‘Courage Brother’: A Reflection on Bangkok

CSC News & Reflections
Spring 2004

The following reflection was written by Kate Belden as part of Prof. Greg Downey’s course, “Cultural Difference and Social Change.” Belden is currently president of the “Free Burma Coalition,” a student group working to focus attention on the humanitarian abuses of the repressive regime ruling Burma.

My life changed inalterably on a typically humid and chaotic Bangkok evening, at a party next to a sewage canal. The party was held for two missionaries who were leaving the National Catholic Commission on Migrants (NCCM) located in the heart of bustling Bangkok. Refugees from the NCCM safe house were present, including Colombians, Americans, Rwandans, Iraqis, Sudanese, Kenyans, Burmese, Iranians, Sri Lankans, Vietnamese, Chinese, Central Americans, and South Americans.

One refugee, Mr. Thien, had been tortured very badly in Vietnam, leaving him severely mentally handicapped and oftentimes confused as to his whereabouts. However, Mr. Thien was renowned at the refugee house for his garden. From simple plant cuttings he had created an elaborate and beautiful garden built on wooden slats that completely masked an unsightly open sewage canal running behind the house. Mr. Thien invited me into his garden—distinguished by a tattered piece of loose-leaf paper taped on the door frame, with “Mr. Thien’s Garden” scrawled in ink. While I wondered at the logistics of creating such an elegant idyll in a sewage canal, Mr. Thien cut a small white orchid and slowly and carefully placed it in the long braid that rested on my shoulder, as tears welled in my eyes. This garden was a living metaphor for the refugees. Out of sewage, what a society threw away and ignored, Mr. Thien was able to grow a beautiful garden.

At the end of the party, the residents sang a song that the departing missionaries had taught them several weeks earlier. This was a traditional song from the American South that slaves sang to one another when they were sold away from their families. “Courage Brother, you do not walk alone. I will walk with you, and sing your spirit home.” Here, displaced people without any real home sang and called one another “brother” and “sister.” Here, broken people grew flowers out of sewage. Here—I experienced real joy and humans exalted in love. They found a home and brotherhood in the shared experience of the human journey.

Many of these refugees were originally from fundamentalist and nationalist societies. But from living in community with other people in similarly dire situations, they were able to understand the core importance of life: the need for human compassion. I realized that the “home” to which our spirit returns lies in the relationships we build with our fellow brothers and sisters on this earth, and this spiritual place transcends any geographical “home” that we could ever claim. The echoes of the refugees’ song and the triumphant re-blossoming of the human spirit that I witnessed that night in Bangkok continue to resonate and grow within me, reminding me to cultivate gardens wherever I can, sing loudly with whatever voice I have, and always harbor hope for the world.