The school was one of 10 Burmese migrant learning centres closed as a result of the 24 August arrest and deportation of 32 Burmese teachers by Thai officials.

News of their reopening on a part-time basis was confirmed on Monday, by Fr Frank Bird, the Director of the Marist Asia Foundation.

"We have our school programme operating because the Marist Asia Foundation is a registered foundation and we have international volunteers and Thai staff", Frank Bird said.

At present, the school is the only migrant learning centre able to open.

It re-opened after conducting a risk re-assessment and determining that by using only Thai and International volunteers the threat risk was "low".

In making the decision to re-open, the Marist Asia Foundation decided that as well as catering for its secondary school students, the school would welcome students from other secondary schools to come and sit their exams.

"We want to show the students our care and support", said Frank Bird.

"We don't want them to miss out on the opportunity."

While the school has some surplus capacity, it worked in co-operation with a local monastery to provide space for students to sit their exams.

Like others in the region, the Marist Asia Foundation laments its inability to reintroduce its Burmese teachers into their classrooms.

"We feel deeply the pain and anxiety of the Burmese Migrant Community as their children are not able to attend school and their own teachers are not allowed to teach", says Frank Bird.

The Thai Government considers the Burmese learning centres as illegal and their Burmese teachers are also illegal. It is a situation that has been permitted for the past 15-20 years.

While the students are not at school, they are either unsafely wandering the streets, locked up at home while their parents go to work, or follow their parents to work in the unsafe fish and charcoal factories.

Source

• Supplied
• Image: Supplied

I've never felt happier.

Restless. Yes, that perhaps sums up in a word a spirit led journey.

I turned 40 a year ago and realised each year I was becoming a bit more a comfortable.

Although a little dramatic, one image in my mind was that of putting slippers on and watching a bit more TV.

With about 25 years to go before retirement, do I choose to slow down or go deeper?

Answer a more radical calling in my bones that I could not turn off.

I knew deep down becoming more comfortable was going in the reverse direction to a God placed desire in me.

Who do you really want to be?

I can still remember a significant moment when I was 16. I was asked by a priest during a spiritual conversation: Frank, what is your deepest desire? Who do you really want to be?

My response was pondered often while walking my Doberman dog along the riverbank - (she insisted on large amounts of daily exercise or she would bark the neighbourhood down) - I wish to live a life of love and service for others.

And hence the journey began to Marist life and Priesthood.

While in New Zealand I greatly enjoyed serving in schools, parishes and among the indigenous Maori people.

But working among poor Burmese Migrants in the fishing town of Ranong for the past 18 months has changed me inside.

What it is like serving in Asia

It's a bit like Jesus in the gospel of John taking off his ‘priestly garments' and picking up a ‘towel and water basin' to wash dirty feet; moving from the ordered priestly workbench of the altar to more dirty missionary pathways and streets.

I've been serving on the Thailand Burma Border for the past 18 months and I've never been happier. Continue reading

Sources

• Fr Frank Bird s.m. in Restless Press
• Image: Marist Asia Foundation