For the past two months, I've been working with some guys here who are ethnic Kachin from Burma. They themselves do work for various activist organizations, such as the Ethnic Community Development Forum, the Kachin News Group, the Kachin Environment Group, and probably a few more I'm forgetting. I believe some of these organizations are based in the area, but these guys mostly work and communicate via the internet from home. I help out with some editing and proposal writing, but most of my work is teaching about applied anthropology, and research techniques. I like to think of myself as a 'capacity building advisor'. At least that's what I'll be putting on my resume. There's only two, and sometimes three guys in the class, so it's pretty informal. Nonetheless, they take it quite seriously. They've completed a couple years of university in Burma, but for obvious reasons, they were unable to finish. They don't have the financial resources to continue their education here in Thailand. Anyone who values their own education can clearly see how much this sucks. They don't have the luxury of studying what they choose, they don't have libraries, and they are doubly burdened by the fact that they have to learn English as well.

At the beginning of the year, one of the guys had been accepted into a program called AEIOU, which was affiliated with Chiang Mai University. It's meant to provide a few years of foundational education before assisting the students with entering university degree programs abroad, or in Thailand. But it turned out to be a joke, and the students, (and some teachers I believe) mutually agreed to quit. Given their situations, that's not a decision they'd take lightly. (AIEOU still seems to be getting funding as well, which is bad.) So this basically leaves these guys with me, and their own desire to learn.

As with work, the internet is our main resource here. And it's pretty good, I myself probably used the internet for the bulk of my own graduate research. But it certainly doesn't make up for old fashioned books. For example, last week we discussed Paulo Friere, and his contributions to grass-roots/participatory development. The problem? I haven't actually read his books. Obviously, neither have they. Kind of limits the extent of our discussions, and definitely limits any constructive topical debates. For all the information about Friere and his theories online, essays just don't compare to reading his actual books. The bigger problem? We can't get books. Even if I could find an English copy of Freire in this town, I personally probably couldn't afford to pay for it. The bookstores here have a serious racket going on English books. I wish I could afford to build a resource library here, however modest, but it's just not feasible. I'd give them all my old anthro books from school - but I don't have any.

Which leads me to the point of this post - I want books. My idea is this - you send us books. Very simple. Seriously, though, I think this could work. I'm going to call it "Books for Burma"....umm..or maybe, "Books for Freedom". Anyway, this is how it'll work: I'll make a wishlist over at Amazon.com, and I'll also post it here, in a convenient link on the side bar. Any generous people who wish to contribute can do so by sending us a book. It doesn't have to be from Amazon, we'd be happy with your own used copies. And if you have one that's not on the list, but you think we'd be able to use, then we won't say no. I don't want it all buried at the bottom of this post here, so I'm going to make another post with the list, as well as all the good reasons why these guys need books, and why helping them will give you a warm fuzzy feeling.