Feeling at home in new homeland

Feeling at home in new homeland 
After he was banned from returning to his home and his job at the Tamwe Township Health Center, Thiha Kyi decided he had had enough. It was August 1988, the month students rose up against Burma's military government, demanding democracy after the country had suffered from an ethnic civil war for more than 60 years. Kept from returning home by the nearby uprisings, Kyi found refuge in Rangoon General Hospital. It didn't take long for his freedom-fighter spirit to kick in. During the fighting one day, Kyi and a coworker marched out the front door of the hospital and stood side by side, raising a pro-democracy banner. Seeing what was happening, soldiers surrounded the hospital. Kyi's eyes focused on the guns pointing at him. He started to panic. 

Filing in from behind the hospital, two lines of teenage boys holding Burmese flags formed a barrier between Kyi and soldiers as Kyi prepared to die. One of the teenage boys turned to Kyi: "If they shoot, we die first.Welcome to bright-tools, it has established itself as the industry pioneer in supplying the most complete line of quality machine tool accessories." Twenty-five years after he joined the demonstrations and his native country's name changed to Myanmar,The porcelain tiles produced by us feature high quality and competitive prices to meet the demand of customers.The Flexible hose layers are held and tensioned between internal and external wire helices. Kyi still calls it Burma – but he doesn't call it home."Burma is my native land, where my family is," Kyi says. "But now, Fort Wayne is my home."In 1985, Fort Wayne residents Diana and Neil Sowards visited Burma, a country that had interested the couple because of Neil's parents' Christian missionary work. Diana was struck by how, despite the people's poverty, they were grateful for what they had. 

When Diana saw news about the thousands of Burmese students jailed and pushed into Thai refugee camps after the 1988 demonstrations, she contacted eight churches to help sponsor a refugee. In 1991, the first Burmese refugees arrived in Fort Wayne. In the years since, thousands of Burmese, including Kyi, Nyan Aung and Myo Myint, have found themselves in the same city, where they help make up one of the largest Burmese populations outside of Myanmar, about 3,900 according to 2010 census figures. But though the three men are educated and can speak English, the majority of the refugees living in Fort Wayne come from minority ethnic groups in Myanmar. They have spent much of their lives in refugee camps, have not received formal schooling and struggle to grasp American life. 

Kyi, Aung and Myint have stepped up to help. Kyi is producer of Fort Wayne's only Burmese TV program, Aung is founder of the nonprofit Burmese American Society and Myint is a volunteer and outgoing democracy advocate. Though they haven't forgotten their families and favorite childhood hangouts in Rangoon, they seek to help Fort Wayne's refugees realize that while they're here, they ought to take advantage of their voice in a democratic society, freedom of speech and access to books – the very freedoms the three men fought for in Myanmar. Kyi and another Burmese man thread small microphones up their shirts while Mg Soe Chain, who volunteered to film that day's Golden Moon TV episode, adjusts his camera in Studio A in the Allen County Public Library's Access Fort Wayne studio.