SAIH and the Student Peace Prize have challenged all the laureates of the student peace prize to contribute to the Student Watch Blog while attending the Student Solidarity Conference 2010. First out is Kyaw Win from the 2001 laureate ABFSU from Burma.
Written by Kyaw Win, from All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU).
Timor Note 1:
We arrived at Dili Airport at 3:10 pm. We applied arrival visa at the small airport building and had pay 30 USD. The weather with high humidity has wrapped all of us with sweat. But we saw our Norwegian and Timorese colleagues waiting outside of the building and welcoming to us. It really touched us with warmth.
We went to a hotel and took rooms. The rooms have high ceilings, and there’s no fun, except aircon in the room, ventilation at the high end and one door. It is of very bad architecture. Or maybe it is because of burglary.
We went out for dinner at where Burmese workers worked. I asked some staffs at the restaurant if could meet Burmese workers there. But they didn’t know what a Burmese was. Then one of them told me there that they had workers from this and that country. Then I smiled at him, because I would like to meet people from Myanmar. So this is a small island and a new nation. There are a lot of NGOs and UN, and at last the Burmese; will they arrive every corner or place of the world? Yes, they will.
Timor Note 2:
We visited the school outside of Dili. There we met some 20 kids in uniforms. Some around 10 kids had no uniform. Maybe they are not from that school or couldn’t attend because we came there on Sunday (school break). We planned to go to top of the mountain and visit to village scatted along the mountain, but we couldn’t because of heavy rain.
We met a former commander from the Timor revolution in 1975. He is now teaching around 50 kids at another school nearby. He smiled much, but was a man of full dedication. His speech was really energizing to me. When he went back to his school, he walked without shoes. He walked gently but very decidedly.
