Cambridge, 'Nam-Jai' and the Cassowary.

Win Tun sat silently eyeing  the neatly laid out pencils,  eraser and red plastic sharpener in front of him. Two years previously due to economic hardship  he had  fled Burma with his family. Now he faced a greater ordeal; the Cambridge exams.

Seated  in two rows the Burmese teachers waited for the papers to be distributed by three examiners from the prestigious Newton Grange School of English, Chiang Mai. This was the culmination of three months study. It  provided a great opportunity. It was a ‘first’ for them for Newton Grange and for us.

Mae Sot’s first official Cambridge exams  got underway at 9.30 on the morning of March 19th at the Wattanna Resort,  a very charming cluster of Thai style buildings surrounding a small lake. The resort tried hard to induce a sense of rural calm with leaping carp, tame deer and a couple of smiling terracotta elephants. A cassowary scratched around in a pen near the main gate. The emu-like cassowary is a menacing  bird with a dangerous bony protrusion on its forehead. I remembered from time spent wandering the world in my youth that the hill tribes of New Guinea believed the cassowary to be a dark omen. It’s not something you want to remember on a day like this.

The journey which led to the Wattanna resort had, in fact, begun four months earlier. Actually reaching this point was a small miracle brought about partly due to the wonderful Thai quality of ‘nam jai’, literally, ‘water from the heart’. It means compassion and generosity. We had been trying to find accredited exams which could be delivered to Burmese migrant teachers living on the Thai border and we had an idea  that we could deliver the Cambridge exams. But exams need examiners. Newton Grange School of English, Chiang Mai, is a centre for Cambridge exams. We contacted them and, unexpectedly, wonderfully and with much ‘nam-jai’ they agreed to help and provide examiners. We now had a course, candidates and examiners. Or so we thought.

The rule is that all candidates must provide documentary evidence that they are who they say they are. Under normal circumstances this is not a problem but the Thai/Burma border does not deal in the ‘normal’. Burmese migrant teachers often have no passport or anything approaching what could be considered to be legal documentation. Until recently many found themselves in jail for a day or two as ‘illegals’. This could have meant the end of the journey. However, ID cards were now being issued by the local Ministry of Education but the exam rules required that they must display a photograph of the bearer. Our rules [based on hard experience] require us never to assume anything so frantic phone calls were made to a British contact at the Burmese Migrant Workers Education Committee[BMWEC] who emailed us an ID card  displaying, like a small Icon,  the required photograph. One would now assume that one was out of the woods and running clear. Assumptions are always dangerous indulgences in Mae Sot. The exam was scheduled for March 19th and many Burmese teachers’ ID cards ran out on March 1st and would not be reissued until the beginning of the school year in May! A sense of imminent disaster returned. Thankfully, the Thai local Ministry of Education, with gallons of nam- jai, encouraged by some compassionate support from our British friend at the BMWEC,    agreed to issue special ID cards for our candidates for the whole of March. Collective sighs of relief were almost seismic.

Other essentials for exams are 1. Somewhere to teach the course and 2. Somewhere to hold the exam. We had two classes, an upper PET [Preliminary English Test] and a lower level KET [Key .English Test] involving in total 23 candidates. Suitable classroom space is not widely advertised here. But  hearing of our problems and responding with true Buddhist compassion and generosity the day was saved by our good friends the Burmese monks of the Free Library. Free Library is an incredible organisation run by three monks  headed  by Khun Suan [Mr Nothing, an allusion to the Buddhist concept of ‘emptiness’ and a metaphysical poke in the eye for the powerful generals]. The monks at  Free Library  pooled their books and  set up ‘free’  libraries in Burma without a licence from  the regime. They soon found themselves in exile in Thailand. We were offered a classroom with a view, the roof of the three storey Free Library  in Mae Sot’s Burmese quarter. It was windy but we put up plastic ‘windbreaks’ and purchased cheap desks and chairs. A secure venue for the exam with holding areas for candidates was out of the Free Library sphere  of influence. Luckily, the East does not have a monopoly on ‘nam –jai’. The huge American NGO, Global Vision, with whom we work stepped in with an offer of a room at the Wattanna resort. It made a perfect venue even with the cassowary.

Under ’normal’ circumstances one could assume the picture was now almost complete. The candidates would travel to the Free Library a couple of times a week for the classes. Assumptions are dangerous [see above]. Some candidates lived out of town and would have to travel at night. They felt uncomfortable about this as even though they had ID cards the local police could be difficult. Transport now became an issue. However, with the help of  Global Vision a vehicle was hired to do the run on Thursday night and Saturday morning. And so after three months of lessons on the roof of the  Free Library and nocturnal drives avoiding the attention of local gendarmerie Win Tun and all were now ready for the exam.

The day of the exam had actually started badly with a ‘cassowary moment.’ The logistics of getting 23 teachers who live in scattered communities around Mae Sot to a central point at a given time is, to say the least, fraught with difficulties. However, everything had been organised with almost military precision. A song–tau [converted pick-up truck] would pick up the candidates at certain points, at given times. This had been thoroughly rehearsed  with all concerned. Now we felt certain all was ready. Certainty is even more dangerous than  assumption on the Thai border. Never allow yourself to be lulled into a false sense of security in this part of the world. Never believe anything will really happen until it really happens. Duly the song-tau did not  arrive at 7.30 a.m. as planned but was in fact forty miles south of Mae Sot in a remote village. Reasons given were vague even for an area where vagueness seems like certainty. But at the eleventh hour with much water-from–the heart the day was saved by the local café owner, aThai friend, who, overflowing with ‘nam- jai’, gave us a very smart four wheel drive and panic and disaster were avoided.

The exams got underway as planned and the rest of the day ran like clockwork. At four o’clock we left the Wattanna resort. The examiner from  Newton Grange said he had never seen so many smiles on an exam day. I think the cassowary would have agreed.

Names have been changed to protect privacy

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