Bamboo and Barbed Wire

Eight Years as a Volunteer in a Refugee Camp recounts the author’s experiences on the Thai-Cambodian border between 1985 and 1993. Ms. Grant (mother of photojournalist Tim Grant) was a 56 year-old Australian swimming instructor who had recently completed a degree in health education and wanted to do something interesting. In 1985 she volunteered to go to Thailand with the Thai NGO Catholic Office for Emergency Relief and Refugees (COERR). What started out as a short-term volunteer assignment turned into a second career as she braved the dangers of an active war zone to help Khmer and Vietnamese refugees. Ms. Grant went far beyond the normal parameters of refugee camp work, helping reunite separated families, smuggling goods and people into and out of the camps, and making several illegal visits into Cambodia itself before the Vietnamese finally pulled out and she was able to enter legally. During her years on the border she worked with orphans, street children, convicts in prison, widows, lepers, the handicapped, and even set up a school for lifeguards, saving the lives of many children who swam in reservoirs surrounding the camp. Her story culminates with her involvement in the 1993 Dhammayietra Walk for Peace and Reconciliation, during which she and her son walked into a full-scale battle and were taken hostage by Khmer Rouge soldiers.

Margot Grant tells her story with humor and an acute appreciation of the tragic dilemma that the refugees faced as they languished in the border camps for years: many were rejected arbitrarily for resettlement and had to subsist on handouts under extremely dangerous and uncomfortable conditions, knowing that returning to Cambodia was likely to be just as arduous. pp. 296 Illustrated #160216