By Beth Mechum
Staff Writer

Speaking the Karen language is often prohibited in Myanmar, formerly Burma, and in the refugee camps in Thailand where many native Karen speakers are forced to live. But the language now has found a home in Carrboro.

Karen and Burmese immigrants have been steadily moving to Carrboro (with the biggest growth coming in the last five years) to avoid being persecuted because of their status as ethnic minorities in their homeland.

Carrboro is a place where while they’re free to speak their native tongue, almost no one can speak it back.

That is, until recently. In an effort to help break down this language barrier, the Chapel Hill Institute for Cultural and Language Education (CHICLE) decided to offer a short introductory course in the Sgaw strain of the Karen language.

“We got asked because there is a Karen community here and it’s a language that we’ve never taught,” CHICLE’s program director Miriam Palacio says. “With all the people calling, there was an obvious interest, and there is even a waiting list.”

Palacio said CHICLE chose to keep this first class small because the instructor was a first-time and languages are learned better in small groups.

The first round of classes — four meetings of an hour and a half each — ended last week and there are already talks of adding more classes with higher levels.

Student becomes teacher
Christine Wai and her family arrived in the area nine years ago from a Thai refugee camp and knew no English. Flicka Bateman, a neighbor, knew no Karen (pronounced kah-RIN), but the two have formed a lasting bond.

Through the years, Bateman, principal of the Hospital School at UNC Hospitals and a former member of the Chapel Hill Town Council, tutored Christine and her siblings and has been helping other Karen immigrants do everything from filling out job applications and applying for food stamps and has acted as a liaison to the greater Carrboro community.

Bateman helped a Karen man who got in a misunderstanding at a local grocery store and another who didn’t realize he had to have a fishing permit to fish at Jordan Lake.

Bateman emphasizes that rules are hard to follow when it’s impossible to read signs.

Wai now works in a research lab at the UNC School of Medicine. Bateman suggested her as a possible teacher candidate for the Karen language class. And while Wai has no formal teaching training and has tutored only in math and science, she said she couldn’t turn this opportunity down.

“It’s different from tutoring because that’s my major, but it’s fun with the Karen language, because I’m teaching them and also helping my people at the same time,” Wai says.

Bateman says that in the beginning, she had to rely on translators and a little imagination to communicate.
“You learn to be creative in terms of gestures and charades,” she says.

Having now taken the first round of classes, she’s says she’s still nowhere near an expert, none of her classmates are, and those gestures will continue to come in handy. But now, she says, she can talk to Karen speakers on a more personal level.

“A lot of the words are so hard to pronounce,” Wai says, acknowledging that only small steps can be taken in the allotted time. “But they are trying really hard, and if I see them trying hard, it just makes me happy.”

Culture infusion
The Karen language certainly is not an easy one to learn. It’s tonal, and even many of its native speakers can’t actually read it.

It’s hard to find a Karen dictionary, much less workbooks, but Wai worked with what she had.

Classmates use each other for practice, and class organizer Andrea Heckert said learning words by playing a variation of Bingo has students excited.

The class is about as introductory as it can get, with a primary focus on greetings, how to refer to people and some basic numbers, because those are the things most needed in general conversation, in the health field and by churches that sponsor Karen people.

But it’s about more than the language.

“The curriculum is about the cultural, political and social realities of the Karen refugee community here, as much at is about learning greetings as cultural competency,” Heckert says. “It’s about relating to another culture that is so very different.”

Heckert says all class members have a real commitment to learning at least a little of the language. These aren’t people who decide to take Karen on a whim, she says, it’s not that kind of language.

Peter and Sarah Durham have encountered a lot of Karen people in their work as Jehovah Witnesses and wanted to know more about the immigrants.

“It’s out of respect of human dignity to speak to someone in their own language, and it reaches the heart,” Peter says. “I think it’s good to know the basics, and I think learning the culture is huge.”

Durham said he and his wife have appreciated little bits of simple but important knowledge they’ve gained from the culture parts of the class. He says he now knows that it’s respectful to sit down and take off your shoes when entering a Karen household, you should never walk in front of an older member of the community without bowing your head in respect and that touching someone’s head is disrespectful.

Durham says the small amount of Karen he’s learned has already made a difference.

“We have used the greetings. Before I didn’t know how to say ‘nice to meet you,’ or even ask about another member of the family, and that has gone a long way to just the appreciation on their faces,” he said.

Durham views the class as an open forum where everyone feels comfortable to ask questions, and that’s the kind of feel both Wai and Heckert wanted.

“That’s the good thing about the area of Carrboro, it’s a very accepting area,” Durham says. “Carrboro hasn’t forced the Karen community to conform and forget their culture. And since their culture is essentially being attacked and destroyed, it’s important that there is a place for it.”