, he opened his computer to find an email from ____–they had relief supplies, but no means of transporting them to the camp.   FBR had trucks and rangers ready.  Doh Say, a Karenni FBR leader, led the trip, joined by Jonathan, Lisa, and me.

The mission would be no slam dunk.  Refugee camps in Thailand notoriously restrict visitors—especially foreigners, since the camps “technically” do not exist.  Despite the challenges, our team took off Saturday morning for an anticipated five-hour drive.

Ten hours and several engine overheating stops later, our truck rambled into the first checkpoint along the road the refugee camp.  We were not sure what would happen next.  Three hours prior, we received a phone call that the camp gate would close at 5 p.m.  We prayed for an opening and kept moving, anticipating that we might sleep on the hood of the truck at the camp gate.

News quickly turned worse.  A Thai army at our checkpoint told us that only 30 minutes ago, the refugee camp commander called up and said “Allow no more trucks through.”

“You missed it by half-an-hour,” the soldier explained.  “Only registered NGOs and people with camp permits.”

We had neither.  We decided to wait them out.  Two other trucks from Chiang Mai arrived just in front of us.  They received the same frustrating news.

After waiting 30 minutes, the Thai soldiers came to us and said they called the camp commander who would allow us to drive to the gate and then make a determination there.  With no guarantees our relief supplies or our FBR team could get into the camp, we pushed ahead.  There would be no turning around for the next two hours.

The road to Camp 2 winds up and down a ravine, crossing a large river in at least a dozen places.  The off-road trail requires four-wheel drive with deep ruts and steep climbs through the jungle—picture taking the back entrance to Jurassic Park.  With darkness already upon us, the pace slowed to a crawl.

Two hours later, our truck entered the rocky flats along the riverbed.  A surreal world greeted us.  Hundreds of candlelit tents lined the steep canyon walls around, reflecting off the snake-like river our trucked waded through.  We drove straight up the river in places, finally coming to a halt at an oasis of technology in this remote camp: the emergency response center, complete with satellites, internet, and aid workers.

Doh Say stepped out to negotiate.

“We can go,” he told us minutes later.  If we had a place to stay in the camp, we could walk in and drive our truck in tomorrow.  “Hurry before they change their mind,” Doh Say stressed.

By flashlight, we began a walk into an extraordinary land of suspended bamboo walkways and tree trunk footbridges.  Crisscrossing the river, entered a portion of the refugee camp burned to the ground.  The air smelled of recently scorched earth and, in places, the fire still burned and logs continued to smolder.  Charred bamboo poles rose eerily from the ground and each step left footprints in the ash.

We soon arrived at the bamboo home of the camp chairwoman.  I’m not sure whether they knew of our arrival, but they made space for us to sleep in and prepared dinner.

We rose in the morning to deliver relief supplies, including rice and cooking materials, and begin interviewing victims.  We made visits to families in two sections displaced by the fire, as well as interviewing several other victims and the camp chairwoman.  The fire victims received temporary tarp shelters.

In total, the blaze destroyed at least 380 homes out of 685.  The fire consumed 55% of the camp (2 sections), displacing approximately 2,300 people.  In addition to the homes, the fire burned 2 churches, 1 Bible school, and a large clinic.  39 people died in the fire, including two unborn children.

The sections of the destroyed refugee camp contained predominately Christian families.  They requested new Bibles, which mostly burned in the fire and relief organizations do not provide them.

The refugees interviewed said they had a lot of time between seeing the fire and it arriving at their home.  One section burned in 10-15 minutes while the other burned over the course of 30-60 minutes.  Yet, they did not know what to do an often ran in and out of their home in fright.  Despite the amount of time, they did not save any possessions from their homes.  Others attempted to fight the fire instead of saving possessions.  Also, many of those who died did so because they went in to rescue victims.  All of this gives rise to some questions about the adequacy of fire response training among the refugees.

The cause of the fire remains unknown as well as the subject of suspicion.  Early reports suggest a cooking fire.  Some refugees, however, cite seeing an aircraft fly overhead and drop a glowing material.  The Thai government operated rain-seeding aircraft in the area at the time of the fire.  Other refugees said the size of the fire was too large for it to be a cooking accident because the fire had to jump a wide river in several places.  Additionally, they said the fire appeared to begin burning in two places almost simultaneously.  The cause remains under investigation.

After spending about 10 days along the border, I am way behind on my bogging and report.  More to come soon!!

As usual, we joined them on our morning of departure for a church service.  In typical fashion, we sat in front and each student introduced themselves.  I gave a message.  When that was over, one of the pastors thanked us and, in front of 450 Karen in the congregation, asked for our help in an important matter.  The dictionary.  In The New American Oxford Dictionary, he explained, the Karen people are defined as a “wild unclean man.”  Could you help us change it? he pled–he had written to the dictionary and received no response.

I was stunned–by both the perplexing nature this prejudicial definition and the specificity of their request.  Naturally, as lawyers, we all wanted to see the definition in print.  An outdated dictionary perhaps?  Urban legend possibly?  We would need to make it back to Chiang Mai to read this supposed definition in an obscure dictionary edition.

Or so we thought.

On Lisa’s Kindle, The New American Oxford Dictionary comes pre-loaded.  Not so obscure after all.  And, there it was, the high definition: “from Burmese ka-reng ‘wild unclean man.’”  The offending definition was Oxford’s proposed etymology, not the full definition itself.  Nonetheless, the Karen position is completely understandable.  For the several million strong Karen population now spread the world over as ambassadors and refugees of Karen nation, the definition is simply offensive.  Especially for refugees getting resettled among 11 nations, the definition is prejudicial.

The New American Oxford Dictionary origin, however, is suspect.  First, the language of the Karen isn’t Burmese—it’s Karen.  It’s dubious that the Karen would adopt a name for themselves not of their own language.  It’s also questionable that they would willfully adopt a derogatory term.

We immediately began some research on the origin of the name.  It’s been studied by anthropologists and there is a fairly clear consensus among them: they don’t know.  While the exact origin of name “Karen” is unknown, the most probable scenario is that it came from the Kayin, another hill tribe in eastern Burma who speak a related Sino-Tibetan language.   No anthropologist suggests the name originated a derogatory Burmese term.

While the exact origin of “Karen” is unknown, The New American Oxford Dictionary treats it as conclusive fact.  At the very least, this is incomplete and misleading, if not woefully inaccurate.  While the good people at Oxford Press may not be moved by the effect of their definitions, I suspect they are concerned about the accuracy of their dictionary.

So, what do we do from here?  Despite their many needs as refugees, its not very often that the Karen ask for something specific.  Thus, we are inclined to do what we can.

Two questions:

1)     Does anyone have an explanation for the Karen name that explains or refutes the NAOD definition?

2)    If the definition is inaccurate, does anyone have any suggestions for how to help get the definition changed?  We are considering a letter from Pepperdine University School of Law to Oxford Press as well as a subsequent or concurrent Change.org petition.

The Conference will be held at Pepperdine University School of Law from February 8-9, 2013.  If you are interested in this topic, considering inter-country, or know someone who is, you won’t want to miss it.  We will welcome some of the leading thinkers and practitioners to the event.

Learn more and register on the Nootbaar Institute website.

Presentations will include:

PRACTICE

• Orphan Rescue or Child Trafficking: A Generational Perspective
• Case Study: Uganda
• Abusive Practices in Inter-country Adoption
• Special Needs Adoption from China: Reframing Discourses Of Value And Rescue In The Chinese Transnational Adoption Program
• Adoption Trends: Causes and Solutions

LAW

• The Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption: Past, Present and Future
• Special Legal Topics Raised by Inter-country Adoption
• Forgotten, Detained, Removed: Transnational Adopted Persons and Citizenship Rights

FAITH

• Theological Perspectives on Inter-country Adoption
• The Christian Inter-country Adoption Movement
• Inter-country Adoption Best Practices
• Interfaith Perspectives: How Religion Informs Adoption Law

FAMILY

• Adoptee Adjustment and Identity Formation within the Family
• Adult Adoptee Citizenship and Inter-country Adoption
• Older Children Adopted Internationally Through Hosting Programs: The Adoptee’s Perspective
• Inter-country Adoption: The Multi-dimensionality of Identity Development
• Attachment, Development and Learning Struggles Related to Inter-country Adoptees

Do you work in the inter-country adoption field? Have you adopted or are you thinking about adopting? Do you have a heart for orphans and children in need?

Join us at our two day conference as we bring together scholars, politicians, lawyers, theologians, social workers, psychologists, adoptees, adoptive families and more to investigate the future of inter-country adoption.

If you are outside the Pepperdine community, you can watch the live stream of the event by following the link below:

Dr. Rajiv Shah, the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will announce the launch of ChallengeSlavery.org, a USAID initiative aimed at tapping the collective power of college students and faith-based organizations to combat modern day slavery. The event will also feature a panel discussion with experts from Google Ideas, International Justice Mission and Not For Sale.

Join us at the event!

Date:  October 11, 2012

Launch Event: 4:00-5:30 p.m., Elkins Auditorium, Pepperdine University

 More about ChallengeSlavery.org

Responding to the President’s call to action at the Clinton Global Initiative, USAID will launch it’s Counter Trafficking in Persons (CTIP) Campus Challenge on October 11th at Pepperdine University.  The intent of the challenge, designed in three phases, is to increase global awareness about trafficking and inspire activism among students and scholars at colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad. From October 11th to November 28th, we will build a community of students on challengeslavery.org, who will have opportunities to participate in discussion groups on various trafficking subtopics, host online conversations, and crowd source issues that will frame the problems solvers will be asked to address in the next phase.  The contest phase, from November 28th to January 8th, will be open for applications from U.S. and international students proposing innovative technological solutions to advance TIP prevention and protection.  From January 9th to 30th, the challengeslavery.org community will be invited to rate the proposals and provide suggestions on how submissions can be improved.  On February 1st, USAID will announce the semi-finalists and in the following three weeks, semi-finalist proposals will be judged by an expert CTIP and technologist panel.  The winners will be announced at the end of February, receive a monetary prize, and be invited to share their proposals with donors, CTIP and technology professionals. USAID and its partners, MTV Exit, Free the Slaves, and Not for Sale view this as an important effort in growing a truly global movement to combat modern day slavery.  As the President said, “our fight against human trafficking is one of the great human rights causes of our time….  The change we seek will not come easy, but we can draw strength from the movements of the past.”

My photo of the week again from the archive on my recent trip.  I took this photo and liked it, but once the color was corrected, it’s power really came through.  This was another boy we met in the prison in northern Uganda.  They just sit and wait all day.  The look on his face captured the pain of waiting, wondering what’s next, and wishing you were back home in school.  The light is from the doorway and I particularly like the way it illuminated its outline on the back wall.  The lighting is what makes the photo.  After our work, the boy has his case dismissed and went home.  I shot the photo with my ultra-wide angle lens.

I am starting a new blog series, “Photo of the Week,” where I will share a photo from my archive and tell the backstory.  Some may be recent photos and others may be old photos that I’ve rediscovered through new post-production techniques.  Simultaneously, I’ve changed my photography workflow, so I’m going back to revisit and re-master favorites from the archive.  Photos will come from a diverse range of themes, but predominantly a thread I plan to curate, “Images of Justice.”   I’m not a ‘photographer’–those are professionals.  I’m just a lawyer using a camera to tell a story.

“Boy Behind Bars” was shot at a tiny, rural prison in Uganda.  After our juvenile justice work concluded, I went back out for a final visit and brought my camera along.  It’s often too chaotic to shoot when we have 10-15 people visiting out there.  On this trip, it was only three of us, so it was calm and I could capture routine moments of the day.  I spent some time talking to these boys in the jail–many were accused of pretty serious crimes and I was locked in the cell with them for awhile.  We had a good chat and they agreed to let me take their photo.  I wanted a photo of them through the bars with the lock and I got exactly that.  I like the colors and I like the asymmetry of their positions: looking between bars, looking around bars, hands up, hands down, shirt on, shirt off.  Yet, their current conditions are the same.  Both boys were acquitted and/or released after our work.

For me, thee big event of the summer was the May release of my book, Go & Do: Daring to Change the World One Story at a Time.  Two years in the making, it was fun to finally see it come to fruition.  The strangest part of the experience was sharing intensely personal experiences in a public forum.  But, it’s good–the message resonated with people and, I hope, helped some.  I received messages from readers I didn’t know across the country and as far away as South America and Asia who read the book.  It’s interesting see see where a message can go.

Following the book release, I had several speaking events from Nashville to Minnesota to California.  Audiences varied widely from academics to college students.  The college students are by far the most fun.  I spoke at a retreat of about 600 college students this last weekend and had a blast.

When I think back about the last year, it involved a lot of writing.  While I was hoping to take a break after the book, it only freed up time to allow me to focus on several other writing projects–two articles in particular.  Where I did find I took a break was from the blog.  With several writing projects on my hands, I did not carve out time for the blog.  In some ways it’s a relief–I was disciplined about doing it three days a week for a while–and in some ways I miss writing about more random ideas and daily reflections.

I am quite proud of the academic articles I worked on this summer, in particular one about Africa explorer David Livingstone.  I became interested in Livingstone’s explorations after seeing monuments to him in Africa–I picked up a book about his explorations.  The book didn’t just pique my sense of adventure, I learned that he was an anti-slavery advocate and devout Christian.  He seemed to be a melding of professional and external interests.  I started some research in to how he became an abolitionist and uncovered an incredible story left largely untold.  His story arch is a great rise to fame as an explorer, followed by monumental failings that brought him to his breaking point.  He went back in to Africa largely as a publicity stunt to draw attention to the horrific East African.  He died in Africa likely believing he had failed in everything, never knowing that his work led to the abolition of slavery only a month later.  If you’re interested, you are welcome to read the academic article, Livingstone and the Law, which I wrote to make sure I had the history solid.  Now, I am in the process of putting the article into a more accessible format for a general audience–more to come on this.

I made two major trips this summer–first, to Uganda in June.  We conducted another Juvenile Justice Project, working to help 22 kids get their day and court and see justice take place.  It had been two years since the first Masindi Project, so it was a blessing to return to Masindi and see improvements there.

The second major trip was to the Amazon River in Brazil.  We joined Malibu Presbyterian Church for a week on a boat traveling down the Amazon to perform cleft palet surgeries.  This trip mostly focused on Lisa’s work as a nurse and her ability to help in a critical way.  For her, it proved to be a deeply meaningful experience.  I definitely enjoyed it, but was less useful than Lisa–although I did get to go in and watch the surgeries too.

Summer is also a season for triathlon.  Lisa and I tried to fit as many in as possible, but missed several favorite races due to our hectic travel schedule.  At the recent Hansen Dam Olympic Distance Triathlon, Lisa took 1st place in her age division, and I took third in my age division.  This upcoming weekend is the Nautica Malibu Triathlon–always a favorite.  We are planning likely 2 more races before the end of the year.

I also need to add that one significant accomplishment was FINALLY summiting Mt. Whitney after getting stormed off the very top last year.  Lisa and I checked that one off of life’s to do list.

Two things have particularly animated me this summer.  First, I’ve made some camera workflow process changes that have reignited some enthusiasm for photography.  I’m going back to re-edit some old photos and, occasionally, I’m finding hidden gems in photos that I overlooked.

Second, I’ve been blogging on some local issues back in Minnesota through a website called Areavoices. My goal has been to start some, I believed, needed conversations about issues back home.  In many ways, it’s been a social experiment–and one with net positive results.

Now, here we are–almost mid-September already.  The question on my mind is: What now?  Is there another big project or trip on the horizon?  Not yet.  I am happy to be still and not travel extensively for at least a month.  I am also looking forward to diving into some new writing, video, or photography projects.  Fall–here we go.

Amazon Reflection – I could not build a better movie set.  In life, I think reality rarely lives up to the mental images forming the way we hope a place looks.  When it actually, it can surprise us.  In this tiny riverside village, the scene looked like the movie set I would want to design, yet it was authentic.  It surprised me.  The sky was brilliant and wate was still.  I captured this brilliant reflection amidst some interesting boats.

Abstract Church – This photo comprised a rare moment where three things I would want to photograph lined up in one shot.  At the forefront of each village, immediately after the main dock, stands a church.  Most are fairly plain, but this one had interesting abstract lines and angles.  A cool building.  Then we got a beautiful rainbow (double if you look closely).  Then, this little girl–with a pink balloon we gave her–walked right in the foreground.  I think there’s something symbolic about the church, God’s promise marked by the rainbow, and an innocent child.

The Staircase – Hills seemed rare in the Amazon.  If you saw one, you could expect a village on it–the only natural way to protect against the annual rise in the river.  This photo was the long walk, and climb, in from the dock (our boat–a floating hospital–sits at the end).

Cross Silhouette - The cross in front of the church at the forefront of the village.  I love the colors in the sky this evening.  Our boat moors at the end of the dock.

Village Kids on the Dock – I just like this angle and the colors.  It’s from the second floor of the boat looking down on the dock where dozens of kids from the village came out to see us off.  They crowded the dock climbing up on the boat and railings.

Our local church, Malibu Presbyterian, takes an annual trip to the Amazon River.  They load up on a large boat and head out to rural villages where medical care is thin or non-existent.  Since Lisa (a nurse) first heard about it, she’s been wanting to go.  The experience was more than we expected.

We arrived into Manaus, Brazil, late last Monday night.  From the airport, we went directly to the boat and started down the amazon.  After a 20-hour cruise down river, we arrived at Barreirinha (about 1/3 of the way to the Atlantic Ocean).

View Larger Map

We woke the next day to cruise through the winding waterways and tributaries of the Amazon.  Definitely a different world than I’ve experience before.  No roads, all river.  Houses stood on stilts to account for the changing river levels during rainy season.

We arrived at Barreirinha that evening under a golden sunset.  To our surprise, we learned that the medical team would be conducting cleft palate surgeries on nearly 20 kids.  Lisa was quite excited.  A reconstructive surgeon joined us on the boat along with a second surgeon and an anesthesiologist.  They needed nurses and our team brought  six.  We met a few of the kids who would receive the surgery that night at church.

We slept and ate on the boat.  The surgeries began the next morning.  The non-medical personnel from our team participated in several programs for children in the village (vacation Bible school, soccer camp, etc.).  I joined the non-medical group in the morning, then was invited to go to hospital to serve as photographer that afternoon.  This was a rare opportunity–in the U.S., I would never be allowed to enter the operating room, much less photograph the surgery.  The Brazilian government normally would not allow the photography, but since we were a U.S.-based group, they approved one photographer.  The photographer that came along for this purpose got sick that day, so I filled in.  It’s definitely one of the more interesting subjects I’ve photographed.

The background to the surgeries was particular interesting.  Cleft palate and cleft lip, I understand, is often caused by environmental factors (i.e. a lack of folic acid in a diet).  Thus, you often find them grouped–one remote indigenous village had five young kids suffering from it.  In preparation for the trip, local radio throughout the region put out the word and many people came forward.  In the case of the indigenous tribe, the Brazilian government paid for their 10-hour travel to get to us.  The kids were as young as 3 or 4 and as old as 20, and one woman in her 30s.  Some of the kids had already received the cleft lip surgery, but the clef palate, a much more difficult surgery, had not been fixed.

The problems with cleft palate and cleft lip are numerous.  Those who suffer from it cannot swallow properly or form a seal with their lips to suck on a straw.  The surgery has immediate health and lifestyle benefits.  Then, there are the cosmetic benefits.  One mother of a boy in his twenties elated that he could finally get married.  But, it gets worse.  In the indigenous areas, we learned, physical deformities can suggest mystical anxieties.  In some villages, the tribes practice infanticide when a child is born with physical problems or when twins are born–they consider the deformity to indicate an evil spirit.  In the case of twins, they believe one twin possesses an evil spirit, but they don’t know which one, so they bury both alive.  For the five tribal kids who came to the hospital, they were ostracized in their community.  In all cases, the cleft palate surgery is undoubtedly life changing.

In total, the medical team completed 18 cleft palate surgeries in 2.5 days.  Most of the days in the hospital were 12 hours plus.  It was a push, but awesome work.  Facilities were sparse.  While the surgeries took place at the village hospital (instead of the on-boat clinic), they had few resources.  The doctors brought all their tools along, including the anesthesiology machines.  Lisa had the unique opportunity to spend a lot of that time in the operating room, helping in ways she would rarely get to in the U.S.  While Lisa spent all her time in the hospital, I got to experience some interesting villages–far far away from roads and modern comforts.  The Amazon is a different way of life.

The Amazon is a beautiful and wild part of world.  I’ve seen the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador, but it was nothing like living on the river for five days.  The villages were fascinating and the people were incredibly kind.  If you get the opportunity to go, take it.  You will not regret it.