Earlier this year I volunteered with the highly esteemed NGO ‘The Border Consortium’ (TBC), started by my friend and neighbour, Jack Dunford (MBE). Jack has been responsible for feeding and housing hundreds of thousands of Burmese refugees on the Thai/Burma border since the early ‘80s. TBC operations are based out of Mae Sot, Thailand, which I first visited as a backpacker in the 90s.

I documented five of the nine camps that stretch over a huge section of the Thai border, from Central to Northern Thailand. As it happened, the day I started was a couple of days after the world’s richest man had thrown USAID “into the wood chipper”. No ‘phasing out’, just medical services for tens of thousands of people shuttered overnight. Old folks unplugged from their oxygen, things like that.

TBC pioneered the philosophy of letting the people in the camps make the decisions. TBC gave technical assistance when needed, and raised money. For literally 50 cents a day they kept 100,000+ people in basic nutrition and cooking fuel. I could go on and on, but I won’t I’m just going to show some photos.

As a family/kids photographer the first thing I noticed were the kids. They had lives that looked like any town in rural Thailand, except they were trapped in there, with no prospects of finding employment when grown. (Don’t worry, there is a happy ending to this!)

Some Portraits From The Border Consortium

My guide from The Border Consortium (TBC) suggested we go meet someone who spoke “very good English.” It turned out she is more or less English, Maureen Cribb, the daughter of Thomas and Norah Cribb.
Thomas was a Brit, born in Burma in 1912 (I believe his grandfather had come to Burma sometime in the mid-19th century). Norah was Karen. Thomas worked for the Burma Oil Company and fought for the British during World War II. He passed away in 1998, having never left Burma even once in his lifetime.
Maureen was born in 1944 and worked for a Baptist organization. She had traveled to places like Australia and Argentina for conferences, but has been stuck in the refugee camp for 17 years with other family members. I snapped a few photos of the pictures on her wall, including one of Thomas and Norah, and another from the '90s in Insein, where she lived. (That's her on the right.)

If that wasn’t fascinating enough, Thomas had a brother, Will Cribb, born in 1930. Will was sent to school in India in 1937 and then on to England, but he never returned to Burma, and never saw his parents again. Will penned a memoir entitled ‘Telegram From Mandalay’, which has received great reviews. Incredibly he’s still alive today! Maureen chats with him via video link, though they’ve never met in person.
Maureen is very frail and has knee problems, so she’s unable to go downstairs. Since USAID closed the hospital in the camp, her chances of seeing a doctor now seem slim. (Unfortunately, the photos I took of her were poorly lit since we couldn’t get outside.) Despite her physical challenges, Maureen is sharp as a tack and loves to chat. I could have easily spent a day chatting with her.

Looks idylic, but it’s a difficult 4-hour drive from the nearest real town, and that’s in dry season. And they can’t leave the camp to find meaningful employment, but that is about to change.

But this summer there was an incredible breakthrough. Amidst recent upheaval in the region, a piece of good news emerged last month: The Thai Government has approved a new policy allowing Burmese refugees to leave the border camps and work. The Border Consortium has worked tirelessly for years to make this happen. A huge congratulations to them for their success.
My experience photographing in five of these camps last February completely upended my preconceived notions. I'd always imagined refugee camps as places of passive waiting, where families lived in tents with no control over their lives. The reality was the opposite.

These camps were vibrant, self-governed communities that felt much like any other town in Southeast Asia; full of schools, markets, and an inspiring sense of positivity. The only catch was that no one was allowed to leave. But now, that is changing.

I remember a conversation with a young Karen woman, a member of the camp administration who, like many young people there, spoke excellent English. (In green shirt below.) When I asked if she had ever been to Chiang Mai, she said, “No, that would be like a dream.” Now, with a pressing need for unskilled labor across Thailand, she and countless others may finally get to pursue that dream and find meaningful work. It is an incredibly positive development in a year begun with such malice.

TBC press release on the change of policy. Major kudos to the Thai government for making this happen.

Below are some photos of daily life in the camps.

Just when you thought I was finally done, there is an adventurous postscript to this story. In July I was part of a small group invited to the old Karen National Union Headquarters of Manerplaw. It had been won back from the Burmese junta in December 2024 after being held for almost 30 years. I was the first photographer to visit since 1995. Our security detail was solid.

The main issue was that we had a two hour ride down a crazy river swollen to dangerous levels by days of torrential rain. Massive whirlpools and whole trees in the current; it was exciting, to put it mildly. But I loved it, it’s been a while since I had an adventure. (I lived in Phnom Penh for most of the ‘90s, so I had a crazy number there.)

Manerplaw must have had the highest concentration of acronyms per square meter in the world back then: KNU, ABSDF, DPNS, NDF and of course the NCGUB.

Not much there now, the structures are long gone. There is a memorial in the old parade ground and amazingly some old graves of Karen heroes still exist. As it rained for days without stopping for one minute, so the massive famous cliff behind didn’t reveal itself. We had to leave in an extreme hurry to avoid being stuck for days by the rising river. (And with no food.) I snapped a few moody shots in the rain. Little bummed about the photos, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out.

Anyway, I was in desperate need of something out of the ordinary, and while I couldn’t really shoot on account of the weather, it was an amazing trip. I made some interesting friends. Interesting that we could be 500 meters from Thailand, but nobody spoke Thai.

Burma is just an incredibly complicated place, and with the ongoing civil war that literally no media in the west is covering, things are going to be even trickier in the near future. But at least there is good news for the 100,000+ refugees in the camps supported by The Border Consortium.

OK, I’m almost done. On this trip I was also introduced to what must be one of the World’s Greatest Coffee Shops, I kid you not! Naisor Coffee is a long way from anything you could call a “town”. It is perched up on the top of a mountain, or side of a cliff more correctly, looking over a gorgeous, and poetically named เมฆทะเล (‘mek talay, or ‘sea of clouds’) It is run by a local Karen guy who came back to his village to establish this little shop. He works with local coffee growers and roasts his own delicious beans. I have to go back to Italy many decades ago where I had such a cup of coffee for a dollar.

Naisor Coffee is a Destination Coffee Shop, I Never Thought I Would Type That

I will end by saying, I am up for volunteering on these types of projects, when time permits. I would rather tough it through the mountains in a Land Cruiser over going to an all-inclusive resort somewhere. If you are involved with a charity that needs to tell a positive story through photography, contact me to discuss. I have worked with the Asian Development Bank, Save the Children, CARE, USAID (RIP), Helen Keller International and more.