#entry 44

[ezathe]

Hi I’m Maven/Mavis or Vendetta (collectively Haven)

🎨: Otto-Tigtea

(Messy) Links | Donation Post

He/Him/They + 25 + Guy-Adjacent (Transmasc, TME) + white

I really like playing games with my friends and I post a lot about my OCs :] im also a system and physically disabled among other things, and i talk about this sometimes

I have so many animals <- I post about them a lot

i used to be @/thiefrogue and @/fiendpatron !

[making-sense-of-oversomnia]

Theory: Junction Space, Irving’s Friends, the Serpents, and Ending 1

Buckle in, this is gonna be a long one, and probably the closest I’ll ever get to posting a 'complete' Oversomnia theory.

To begin, let’s recap what exactly happens at Junction Space. 

First, you go to the southernmost part of Outback Roads where the screen darkens. If you successfully dodge the black and white monster roaming around the area and reach a rock formation that looks like a key, you can use the skeleton key effect to unlock a door there.

Doing this brings you a monochrome blue bedroom. From here, you follow a triangular-patterned pathway to a gateway with serpentine motifs, guarded by black and white monsters on either side.

This takes you to a space with 4 doors. On the left, a red door with one dot, then an orange door with two dots, a green door with three dots and a blue door with four dots. Each door has the same serpentine decorations as the entryway. A person with black hair and a blue-gray sweatshirt vanishes after entering the green door. Irving can go through any of these doors, and doing so causes a slowed down version of a phone disconnecting sound effect to play. This takes you to an extremely staticky void space where letters appear on screen. After seeing this, Irving is returned to the nexus. 

The bestiary entry for this event reads: There was a glimpse of one of my friends in an area shrouded in an unwelcoming atmosphere. Perhaps I was no longer in my own dream.

That's a lot to unpack.

For starters, I think it’s pretty safe to say that each door represents a person here. Irving’s color is overwhelmingly green. His name literally means green water, and more importantly, his section of the Dreaming Serpents World is green. Green crystal trees, green doors, green river. 

Junction Space is obviously a space either created by, managed by, or otherwise connected to the serpents. The doors all have serpent motifs that look nearly identical to those seen in the Dreaming Serpents World. So -- the green door is his. This is also why Irving notes in the bestiary that he is, perhaps, “no longer in my own dream” if his friend went through his door. Put a pin in that for now, we’ll come back to it.

We can also determine the owner of one other door using this color-coordination method. Dreaming Serpents World only loops horizontally; you can see other colors in the far north and far south. There are blue crystal trees in the south, and red ones in the north.

You wanna know what else is in the north? In a hard to access spot near the door that sends Irving to Lowest Point is an out of reach semitransparent version of Lucky. This would make door number one -- the red door -- hers.

This also means that Irving and Lucky have opposite colors from each other -- red and green are typically opposites from each other on the color wheel. Their dominant outfit color has no bearing on their serpent door color either, which is important to note when determining the owners of the other doors. 

So, Lucky’s #1 and Irving’s #3. I made a theory earlier that the white monster outside of Junction Space is representative of Irving based on the fact that the racoon dog transforms into it when copying him. If we take this into account, there’s one other place in the game where Lucky’s #1 and Irving’s #3: their order in the bestiary.

This would make the alarmed person correspond to orange door #2, and Irving’s friend who we see at Junction Space correspond to blue door #4 (meaning the area in the south of Dreaming Serpents World is also theirs). This could also explain part of why the alarmed person is so prevalent in Irving’s dreams. Everyone else with a door is one of Irving’s friends, so maybe they’re a dream-version of a different one of his friends too, or a friend of a friend. Although, I don’t know why he wouldn’t mention that in the bestiary if so. I’ve previously speculated that the person with the beret you see at Vermillion Rooftops is perhaps closer to the “real world” form of the alarmed person since they bear quite a few design similarities (but noticeably lack alarms or other supernatural design aspects). However, that person doesn’t have a bestiary entry we can reference, so your guess is as good as mine.

I think it’s also safe to say the room we see in Junction Space belongs to friend #4. None of those decorations resemble how Lucky decorates her stall, and the computer on the desk isn’t the one we see in the Lowest Point event (which could be Lucky’s or Irving's, but we don’t see it anywhere in Irv's room). Note the stickers on the Lowest Point event computer, and the utter lack of stickers on the one on the desk.

Circling back to the actual events of Junction Space though -- the serpents tend to be heavily associated with phones. Entering any door in Dreaming Serpents World doesn’t prompt a door opening sound effect, but instead, a phone ringing. Similarly, the sound you hear after going through Junction Space is a telephone disconnect sound effect slowed down at 0.5x speed. You can hear the properly timed sound effect in one of the vents in the Ventilation Passageway, where Irving sits facing away from a black landline phone tangled up in an ominous red material.

Notably, that phone is NOT any of the ones Irving typically uses -- it's big, black, and has rounded speakers at both ends. His mobile phone is obviously small, rectangular, and blue. The one he uses to save in his bedroom is similarly small and rectangular (which you can see especially clearly in the game instructions). So, who’s hanging up on who here? It evidently doesn’t seem to be a good kind of hanging up either.

Possibility 1: The phone disconnect in Junction Space is represents a denial of letting Irving enter someone else’s dream. He’s not allowed to go into any of their spaces, even though (and possibly because) someone else is already in his. 

Possibility 2: Irving calls his friends to talk with them about his dreams, which is why you save the game with the phone (that’s him checking in with them). The serpents, on the other hand, call Irving (and his friends) because they want favors of some kind, which is what the purpose of Junction Space is, and which is why the Dreaming Serpents World doors are represented by a phone ringing. Whoever went through Irving’s door was going against some kind of plan or agreement, and Irving’s is not happy about it (see: Ventilation Space, and the monster trying to keep people out of Junction Space).

As an aside, you might see information on the Oversomnia wiki about Irving being “part of a ‘dream club’ whose members share their dreams using different methods.” This is information taken from itch.io descriptions of earlier releases, which you can still find via let’s play footage and the Wayback Machine. I’ve attached both older descriptions below here for reference, but I don’t know how much you can consider this information “canon” since the creator of the game has said to ignore versions that came before the current one and the current itch.io description mentions nothing along these lines. Regardless of whether or not there’s a club though, I think there’s still definitely in-game evidence for the fact that Irving has friends, they also happen to talk about dreams with each other, and they also happen to go onto each other's dreams sometimes (even if they maybe shouldn’t). 

Also, if they can all access each other's dreams, then friend #4 going through Irving’s door makes it hard to analyze Irving’s personality based solely on what he dreams about (not to mention any serpent influence) which is why I haven’t done a personality analysis for him yet like I did with Lucky lol

Anyways, I think Junction Space and the Dreaming Serpents World are opposite sides of the same coin. They both have doors created by the serpents and they both are spaces where Irving and his friends can see each other in their dreams. However, where Junction Space lets them hop into each other's dreams, Dreaming Serpents World actively separates them from each other with fences and castle walls. I think both spaces are set up by the serpents for some kind of endgame that benefits them at everyone else’s detriment. Serpents, in general, are NOT friendly forces in Irving’s dreams and are noted as being “harrowing” and “not good” by the bestiary. For example, seeing the embryo in the ventilation space sends Irving to Deathrow in a VERY literal way!!!

The serpent in Swamp World sends you to the Ventilation Passage, and there is NOTHING good there (besides the alarmed person chilling out with some tunes). The monster in the incomprehensible event -- who also bears a striking resemblance to the pillars in the Dreaming Serpents World -- dissolves another person there!! 

Speaking of the incomprehensible event -- despite its name, the symbols spoken there actually aren’t all that incomprehensible. There are 8 symbols total: Z, a musical coda (or possibly just a really shiny star -- more on that later), the character 无, an eyeball, Xp, a clock, å, and a sheep.

Half of these have to do with sleep: Z as in zzzz the sound when you’re sleeping, sheep as in counting sheep, and a clock as in an alarm clock (or possibly just time in general). The character 无 (which is also the final “word” the monster "says") means “nothing” or “negative,” which would make sense since it's spoken when the other figure disappears at the end of the event. The musical coda, on the other hand, aligns half with this idea of 'endings,' and half with another serpentine motif -- infinity, looping, and repetition. A coda is used in sheet music to denote where the exit from a repeated section of a song is. There are two other things associated with the serpents and looping. The first is the title screen logo, which shows a serpent in the shape of an infinity symbol. The second is the background of the Dreaming Serpents World, which depicts an ouroboros -- representative of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

From all this, I think it’s fair to say the serpents control the dream. Their symbols are all dream related, or cyclical. Maybe they even derive power from dreams somehow… 

It’s also worth noting that the serpents are just generally incomprehensible to the in-game characters anyways. That message at the end of Junction Space isn’t translatable. Take it from someone who’s run the event at least 10 times and has made multiple decoding efforts. The message is always different regardless of which door you enter. Each letter in each word is rolled from a set of 3 values not linked to any others. Each word always has the same number of letters, even if the letters themselves are different. Not to mention some of the “letters” don’t look like letters at all. The only word that stays consistent is the final four letter word at the bottom, which I always thought looked like “RANO” or something. Regardless, I don’t think there’s a message here you can translate. And if there IS a way to translate it, then I've got no clue... I'm out of ideas SOS...

Ok, so then what exactly is happening in the incomprehensible event? I personally think the event either depicts ending 1, or the serpents’ end goal (if they’re not the same thing). In the ending, Irving makes contact with the serpents, drowns in the green river, and vanishes from reality. In the incomprehensible event, someone makes contact with a serpent-headed monster, and then vanishes from reality at the serpent’s command. See the parallels? If it's true that the serpents work cyclically, then Irving jumping into the Green River at the end of the game possibly represents him giving himself over to the dream entirely (and the serpents, by extension). He vanishes from reality, but throws himself into this never ending cycle of dreaming and waking up. This is why you “wake up” after ending 1 and get a menu theme -- you’re not actually waking up in reality, you’re just waking up in a dream version of reality so you can continue the loop. Alternatively, Irving’s been stuck in that cycle, nothing was real the entire time (which is why the weather outside never changes, or maybe he just lives in Britain idk), and jumping into the Green River is a way of ending that cycle once and for all (even if it means erasing himself from reality entirely). 

Ok, so how real is reality then? Was Irving trapped from the start? How many times have We done this? At that rate, was friend #4 trying to save Irving by coming into the dream? What the HELL is going on in the abduction event too? Triggering it is so hyperspecific (get to Boiling Water World at night and then find a specific place to stand) and immediately after you wake up, there’s a face in your window. It could just be sleep paralysis, or maybe reality was a dream too.

I feel like it’s safe to say that the supernatural is probably to real in some extent in Oversomnia (there’s people vanishing from reality and connecting to each other's dreams after all), but this is the only instance of something DIRECTLY affecting reality and not just doing weird things in the dreamworld. That is, besides ending 1, which also takes place in the real version of Irving’s room (note position of the pillows, the bag in the bottom left corner, and the fact the doorways to the bathroom and kitchen are still there).

Which brings up to what the hell Lucky is doing in ending 1.

I think Lucky's the first victim of the serpents, which is also why her door is number 1. She’s their first contact. This makes the incomprehensible event both a memory AND a premonition then -- it's what they’ve done to her, and this is what they WILL do to you. That’s also why she’s semi-transparent in the Dreaming Serpents World up north; she’s not there anymore, but she used to be. It could also be that the door order in Junction Space indicates the order in which people reach their section of Dreaming Serpents World, which could also explain why the alarmed person is Like That. They’re also stuck in the dream, but are just kinda chilling. Ending 1 also seems to be “Lucky’s ending” in some capacity -- the emerald theme you get from it has clovers at its corners, the text reading “ending 1” is in her special font color, and she’s literally there during it.

This could also indicate that we’ll get 4 endings down the line? One for each friend, one for each door maybe? And I’ll be shocked if ending 1 isn’t a “bad end” in some capacity. I don’t think Lucky’s dead though -- I don’t think the serpents necessarily want people dead. I think they just want to use people for whatever weird metaphysical shit they’re doing. And if they DO want people dead, it’s to send them through the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Death is not their main endgame; you don’t trap people in an ouroboros if you just want them dead. I think the serpents want people to move into the dream dimension. Permanently. My closest guess as to why they want that is the embryo in the Ventilation Passage -- maybe they need some degree of mental energy for incubating whatever the hell that is. Or maybe they just get energy from dreams in general. I’m honestly not sure.

Speaking of Lucky, there’s one other event that prominently features her -- the Lowest Point.

I don't know for sure if the serpents are aliens, but they’re linked enough that I think you could definitely make an argument in favor of it. The event at the Lowest Point is outer-space centric: Irving sees something in the sky, and then there’s green aliens blocking him from going behind his house. But you know what you have to pass by in the elevator that takes you to Lowest Point? Dragon ship.

I think Lucky saw something on that computer that connected her with extraterrestrial life (hence why she glitches out and her face vanishes during said glitch out) and now they’re all screwed. Maybe the serpents/aliens/whatever communicate via radio waves and that’s why they’re in your phone and your computer, and that’s why electronics are such a big theme throughout Oversomnia in general. If the serpents are aliens, it could also explain why they’re so incomprehensible. Speaking of the incomprehensible event, one of the symbols the monster-headed figure speaks is an eyeball. The other most prominent eyeball in the game is the planet that stares at you during the stargazing event. The stargazing event also gives you menu theme 7, which happens to increase your chances of seeing the event at Lowest Point too… If you don’t want to interpret that one incomprehensible symbol as a sheet music coda, you could also see it as a star or planet, which would be yet another connection. It even resembles the pattern on the ground where the abduction event takes place...

The Lucky we see at Lowest Point is also definitively linked to Lucky in the Nexus. After seeing that event, Lucky will always be gone from her shop, leaving a little sign in her place (presumably reading something like “closed” or “back in a few”).

On the other hand, Lucky from the shop and Lucky from the ending don’t seem to be aware of each other. If you talk to Lucky at the shop after seeing ending 1, she asks if Irving is alright because he looks worried about something. Lucky saw him drown in ending 1. If shop Lucky was the same as ending Lucky, she wouldn’t need to ask this.

I don't know for sure which one is more “real,” but I think shop Lucky might just be Irving's imagination. The bestiary even refers to her with different terms compared to friend #4, saying that shop Lucky “looks like one of my friends” vs friend #4 who Irving catches a “glimpse of.” Not resembles, not looks like -- that friend was there.

I think shop Lucky is an accurate representation of her as a person, but I don’t think it’s one-to-one where she’s literally IN Irving's dreams. That’s also not to say shop Lucky is completely unaware of the ending though. She cuts herself off before she can ask if Irving is something, which implies that she also knows something.

I think ending Lucky is trapped in whatever serpent cycle is going, and that look over the shoulder in the ending isn’t a look of disdain or annoyance, it’s a look of “I can’t help you and you shouldn’t have done this.” At the end of the day, seeing ending 1 is a choice. You have to collect all the effects, find the right door in the Dreaming Serpents World, and then offer it all up to the serpents… that’s a lot of work for what amounts to Irving playing right into their hands. This would also be why the game continues after ending 1 AND gives you a menu theme that’s very Lucky-themed -- you’re joining her in dream hell in a sense. I also don’t think it’s the true ending. Alternatively, maybe Irving was doing all this to try and get her out of there, but uh. My man cannot swim. I guess.

If you really wanted to put Lucky in a bad light, I think you could argue that she’s doing this to trade places with him. He gets to go with the serpents and she gets to walk free since there’s someone else in the river now -- he’s trapped in the dream instead of her. I don’t think there’s much evidence for that though, and I still don’t think Lucky’s malicious. She shows genuine concern at her shop if you talk with her after the ending (and if you just talk with her with certain effects too), and regardless of how much of a connection there is between shop her and real her, she knew SOMETHING was up before cutting herself off.

Alternatively, shop Lucky IS real Lucky, but since she’s trapped in dreamland she can be anywhere at any time and you’re seeing her soul or a representation of Irving’s memory of her or something along those lines in the river. It would also explain why she’s always at the shop regardless of when you go to sleep if she’s stuck there.

This could also be why, if you show Lucky the tuning fork effect at the shop, she remarks "I used to have one of those, too. What's up?" If she had her own dream quest to reach the Dreaming Serpents World and then dropped off her effects, no wonder some of them would be gone. Tuning fork is one of the effects you need to get other effects after all, so she definitely would have had to pick it up at some point. Could also be why she’s selling temporary extras if she has some leftover from exploring and knows from experience how to get them.

Well wait, if she’s helping Irving in his quest to reach Dreaming Serpents World, then that makes it sounds like she’s working for the serpents. But also, if she can provide him with effects that won’t count towards the final total to unlock the door, maybe that’s also working against them? What does she need the money for anyways? Money looks like moons, which looks like outer space, which is serpent themed… but you only really need money to buy stuff from her or the vending machines? I have no idea.

TO SUMMARIZE:

Irving has friends! At least two (Lucky and Junction Space guy), but possibly three (alarmed person).

Irving’s friends can enter each other's dreams through Junction Space, but it’s probably not a good idea to do that.

Junction Space is managed by the serpents, who control dreams and want people to vanish from reality, which is what happens in ending 1.

Lucky is probably already a victim of that, hence her appearance in ending 1.

The serpents might also be aliens.

And that’s all I’ve got for now..!! I think this will definitely change as the game updates and we get more info, but I’m pretty confident in a decent amount of the dots connected here. Please let me know what you thought in the comments, and thanks as always for reading!!

[grow1ng-gurl]

Entry #44

The 127th day of my growth, and I’ve reached 23 feet and 7 inches in height. *loud burp* Oops, sorry. *giggles* I’ve just been eating a bit more than before since I’ve gotten bigger. I’ve tried to see if I’m getting chubby, but I can’t see anything closer than 5 feet to me unless it’s the size of a building. Too bad there aren’t any building-sized mirrors nearby. And everyone’s too scared to possibly displease me and tell the truth. I mean, come on! I’ve only killed two people, not that big of a deal.

[diary-of-a-people-pleaser]

Entry 44, 3-2-21

██ doesn’t hate me. █ just said that █ was being █self. I don’t know the implications of that. That was last night.

Anyways… am I already falling apart or is this just being a teenager? Am I gonna run away or die too soon? I wish I had answers…

[irelia-ad]

Strike against the legion

(OC: Date [22-08-2016] Day[Monday])

Dear diary… 

We made attempts to strike out at the legion today. We took to the air to go destroy some of the legions means to attack the gates of the city. Unfortunately for me, my flight didn’t last long as the beast I was riding got hit and we fell from the sky. Lucky for me it was a few scratched, the beast might not be so lucky. I met up with the others and we attacked a demonic structure. I destroyed two of the crystals. The doors opens to two large demons and an eredar. After some conflict I was able to get onto its back and stab it through the neck. 

Taryane had arrived to the battle part way and joined in. She seemed ill from how she was fighting. The body of the eredar started to fall over her. I tried to move her but I was just too tired and slow to move us. So it landed on us both. She later expressed her unhappiness with this but doesn’t understand that I would have rather at least tried to hep her. She got hurt regardless of what I did, my injury's were just the price of failure. 

I had a look at some of the books we had whilst listening to my allies talk. Some seem to want to question my -optimism-. I am not optimistic. This fight is a losing one and so far there has been little to suggest change. The only thing changing is the number of demons and our death toll. I made a comment of needing a rest once the war was over which prompted the shade in saying that I was so sure we was going to win. Which is strange of her to say since it was her comment of what she was going to do when the war was over which prompted my response. 

I had felt better at that point and made a comment about the fight I owed Graularr. We went outside with the shades permission. We have to avoid other members of the warband because Taryane contracted a strange illness. We had our quick spar, I focused on speed and avoidance given the current enemy we are at war with. In the end my body reached its limit and I slowed down enough for him to take victory. 

We then spoke for a while before the topic eventually landed on Varo’edis. It turns out the hunter is still alive. Even after gutting himself. Graul has issues with how the hunter attacked me whilst my back was turned one time. He wants me to challenge him to a fight to earn his respect by showing strength. But the orc doesn’t realise that the hunter simply doesn’t care. He would watch me die and not bat an eye and possesses no respect for me at all. A pointless fight which I would not win wound’t achieve anything. He did however assure me that he would have my side if things turn deadly between me and the hunter. In his words, he is an outside and not part of the warband. And a demon. 

We both departed back to the top of the tower. Taryane still seems to be resting fine. I will do so now. There is no telling what the legion will do tomorrow. 

Yours faithfully

Irelia Dawn Bringer

[nmahakan]

07/31/15: The Final Presentation

[nmahakan]

07/31/15: The Final Presentation

Finally, today was our final presentation day! We gathered at a big classroom to present and my group, being Group 1, decided to go first! We presented our Merry Mobile Mamas (MMM) project but before we did, we summarized our findings as follow:

Before carrying out our idea of using pregnant women as a gateway to improve access to healthcare, we needed to review all the barriers we found in the field, to make sure that we were not missing any important aspect that we could focus on. Thus, we categorized the barriers faced by displaced Burmese into three distinct themes and came up with some of the insights that we felt were most important to consider before we could finalize our solution.

Root Problem:

As we learned from BMA, the ongoing conflict in Myanmar between the government and ethnic groups is one of the major issues that prevent equal access to healthcare along the Thailand-Myanmar border, because most of the people living there belong to one of the ethnic groups. Their conflict prevents the process of convergence in healthcare, both between the ethnic groups and the government and also between Myanmar and Thailand. This conflict hinders the opportunity of improving healthcare access along the border. As San Nay Htoo from BMA said, the first and most important step that should be done is for them to sincerely stop fighting. However, we acknowledged that this conflict has been going on for a long time and has a very deep root that we, alone, can’t possibly tackle.

The lack of documentation in Thailand and Myanmar also plays a big role in preventing displaced Burmeses from accessing government services in both countries. As we learned from a lot of the patients we interviewed, many displaced Burmeses with no proper documentation are prevented from getting the healthcare they need because they are afraid of getting caught at checkpoints along the way to receive health services. When caught, they face certain amount of fees or possibly get locked up in jail and deport back to Myanmar. In addition, it seems that some Thai health providers prefer not to treat undocumented Burmese because they only get enough funding for Thai citizens and documented migrants. As we noticed, it might also be due to the discriminations towards the Burmese. These problems can only decrease the already low access to healthcare for undocumented Burmese.

Furthermore, low wages, high costs of government services and lack of funding add more difficulties to their access. As we learned from going into the communities, many displaced Burmese have to borrow money from their friends or take out loans when they are in dire need to use health services. Even simple services cost them a lot of money as compared to their earnings so many of them wait until their sickness or symptoms are very serious before they decide to actually seek health services. Even though they can have an easier time accessing MTC with its free services, when the cases are serious, they have to be referred to big hospitals like Mae Sot Hospital. As we learned from many health facilities such as MTC and SMRU, the cost of referral is huge and with limited funding that they get, only a few cases actually get referred. The rest of the patients faces the option of going to big hospitals and paying out of their own pockets.

Communication:

Language and cultural barriers make it difficult for displaced Burmese to communicate their needs and ask for assistances from Thai health providers. As we learned from people like Mung Lah Por who couldn’t communicate with the sub-district hospital, most displaced Burmese only speak Burmese or one of the ethnic languages but most Thai health providers only speak Thai. As a result, displaced Burmese feel very uncomfortable using Thai health services even though those services are sometimes easier for them to access. Although some hospitals like Mae Sot Hospital do provide interpreters, some of the patients we interviewed felt that there are not enough interpreters to make patients feel comfortable.

Another problem is the communication between health systems, not only the ones in Thailand, but the ones in Myanmar as well. The process of Health Convergence is one of the first steps that is being taken to tackle this problem. However, as mentioned, the conflicts in Myanmar still presents as a hinder to this process.

Another vital problem with communication is the inconsistency of health records and services. Since many displaced Burmese are mobile, it’s very easy for them to lose track of all their health records. This is a big problem in the case of immunization, especially for children whose parents can’t recall which vaccines the children were already given, like in the case of Pyee Pyo Aung. Since there are limited communications between health systems and the fact that each one of them keep their own separated health records of patients, it is very difficult for patients to have consistent health records. In addition, as we learned from the sub-district hospital, the process of translating Burmese names into Thai can also be a problem. All these problems regarding health records encouraged us to think that there should be a more centralized and easier to access system for health records. We think that in the future, fingerprint system like the one utilized by SMRU should be used more wildly. As for the inconsistency of health services, the health post we visited was a great example. The irregular schedule of when the health post opens and the lack of communication of opening hours to the community prevent many people from using the services there. A lot of people stopped going there because they cannot rely on it to be opened. This is just an example of how inconsistency make it difficult for people to utilize health services.

Health Education:

The lack of education is one of the most important factors that can prevent displaced Burmese from accessing healthcare. Without the awareness of what health services are available to them and how they can access those services, it is very difficult for them to utilize the right services. We found that some displaced Burmese, especially the ones that live in isolated communities far away from the main cities, do not know about the health services that are available to them. Even if they do, they do not know the specific details of those services, for example, they did not know about the availability of Burmese interpreters at Mae Sot Hospital. Some Burmese simply refuse to consider all Thai health services because they cannot understand Thai. They really don’t know that interpreters are available at all. In addition, some Burmese are also uncertain if their undocumented status will limit their access to some health services. They are not sure if they will have to pay a large amount of money to be able to use the services. As a result, they prevent the risk of having to pay a lot of money by avoiding all Thai health services. Therefore, an education on health services and access is definitely a necessity for displaced Burmese to understand the services available to them.

In addition to education on health service access, it is unquestionable that education on personal wellness and prevention is also necessary. If proper measures are being taken in the first place, such as the prevention of sickness and injury, there will be less cases that are severe to the point that they have to be sent to a hospital or a clinic. Personal wellness and prevention education also includes the knowledge on immunization and health checkups. As we found that some Burmese do not understand the importance of vaccinations and think that it’s only necessary for children, it is clear that education on health is needed for them.

Lastly, we learned that an important aspect of working towards improving healthcare for displaced Burmese is by providing them the resources they need in order to serve their own community and develop a sustainable health system in their community. During our time in Mae Sot, we learned about a lot of programs already in place that are working towards this goal, for example PLE’s SHIELD program that is working towards creating an integrated community health volunteer system between Thai and Burmese so that they will be able to work with the dynamic border population that exists in Mae Sot and other border areas. In addition, we learned that there are already training programs at MTC that are working with Ethnic Health Organizations to train health workers from different ethnic states to be able to learn essential provider skills so that they can go back to their communities and be able to use those skills to serve their people. After learning about all these programs, we were assured that programs that actually empower and educate the communities to be able to sustain themselves are one of the best ways to tackle a lot of barriers faced by displaced Burmese, or at least, it should be where we focus on.

After we were done with our presentations, the school provided us with a lunch buffet! The food was really good and was a nice way to end our last day here. It was definitely an intense course, however, I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything else. I’m really glad to be a part of this program and would encourage anyone to take part in it!

[nmahakan]

07/29/15: Design Lab Day 3 - Prototype Testing