The Karen: Harmony and Humor
The Myanmar coup has brought the interest and attention of many foreigners, some of whom had varying degrees of knowledge about the country and culture. Not so of David Eubank, the Free Burma Rangers founder who has been living among the country’s ethnic populations for years. In this following excerpt, David shares about his time living in Karen villages.
“They keep choosing to laugh. And I think that’s Karen: harmony and humor.”
“We spend a lot of time with the Karen. I think if I chose one word about the Karen, it'd be ‘harmony.’
Although they have disagreements, they try to find compromises. They may compromise some values, but they don't compromise the principles and virtues they live by, being integrity, love, courage, equality, but rather values like safety, education, comfort, modes of movement, because we value some qualities over others… but the Karen are always striving for harmony.
Harmony and consensus in what they do, would be the sum of the salient marks of the Karen, and then laughing and smiling all the time! I remember one time I was with a French guy; he was an ex-Foreign Legion fighter. And he'd helped the Karen as a volunteer fighter, and then later started his own business. He said the Karen laughed at everything, even when there's a tragedy, which is true! Later on his restaurant burned down in Mae Sot, Thailand, and he said ‘What’s going to happen is a Karen will come by today and see my burned-down restaurant. They’ll say a couple nice words, and they are going to start laughing.’ And so sure enough, like an hour later, one of the top Karen leaders shows up.
‘I'm very sorry about your restaurant burning down. Hahah!’
And the French guy was so mad. ‘That's my restaurant! What if I said your mother died, your mother died? Haha!’ And the Karen leader goes “What? My mother died? Haha!’
But they also cry at losses. I remember once, we were helping with some IDPs. They're being chased by the Burma army and barely survived, just took what they could carry. I was helping carry some of the kids on my shoulders with their baskets. Fleeing to the jungle, we get to this big river that had a sandbar in the middle, and we crossed one branch of the river into the sandbar. I set up a lean-to in the middle of sandbar with our team. And then the villagers went into the treeline on both sides of the river. Well, a storm came up, a huge one, and the tree started to fall. One pastor, who had a name which meant ‘Victory over the Burmese,’ he's a funny guy. He put all his family's possessions, which were about four baskets of food plates, dishes, machete, a flintlock musket for hunting, pieces of plastic blanket, rice, salt, and fishing stuff— all his survival stuff was in a few baskets, and he put them next to a big tree, and then all of a sudden that tree, all of 700 feet tall, it fell and the family jumped out of the way. But all their goods were crushed. This tree was like a redwood, a diameter of 20 feet. To add insult to injury, they’re soaking wet!
Imagine, you only had these possessions, and now they're buried under this tree. Yet instead of complaining, like, ‘God hates me’ or ‘There is no God,’ he just looked around, laughs, and goes, ‘Look, God gave me firewood!’
And that's a very Karen. I was at a Karen house once and one of my kids broke a dish. They go, ‘Oh look, now we have two dishes!’ So they keep choosing to laugh. And I think that’s Karen: harmony and humor.