Mae Sot, Thailand – A life spent mining through mountains of trash is better than life in Burma, say those who reside at a local garbage dump at the edge of this border town.About 200 Burmese migrants have traded their troubled homeland for rudimentary bamboo dwellings perched amid the peaks and valleys of foul-smelling rubbish.

“It’s worse in Burma,” says a 25-year-old mother of two children from Rangoon who has lived in the dump for about a year.

Last month, her husband died here after a bout with malaria. He was 28 years old.

The woman, who did not want her name used, says she feels safer at the dump than in town because run-ins with Thai police are less frequent.

Here, children in grubby clothes run around the heaps barefoot. Camp dwellers wash their clothes in a lagoon of green-coloured water.

But food scraps and good trash are harder to come by these days with processors and dumpster divers in town getting first crack at Mae Sot’s garbage.

“I thought I could have an easy life,” said Ko Pyar, a 42-year-old father of two who has lived here for seven years. “I see now that it’s different, but I cannot go back.”

Though there is a school for migrant children at the edge of the dump, his kids don’t study there because he needs them to work.

Ko Pyar, whose wife died of hypertension five years ago, says he can earn between 30 baht ( 96 cents Canadian) and 40 baht ($1.28 Canadian) a day taking care of cows at farms in the area.

That’s about how much he would make if he has a good day finding trash. The minimum wage in Mae Sot is 152 baht ($4.87) for a day’s work.

This is perhaps the bottom rung of the border town’s underground economy.

It’s estimated that more than 100,000 Burmese migrants work in Mae Sot at construction sites, garment factories and farms.

Burma, known as Myanmar by its military rulers, has struggled with internal strife ever since it achieved independence from Britain in 1948.

Ethnic minority groups have mounted armed bids for autonomy and civilians have been caught in the crossfire.

An impoverished nation of about 50 million, Burma has been subject to military domination since 1962, earning it the label of international pariah.

Human Rights Watch states the government “systematically denies citizens basic freedoms including freedom of expression, association and assembly.”

Moreover, the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) “continues to perpetrate violations against civilians in ethnic conflict areas, including extrajudicial killings, forced labor, and sexual violence.”

Canada continues to impose strict economic sanctions on Burma.

Ron Hoffmann, Canada’s ambassador to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Burma, is hopeful for gradual change.

“Most people with a stake in the country want change,” said Hoffmann in a recent interview. “The government really has very little support.”

The SPDC has announced intentions to hold elections sometime this year but has yet to hold a date. Democratic champion Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy, remains under house arrest in Rangoon.

Hoffmann, who met with the junta’s foreign ministry in November, said he’s clearly communicated Canada’s expectations of a free and fair election.

Frank Brewster, a family doctor from Orillia, hopes that his work with Project Umbrella Burma, an Orillia-based charity, can help effect change in Burma.

He is horrified by the squalor at the Mae Sot dump. But he admires the dump dwellers’ drive to survive in the face of such adversity.

“I took it as bad-tasting medicine,” he said after visiting the dump for the first time.

Brewster says it’s hard to gauge the children’s chances, but suggests the general picture is bleak.

“If you take a kid who has so many strikes against them and give them malaria and gastroenteritis, then they’re likely to fail.”

This apocalyptic landscape has served as bitter inspiration for artist Maung Maung Tinn.

The painter, whose watercolours and acrylics have found owners as far away as Japan, France and Canada, wanted to show the situation to the world.

“It’s not for humans. It’s for animals.”

Maung Maung Tinn left his home in Karen State in 1995, when fighting near his village became too intense.

“It was like a nightmare. I wanted to escape from the nightmare, so I ran away.”

The 42-year-old painter recalls waiting on pins and needles as mortars fired between SPDC and Karen military camps flew over his home.

“The bullet doesn’t have eyes.”

Though life in Thailand isn’t easy, at least he has a clean toilet and electricity 24 hours a day, Maung Maung Tinn said.

During his visit, Brewster learned that a man at the dump planned to visit the nearby Mae Tao Clinic, which offers free medical services to migrants.

Through Project Umbrella Burma, doctors have volunteered their services at the clinic, where Brewster is amid his second two-month stint.

“It affirms my work at the Mae Tao Clinic. That is a place where they can go when they can’t go on.”

But when he considers the desperation at the dump, and Burma’s ruling junta, he can’t contain his quiet rage.

“It fans the flames of anger.”

tmoro@orilliapacket.com