A home burned to ashes

Last month, our local team member talked to a girl whose house was burned down by the Burmese military. He met and taught her when he was teaching as a volunteer in her village. We are trying to bring the voices of these vulnerable victims who lost their homes and house which they had worked hard to own, and also to inform in more detail about the kind of people we are helping through your donation funds. We will redact her name and we had to guarantee her that we will not publish anything that will give away her identity or location. She was very, very afraid. She had to talk to her teacher, our volunteer, secretly on a phone call in a low voice so as not to let her mom and brother know because they are so frightened of the scary demons.

She started to talk about her family’s house which was totally burned down to ash. She continued the conversation as below.

Girl: My mom cried often and often saying that all the heritage from her parents were gone. We diverted her attention and calmed her down but it’s just a moment and she continued crying. My mom is so pity. Even me, too. I can’t get the sight of our house out of my eyes. She was shedding tears often. In our rural areas, it takes tens of years to own a house. Some people never do. And, this house was also built when our dad was alive. After my dad’s demise, my mom had to survive and work alone to bring up all of our four siblings though the business was not good. Since she had to send four of us to school, and some years, she could not even repair the roof of the house and we had those days when the downstairs of the house was fully flooded with rainwater. Not very long time ago, we could live in a complete shelter for 2-3 years and now ..... (She stopped as her voice became lower shakily. Our interviewer had no words and just stayed silent for some minutes.)

And my cousin felt more sad since he did not only lose his family’s house but his best friend also lost one. He often cried every time he misses him that his best friend’s family still has to live in the monastery until now.

That’s just all what I want to say.