ON THE BORDER, there are times when it seems like nothing can
be done; the war will never end; the orchid girls have disappeared
forever. In these dark moments, it is a comfort to know Dr. Cynthia.
She somehow rises above the violence and misery and hopelessness
around her, carrying on with her work, doing what the rest of
us cannot. Day after day, she helps people.
The only physical clue to the power and complexity of her life
is her purse. I rarely saw her without the squat, serious-looking
leather bag. Once I asked her what was in it, and she gleefully
dumped out the contents: snapshots of her two children, a stapler,
scrawled notes, checks from foreign donors, grant proposals, keys,
patients' HIV lab results, hair elastics, a pink ice-cream spoon,
Thai money, a black address book.
During my first visit to Mae Sot, when I had taught aerobics out
by the rice fields, Dr. Cynthia would set the purse on a pile
of tires before dancing through the half-hour routine in her flip-flops
and whirling longyi. After class, while I rewound the cassette,
she'd leave me to watch her purse and stroll around the patch
of dirt behind the clinic, picking up bits of garbage while the
sky lightened to a dull white above the mossy mountains fronting
Burma.
It seemed she was thinking about something far away, and I was
always struck by the gravity and enormity and sheer number of
things she handled the rest of the day:
Was the Burmese military bluffing in threatening the border villages?
Should she wait to send a mobile medical team into the region?
What if the monsoon arrived before the medics could dig a new
septic tank for the latrines? How to convince malnourished women
more babies would survive if they waited a few years between births?
How to find time for her own husband and two young children?
Her short walk without the purse lasted less than 10 minutes.
It seemed to be the only time she had to herself the whole day.
Then she'd shoulder her purse and walk back toward the clinic,
where patients squatted on the worn concrete, waiting.
So many people depend on Dr. Cynthia. What if anything should
happen to her?
There was an anonymous letter found in the clinic's toilet room
that had demanded 900,000 baht, threatened to harm "the doctor's"
family. Dr. Cynthia had tried to laugh it off: "Which doctor?"
A powerful Thai monk had quietly warned Dr. Cynthia to be careful
of kidnapping. Punk monks had skidded their truck into the dirt
yard, barged into the clinic, interrogated medics, abruptly left.
Were they spies? Were those guns tucked under their orange robes?
A grenade had exploded in Mae Sot while we were there. There were
rumors that because of the grenade, local Thai officials would
force the Burmese refugees back across the border.
Dr. Cynthia has no patience with rumors or suspicion or fear.
They are the regime's most powerful weapons. They turn people
against each other, erode the community, destroy the heart.
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