This story originally appeared on March 15, 1998. © 1997 The Seattle Times. The orchid girls are still alive. That's the good news. We learned it several weeks ago when my husband and I returned to the Thailand-Burma border to volunteer at Dr. Cynthia Maung's refugee clinic. There is also sad news: Another child we knew has been killed by the war. I hate to report bad news, so first the good. Colors seemed brighter after we found out, for sure, that Shu Wah and Oh Mu were alive and well and had been seen fishing for minnows with small baskets in the stream that flows through Chogali village. It had been hard to get news from Chogali, Burma, since the Burmese military invaded last year. Villagers weren't allowed to come and go. A few did, but it was dangerous and costly. So we were shocked when a mom from Chogali arrived at Dr. Cynthia's clinic at Mae Sot, Thailand, in the hottest part of Sunday, in a swirl of dust and crying children. Her baby was sick and she was scared. Chogali, a village of 60 bamboo huts, had been without medical care since soldiers destroyed Dr. Cynthia's jungle field clinic there last year. Eleven people had died from malaria and dysentery. Six were children. Dr. Cynthia jumped up as soon as she spotted the flash of magenta so distinctive of hill-tribe clothing. We had been chatting and slurping sticky instant coffee out of chipped white cups while leaning against a year's worth of patient records stacked up to Dr. Cynthia's armpits. Last year, the stack barely reached her hips. The patient load had tripled. Malaria seemed worse, resistant to even the most expensive antibiotics, more malicious to red blood cells, complicated by anemia and malnutrition. Many patients needed transfusions. The medics screened each other, matched blood type, and donated on the spot. The mother from Chogali was a beautiful poised woman who maintained her grace even while hand-pumping breast milk into a greasy cellophane bag. Her baby had stopped sucking during the journey. The infant wore a bullet casing filled with traditional medicine on a string around his neck so ghosts could not capture his soul. He had been born the day before Chogali fell. He had huge dark eyes and skin smooth as ripe fruit. The baby, like his mother, was calm and beautiful. This was a bad sign. He was in shock. The baby needed blood. I matched. As her baby recovered over the next week, Hser Lah told me what had become of Chogali and the orchid girls. Oh Mu has grown a little taller. Shu Wah has not. Sometimes they are sick, sometimes healthy. There is no longer a school in the village, so the two girls wander around, trying to copycat grownups who are doing chores. The women spend a lot more time carrying water from the stream because soldiers dismantled the PVC pipes Dr. Cynthia had installed. The men dig. Military trucks collapsed the irrigation ditches in their chili and rice fields. But overall, Chogali was lucky. The generals left it in control of a faction that is less cruel, less likely to rape or use slave labor. Before Hser Lah and her baby returned to Chogali, Dr. Cynthia loaded them up with medicine for the village. We sent back some pink and purple jackets for Shu Wah and Oh Mu, and I tucked their snapshot in one of the pockets. I wasn't sure what to write on the back, because they can't read and have never left the jungle. I ended up sketching the Space Needle, mountains, water, smiling faces. Pretty corny. Like installing a titanium map on Voyager and hoping Martians will show up on your doorstep next millennium. But who knows? You can never tell what will happen in life. We can wish. Aid made a big difference I wish you could have seen that baby get better. I wish you could have seen the medics hoisting 82 huge cardboard crates of medicine up the stairs, medicine from all of you - here in Seattle. I wish you could have seen the ruffled leaf roofs of the Huay Kaloke refugee camp, rebuilt after last year's torching. And the ladies in the new bamboo sewing hut, stitching brassieres and children's clothes on treadle sewing machines purchased with money you donated. I wish you could have seen the orphans from Chogali and the other villages, spinning tops and playing soccer by their big tree house near the river. They'd gained weight since last year. Dr. Cynthia bought 40 extra sacks of rice for them, from you. Thank you for your phenomenal response after "A Land of War, A Journey of the Heart" was published last fall. More than 50 phone calls, more than 100 letters, more than 450 people donating more than $27,000 to Dr. Cynthia's clinic and the refugees along the border. People gave children's clothes, medical supplies, antibiotics, two microscopes. Several doctors, nurses and just-plain people wanted to volunteer on the border. Others called wanting to adopt, wanting to do fund-raisers, wanting to help, wanting to share their own lives. School children wrote letters to Dr. Cynthia. One family donated money they would have spent on Christmas presents. Dr. Cynthia read all your letters, several times, and asked me to thank you - not only for your donations, but for your caring. "When we get all this, we really think we got the heart and so we feel like we win," she said. "We feel like we can continue our struggle. And we want them - all of you - to be involved, to support with the heart. Not only here, wherever in the world." We did an art project with the children in the Huay Kaloke refugee camp, using magic markers and fabric squares to make a quilt. Some of the children drew pictures of peace: duck ponds and golden fields ready for harvest. Others sketched firing squads, guns, blood. The distant mountains were blue; the nearer hills were green. All the children spent a long time coloring the sky. "During the day, my heart is like a melon," one of the young artists said. "In the evening, it's like an orange. And at night, like a bean." Refugee camp shelled, torched Just across the river, on the slope of a looming green hill, there were five artillery launchers aimed at the camp. For months, Burmese soldiers had threatened to attack. People slept with their few belongings in bundles, ready to flee. So here, reluctantly, is the bad news: Huay Kaloke refugee camp was shelled and torched last week. The ruffled leaf roofs, the children's art quilt, all that is gone. Charred stumps punctuate the ashen landscape. Eight thousand people lost their homes, hundreds of people were burned, 50 seriously wounded, four people were killed - including one of the orphans under Dr. Cynthia's care. I once asked Dr. Cynthia if she ever felt like giving up when things got bad. "You can look back over your shoulder, and then they win," she said. "Or you can look forward, and you win." She has already sent teams of medics and supplies to the camp. I have not yet heard which child was killed and I don't know how he or she died. I am afraid to know. Instead, I like to think of the night we spent with the orphans in the treehouse. How the boys sang "Ob-la-dee, Ob-la-da, Life goes on . . . " as they washed their tin plates with water from the cistern and then got ready for bed. How the girls taught me an odd assortment of Karen words (moon, star, flower, rat) while we brushed our teeth in the cool darkness with a brand new tube of mint toothpaste. The girls and I shared a mosquito net with their grimy stuffed bear. Before blowing out the candle, they read me their lessons and drew pictures on my Newton. Then they fell asleep and smelled like shampoo. Sometime after midnight, I woke up and climbed down the ladder to use the latrine. The morning fog had not yet set down. The sky was astoundingly clear and crowded. I felt thankful for the abundance of stars and the peace of the night. It was quiet enough to hear the pulse of a million crickets and the sound of 20 children breathing. The children were breathing. I long to hear that sound again.