mcc story

Mennonite Central Committee story

 

My wife Shirley and I left Canada six weeks after we were married, to serve a three year term in Thailand ( 1982-1985 ) with MCC . We were naïve and idealistic, and were hoping we could save the world.

We arrived at the Don Muang Airport in Bangkok on a muggy evening in early October. We were met there by the MCC country director . After clearing customs and immigration, we hailed a taxi, and were headed to the Bangkok Christian Guest House for the evening. After a few minutes in the taxi, we were stopped at a traffic light. There was a tank at the intersection , and a soldier put his machine gun into the open window of the taxi.. I do not remember how long we were stopped at that light, but I have not forgotten the barrel of the gun. Welcome to MCC work in Thailand.

We worked in Phanat Nikhom Refugee camp in eastern Thailand. There were Lao, Hmong, Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees living there, waiting to be resettled to many countries around the world. Many of the refugees had been in Thailand for years waiting to find out where they would be going. For some refugees, their cases got held up for health or political problems. Our MCC office was just outside the Vietnamese section of the camp . Inside that fence , there was interviewing office for the U.S Embassy. One day, soon after we began our work, I was standing in the courtyard. A young Vietnamese man came in and sat down in the lotus position. The U.S. immigration officer began to yell, “ No ! no !”. The young man , a soldier who had deserted from the Vietnamese army, had poured gasoline on himself, and the next moment he lit a match and set himself on fire. People rushed with blankets to douse the flames. The young man, really a teenager, later died in the local Thai hospital, alone and forgotten. Welcome to MCC work in Thailand

We interviewed hundreds of Cambodian families, to find out their story, and provide something to the people whom they would meet in Canada. They lived through the Pol Pot regime from 1975-1978. Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge, a Communist group, that hoped to return Cambodia to a rural utopian society , but ended up attempting genocide on the population.  1975 is sometimes referred to as “ Year Zero “ because everything changed after that in Cambodia. At least over a million people died, and no family was left intact . As we listened to their stories, they could shed no more tears. Welcome to MCC work in Thailand .

We left Thailand with compassion fatigue. We could cry no longer. There were just as many refugees in our camp when we left in 1985, as there were in 1982 when we have started . Our presence has not made a difference in the refugee situation or the war. But, the presence of refugees had changed our lives and souls forever.

Fred Redekop