beginning of Phyu Phyu Thin

တြန္းအားမ်ား ...
ျဖဴျဖဴသင္း Saturday, September 11, 2010
http://irrawaddy.org/bur/index.php/editorial/2009-02-27-05-56-44/4040-2010-09-11-09-09-26

က်မက ငယ္ကတည္းကပဲ လူမႈေရး ဝါသနာ ပါတယ္လုိ႔ က်မ မိဘမ်ားနဲ႔ ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္က ေျပာဆုိေလ့ ရွိပါတယ္။ က်မလည္း မွတ္သားမိရ သေလာက္ေတာ့ ဘုရားပြဲေစ်းေတြ သြားရင္ တခါမွ မုန္႔မစားရတာ ပါဘဲ။ ပြဲေစ်းက ေတာင္းစားတဲ့ သူေတြကို ေပးတာနဲ႔ ပါလာတဲ့ မုန္႔ဖုိး ကုန္သြားလုိ႔ပါ။ ေနာက္ ေက်ာင္းစာသင္ေတာ့မွ ႏုိက္တင္ေဂးလ္၊ ဟင္နရီဒူးနန္႔ အစရွိတဲ့ နာမည္ ေတြနဲ႔ ရင္းႏွီးလာရပါေတာ့တယ္။ အဲဒီကတည္းက သူတုိ႔ကို အထင္ႀကီး ေလးစားစိတ္ေတြ ကိန္းဝပ္လာေနခဲ့တယ္ ထင္ပါ တယ္။

က်မတုိ႔ဟာ ဘုရား ေက်ာင္းကန္နဲ႔ ပတ္သက္တာကလြဲလုိ႔ တျခားေသာ အလွဴ အတန္းေတြ၊ လူမႈေရး လုပ္ငန္း ေတြ လုပ္တာ အေတာ္ေလး နည္းပါတယ္။ လူအမ်ားႀကီးကို ထမင္းေကၽြးတဲ့ အလွဴမ်ဳိးေတြကိုလည္း မၾကာခဏ လုပ္ၾကပါတယ္။ က်မ ငယ္ငယ္က အဲဒီ အလွဴမ်ဳိးကို ေဝဖန္ ေျပာဆုိရင္ လူႀကီးေတြက က်မကုိ ဒိ႒ိလုိ႔ မွတ္ခ်က္ခ်ဖူးတာလည္း မွတ္မိေနပါ ေသးတယ္။

က်မ လူမႈေရး လုပ္တာ ဝါသနာပါတယ္ ဆိုေပမယ့္လည္း အတိုင္းအတာ ကန္႔သတ္ခ်က္ ရွိပါတယ္။ ေငြေၾကး သိပ္ မတတ္ ႏုိင္တာကလည္း တေၾကာင္း ပါပါတယ္။ ေတာင္းတဲ့ လူေတြကို ေပးတယ္၊ ဒုကၡေရာက္တဲ့ လူကို ကူတယ္ ဆိုတာေတြက လည္း ဘုရားေဟာတဲ့ အလွဴဒါန ဆုိတာထက္ က်မ စိတ္မွာ မေနတတ္လုိ႔ ဆိုတဲ့ စိတ္ တခုတည္းနဲ႔ ေပးတာမ်ဳိးပါ။

ေနာက္တခု ဝန္ခံစရာ ရွိတာက ခုခံအား က်ဆင္းမႈေရာဂါ တိုက္ဖ်က္ေရး လုပ္ငန္းေတြကို ဒီေန႔ ဒီအခ်ိန္အထိ ဘယ္အေျခ အေနမ်ဳိး ျဖစ္ျဖစ္ လုပ္ကိုင္ႏုိင္ေနတယ္ ဆိုတာကလည္း က်မ အစြမ္းအစ ဆိုတာထက္ က်မတုိ႔ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ရဲ႕အေျမာ္အျမင္ ႀကီးမားမႈေၾကာင့္ ပါပဲ။ က်မတုိ႔ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ဟာ က်မတုိ႔ကို ဒီလုပ္ငန္းနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ တ့ဲ သင္တန္းေတြ တက္ခုိင္းၿပီး ဒီအလုပ္ေတြ လုပ္ခုိင္းထားေပမယ့္ က်မတုိ႔ကို တာဝန္ ေပးလုိက္ကတည္းက သူ႔ႏုိင္ငံေရး တာဝန္ေတြနဲ႔ အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္ က်ခံရတာနဲ႔မုိ႔ က်မတုိ႔ ေတြ႔ဆုံၿပီး အခက္အခဲေတြ အေၾကာင္းကို တခါမွ မေဆြးေႏြး၊ မတင္ျပခဲ့ရ တာလည္း ထူးျခားခ်က္ တခုပါပဲ။

ဒီအခက္ခဲေတြကို ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေၾကာင့္ ေက်ာ္လႊားေနတယ္ ဆိုတာ ဘာကို ဆိုလိုတာလဲလုိ႔ ေမးရင္ က်မတုိ႔ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ဟာ က်မတုိ႔ကို စိတ္ပိုင္းဆိုင္ရာ တြန္းအားေတြကို ေန႔စဥ္နဲ႔အမွ် ေပးေနတယ္လုိ႔ ဆုိရမွာပါ။ က်မ ဒီလုပ္ငန္းကုိ လုပ္ေတာ့ ထြက္ေျပးလိုစိတ္ေတြ မၾကာခဏ ဆိုသလို ျဖစ္မိပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္း စုၾကည္ရဲ႕ ဓာတ္ပံုကို က်မ ျမင္လုိက္ၿပီ ဆိုတာနဲ႔ ခြန္အားေတြ အလိုလို ျပန္ျဖစ္လာရပါတယ္။

က်မတုိ႔ ဒီလုပ္ငန္း စတင္ လုပ္ကိုင္စဥ္ ၂ဝဝ၂ ခုႏွစ္က ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ NGO ဆိုတာေတြ ရွိေတာ့ ရွိေနပါၿပီ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ျပည္ တြင္းကေနၿပီးေတာ့ ဦးေဆာင္ လုပ္ကိုင္သူ နည္းပါေသးတယ္။ ႏုိင္ငံျခားသား ဦးေဆာင္တဲ့ အဖဲြ႔အစည္း မ်ားပါတယ္။ လုပ္ကိုင္ေနရင္းကမွ ကိုေက်ာ္သူ ဦးေဆာင္တဲ့ နာေရး ကူညီမႈအသင္းဟာ လူေပါင္း ေျမာက္မ်ားစြာ အားကိုးရာ ျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ အဖဲြ႔အစည္း တခုဆုိတာ သိလာရပါတယ္။

က်မအေနနဲ႔ သူ႔ကို အရမ္း အားက်ပါတယ္။ ဒီေန႔ ထက္ထိ ကိုေက်ာ္သူကုိ အေဝးကပဲ ျမင္ဖူးပါတယ္။ သူက လူမႈေရး သက္ သက္ အဖဲြ႔အစည္း၊ ႏုိင္ငံေရး လံုးဝ မဆက္ႏႊယ္တဲ့ အဖဲြ႔အစည္းပါ။ ဆက္ႏႊယ္ရင္ေတာ့ အခက္အခဲေတြကုိ ဒီထက္ ပုိၿပီး ရင္ဆိုင္ ရဖြယ္ ရိွပါတယ္။

ကိုေက်ာ္သူ လုပ္ျပလုိက္တာဟာ က်မတုိ႔ ျမန္မာျပည္သားေတြအတြက္ တကယ့္ စံျပပါပဲ။ သူဟာ ေအာင္ျမင္ ေက်ာ္ၾကားတဲ့ မင္းသား၊ သရုပ္ေဆာင္ တေယာက္။ သူ ဒီအလုပ္ စလုပ္စဥ္က မလိုသူေတြ ေျပာစကားအတုိင္း ေျပာရရင္ သုဘရာဇာ အလုပ္ကို ထလုပ္တာပါ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အခုေတာ့ ဗမာ ျပည္မွာ စကားပံု တခုလို ျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ စကားတခြန္း ေပၚေနပါတယ္။ “ေသရင္ မပူနဲ႔ ေက်ာ္သူ ရွိတယ္” ဆိုတာပါပဲ။ သူ႔ အနစ္နာခံမႈ၊ လူသား အက်ဳိးျပဳ လုပ္ငန္းဟာ ဘယ္ေလာက္ ထိေရာက္ သလဲ ဆိုတာ အဲဒီ စကားရပ္ကုိ ၾကည့္ရင္ သိသာပါတယ္။

ေနာက္ထပ္ တေယာက္က က်မတုိ႔ ကိုဇာဂနာႀကီးပါပဲ။ က်မက သူ႔ကို ရင္းႏွီးေသာ အားျဖင့္ ကိုသူရ လုိ႔ ေခၚပါတယ္။ သူ လုပ္ႏုိင္သမွ် လုပ္တာေတြကို တခါတခါ ျပန္ေျပာျပမွ သိရတာပါ။ ကေလးေတြ ေက်ာင္းထားေပးတာ၊ အနာႀကီးေရာဂါ တိုက္ဖ်က္ေရး ပါဝင္ ေဆာင္ရြက္တာ စသျဖင့္ အမ်ားႀကီးပါ။ သူလုပ္ႏုိင္သမွ်ေတြဟာ ေတာ္ရံုလူ လုပ္ႏုိင္မယ္ မထင္ပါဘူး။

အထင္ရွားဆံုးကေတာ့ နာဂစ္ ျဖစ္ခ်ိန္မွာ သူ႔စြမ္းေဆာင္ရည္ကို ဘယ္ NGO မွ လိုက္မမီႏုိင္ေအာင္ လုပ္ျပသြားတာသက္ေသ ပါပဲ။ ဘယ္ေလာက္ အထိေတာင္ လုပ္ႏုိင္သလဲ ဆုိရင္ေတာ့ ေထာင္ ၅၉ ႏွစ္ က်တဲ့ အထိေအာင္ကုိ လုပ္ျပသြားတာပါ။

ေနာက္တေယာက္က်ေတာ့ က်မ အရမ္း ႀကိဳက္တဲ့ စာေရးဆရာမ သန္းျမင့္ေအာင္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ က်မနဲ႔ အစပိုင္းက မရင္းႏွီး ပါဘူး။ သူက နာမည္ႀကီး စာေရးဆရာမ၊ က်မက သူ႔ပရိသတ္ တေယာက္ဆိုေတာ့ မရင္းႏွီးတာ မဆန္းပါဘူး။ ဒါေပမယ့္ သူ လုပ္တာေတြ ၾကားပါတယ္။ ကိုေက်ာ္သူတုိ႔ နာေရး ကူညီမႈ အသင္းမွာ ဦးေဆာင္သူ တေယာက္ အေနနဲ႔ ပါေနတာ၊ ကိုသူရနဲ႔ တြဲၿပီး တိုင္းျပည္ရဲ႕ လိုအပ္ခ်က္ျဖစ္တဲ့ လူမႈေရးေတြကို တက္တက္ ႂကြႂကြ လုပ္ေနတာေတြ ၾကားပါတယ္။

AIDS ျဖစ္ေနတဲ့ မိဘမ့ဲ ကေလး တေယာက္ကို သူတုိ႔ရဲ႕ သုခရိပ္ၿမံဳ ဆုိတဲ့ ကေလးေဂဟာကို သြားအပ္ေတာ့မွ သူနဲ႔ စေတြ႔ၿပီး လူခ်င္း ရင္းႏွီးရတာပါ။ သူ႔ကုိ ျမင္ျမင္ခ်င္း က်မ စိတ္ထဲမွာ ေအးခ်မ္းမႈကို ခံစားရပါတယ္။ တကယ့္ အစ္မ တေယာက္လိုပဲ ခံစား ရပါတယ္။ သူတုိ႔ ေဂဟာမွာ ကေလး သိပ္မရွိေသးပါဘူး။ ေနရာကလည္း ေျမာက္ဒဂံုဘက္လည္း မဟုတ္ေသးပါဘူး။ သန္လ်င္မွာပဲ ယာယီ ရွိေနပါေသးတယ္။

သူ႔ကို ကေလးေတြက အေမႀကီး လုိ႔ ေခၚပါတယ္။ ကေလးေတြက သူ႔ကုိ ခ်စ္လိုက္တာ၊ တကယ့္ အေမရင္း အတုိင္းပါပဲ။ သူကလည္း စိတ္ရွည္ လက္ရွည္ ကေလးေတြကို စကားေတြေျပာ၊ မုန္႔ေတြေကြ်း လုပ္ေနတာ ၾကည့္ရင္း က်မ ၾကည္ႏူးမိပါ တယ္။

သူတုိ႔ အေၾကာင္းကို ဘာေၾကာင့္ ေျပာေနသလဲ ဆုိတာ အရွင္းဆံုး ေျပာရရင္ေတာ့ သူတုိ႔ကို ေလးစား အားက် လုိ႔ပါ။ က်မ တုိ႔ ျပည္သူေတြက သူတုိ႔လို တိုင္းျပည္မွာ ထင္ရွားသူေတြရဲ႕ လႈပ္ရွွားမႈေတြေၾကာင့္ ဘာ လုပ္သင့္တယ္၊ ဘာလုပ္ရမယ္ ဆိုတာေတြကို အလိုလုိ သိသြားတာပါပဲ။

အခုဆိုရင္ ေငြေၾကး ရလုိ႔ ျဖစ္ေစ၊ မရဘဲ ျဖစ္ေစ တဦးခ်င္း၊ တဖဲြ႔ခ်င္း ကေန အစုလိုက္ ရပ္ရြာလိုက္ လုပ္ေနၾကတဲ့ လူမႈေရး အသင္းအဖဲြ႔ေတြ အမ်ားႀကီး ေပၚလာပါၿပီ။ သံဃာေတြကလည္း က်မတုိ႔ ငယ္စဥ္က တရား ေဟာသလို အလွဴေပး သူေဌးျဖစ္ ဆိုတာထက္ လူမႈေရးေတြ လုပ္သင့္တယ္၊ တိုင္းျပည္ လိုအပ္ခ်က္က ဘာေတြ ျဖစ္ေနတယ္၊ ဘာေတြ လုပ္သင့္တယ္၊ ဘယ္ လို စိတ္မ်ဳိး ထားရမယ္ ဆိုတာေတြကုိ မ်ားမ်ား ေဟာေျပာလာပါၿပီ။

တိုင္းျပည္ အုပ္စိုးသူတုိ႔ ပစ္ပယ္ထားတဲ့ လစ္ဟာခ်က္ေတြကို တက္ႂကြစြာ ေဆာင္ရြက္သူေတြ ရိွလာပါၿပီ။ အားရစရာ ေကာင္းလွတဲ့ အတိုင္းအတာ တခုအထိေတာ့ မျဖစ္ေသးပါဘူး။ ပြင့္လင္း လြတ္လပ္မႈေတြ ရွိလာရင္ ပိုမုိ လုပ္ကိုင္ ေဆာင္ ရြက္လာႏုိင္မွာပါ။ ေသးငယ္တဲ့ လူမႈေရး လုပ္ငန္း ျဖစ္ေစ၊ တဦးခ်င္း ျဖစ္ေစ၊ အဖဲြ႔လိုက္ ျဖစ္ေစ လူမႈ လိုအပ္ခ်က္ လုပ္ကိုင္ ေနသူေတြဟာ ေလးစားစရာ ေကာင္းပါတယ္။

ေသခ်ာတာကေတာ့ အထက္က ေျပာတဲ့ ရဟန္းသံဃာေတြ၊ ကိုေက်ာ္သူ၊ ကိုဇာဂနာ၊ မသန္းျမင့္ေအာင္ တုိ႔လုိ က်မ ေလး စား အားက်ရသူေတြရဲ႕ ဦးေဆာင္ လမ္းျပမႈေတြ မရွိရင္ က်မ လုပ္ကုိင္ေနတ့ဲ လူမႈေရး လုပ္ငန္းေတြ ဒီအေျခအေနထိ ျဖစ္ခ်င္မွ ျဖစ္လာမယ္ ဆုိတာပါပဲ။

Amid Hardships and Unchanged Behaviors

By PHYU PHYU THIN

Saturday, March 6, 2010

http://irrawaddy.org/opinion_story.php?art_id=17973

Some people have asked me what kinds of difficulty I have encountered while working on the prevention and eradication of HIV/AIDS. I said every job I do is full of hardships.

I and a few young people helping me have been thinking about HIV/AIDS awareness programs and how to approach HIV-infected people in order to provide them with medicine and proper treatment, and to reintegrate them into the society so they can continue their social lives. You can imagine how much trouble we will have to shoulder in implementing our work.

The most essential thing that we always have to talk about is financial problems. The less funding we receive, the more difficult it is to carry out our programs. Some of my friends have lent some assistance to us. I now rent a place from the local municipality in New Dagon Township where I am running a rehabilitation program for HIV patients. It includes vocational training such as spangling and sewing. Recently, I could open a nan-bread shop for four patients with contributions from a donor. One of the difficulties I have faced is that I still cannot work for many patients.

Amid these hardships, I have met with some people who still cannot change their behavior. Perhaps this is the most difficult thing to alter.

I also have experience with other young people who have gone back to their old ways—being naughty and drinking—after being infected with HIV. Treating such careless patients costs us more money and makes us more physically and mentally exhausted. However, this is not so bad. I have faced worse situations.

Most of my patients are not from urban areas. They don't have much knowledge about HIV/AIDS. They are farmers, drivers, truck attendants and others. Among them, there were five girls who were sex workers. They came from different backgrounds, but they use their bodies in the same way.

In my opinion, one of the girls is someone who cannot stand to be without a man. She made money and spent it with other men she liked. She earned money by using her body and used it again when she looked for happiness with other men. I don't even want to think about how much she has distributed HIV to others. Whenever I had a chance, I brought her home and tried to help her change her ways, but she always ran away and went back to her original life, living on the street.

Another girl is a singer from a restaurant. She has another story. She always told me that she only sang songs. But one day she made an unexpected visit to my house when I was away. The reason she came to my house was to tell my family that she would move to Sittwe for a better job since she could not survive in Rangoon. She also said that she had unprotected sex with a man who used to take care of her just to give him the disease, because he did not support her anymore. My family became furious.

My family treats HIV patients as if they were our close relatives. Almost every patient has eaten at my house. Perhaps the girl's familiarity with my family made her speak out very openly. Nevertheless, the act of deliberately spreading the disease is not something a human being should do.

Another girl works at a massage place. She is very beautiful. Her skin is so smooth that you would never think that she has been infected with HIV. She said she did not mean to do it, but for her future she had to approach a rich man who visited her place. That man took her to a karaoke room and they had sex without a condom. Even though she said she did not intend to do it, I think she should have prevented herself from spreading the disease. I came to know about it just because she told me.

Whenever I think about how many similar incidents like this have already taken place, I cannot sleep anymore. Sometimes I suddenly wake up at night, fearing the consequences of the spread.

I really am not very happy when I think about this. And I am very concerned about how to change the bad behavior and attitude of some HIV patients who I have come across.

Phyu Phyu Thin has cared for HIV and AIDS patients since 2002, providing counseling and education, sending them to clinics and providing accommodation in Rangoon to those coming for treatment from outlying areas.

A Town of Widows

By PHYU PHYU THIN

FEBRUARY, 2010 - VOLUME 18 NO.2

http://irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17693&page=1

In a country where the government provides minimal general health care, citizens must take up the fight against HIV infection themselves.

A relatively prosperous transport hub for family-run trucking businesses, Kyaukpadaung’s high incidence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV/AIDS) among its population is a major downside to the township’s heavy dependence on the transportation industry.

With the 1,500-meter peak of Mt Popa nearby bringing cooler breezes and water to an otherwise arid region of eastern Mandalay Division, Kyaukpadang’s location at a major crossroads near the geographical center of Burma favored the town’s development as a trucking center. With larger businesses operating up to 100 trucks, many of the town’s residents are employed in the industry, spending weeks at a time on the road.

On Burma’s roads at night, teenage students are known to flag down trucks with flashlights, hitching rides and lifting skirts, passing from truck to truck, leaving sordid memories and sexually transmitted diseases.

Even if the drivers are aware of the problem and want to protect themselves, condoms are often unavailable in rural stores dimly lit by oil-lamps, where snacks, tobacco and liquor are sold along with the services of garishly made-up teenagers in a tin hut out back. As a result, when men return to their families in Kyaukpadaung, they often take HIV/AIDS with them.

Kyaukpadaung was an ideal place for our group to put our HIV/AIDS prevention and care training into action. As youth members of the National League for Democracy, we had been selected by NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi to train at the UN Development Programme office in Rangoon.

On my first visit, I went to the town to help organize assistance from our group. By working with Kyaukpadaung’s people, we helped them to learn how to confront the disease as a community. They have become aware of how HIV is spread and are now more adept at preventing infection among newborn infants and children.

Those infected by HIV/AIDS now encourage each other to be open about their affliction, and many are willing to talk about their disease and have formed their own support group to assist each other.

They are ready to help others experiencing difficulties, such as when antiretroviral medicines fail to arrive on schedule due to supply problems in Rangoon or breakdowns in Burma’s antiquated transportation. Those who have remaining stocks of medicine willingly share with those who have run out and will be repaid in kind when new supplies arrive.

When one member suffers from an ailment such as diarrhea, another will help out at his or her home for the whole day if necessary, washing clothes, providing rehydration fluids and performing essential chores, often returning home late at night.

In many places it creates a stigma to announce HIV infection, but in Kyaukpadaung, not only do infected residents make themselves known to each other, they openly announce that they have been “bitten by A,” a local idiom meaning they are HIV positive, and they have no qualms about talking to the media or seeing their names in print.

If HIV victims in other towns could be as open as those of Kyaukpadaung, it would be a significant step in preventing the spread of the disease. The network that started in Kyaukpadaung has spread to Wundwin Township in Mandalay Division, and to Aunglan (Myayde), Magwe, Taungdwingyi and Yenanggyaung townships in Magwe Division and to some parts of Rangoon.

Shortage of funds exacerbated by the general poverty endemic in Burma is a constant problem. Network members must work hard to raise money to pay for treatment for fellow members or help new victims.

The HIV group in Yenanggyaung has even managed to raise enough surplus funding to open a grocery stall in the market, where HIV network members work in rotation. Two network members supervise the shop, managing its finances and assisting with travel expenses for infected patients who need to go to Rangoon for treatment.

Because the government spends so little money on health and education, support groups are usually the only means available for maintaining health among HIV victims and preventing more infection.

Of the self-help support groups set up so far, the Kyaukpadaung group is the most effective. I went to the town to teach but found I learned from its people. They were the only group that dared openly invite me, an NLD member the military government brands as an “infamous political activist.”

On my second visit, I went there on a pilgrimage, as well as to evade the authorities, who were trying to arrest me. The locals took me to various places around town, including the homes of some residents who may have been providing financial help to Kyaukpadaung’s HIV/AIDS network.

Before I left town, I overheard some youths in a tea shop cajoling each other to make sure they took condoms if they went to a karaoke bar. A sign on the outskirts of the town said, “Bon Voyage,” and I remembered the words of one HIV patient.

“Ma Phyu,” he said, “every second house in my town is the home of a widow.”

Phyu Phyu Thin, 37, has cared for HIV and AIDS patients since 2002, providing counseling and education, sending them to clinics and providing accommodation in Rangoon to those coming for treatment from outlying areas. Due to her political affiliation and strong support for the NLD, she faces harassment in her work and has been arrested and jailed on several occasions.