မုန္တိုင္းၾကားက ေမြးတဲ့ ကေလး..

Storm baby beats Ike

Tuesday, September 16, 2008 1:16 PM CDT

BY CHARLYN FINN - Ku Paw, 38, is a survivor of evacuations. She is a member of the Karen tribe that lived in Burma (now known as Myanmar for centuries.

She and her husband Pah Yu evacuated with hundreds of thousands of Karen tribal members fleeing from a military government that did not tolerate their religion. Then after four or five years they evacuated from a Thailand refuge camp and came to the United States.

They landed in Houston where they were unemployed.

Thanks to a local dentist, Dr. Gillian V. Kwi, also a Karen, the couple and about 100 other Karen now have jobs at Inteplast and homes in Port Lavaca.

Last week the couple evacuated again this time with 195 other Karen to New Braunfels.

Ku Paw, on maternity leave and heavy with child boarded a Calhoun County Independent School District bus. They were fleeing from the possible wrath of Hurricane Ike. The huge storm threatened the Gulf of Mexico coast from Port Mansfield, Tx. to Cameron, Louisiana.

Ku Paw and Pah Yu expected their baby to be born on Monday, not on Friday, and certainly didn’t dream the new addition to their family would be born in a hurricane shelter.

Nevertheless Katrina Htolla made her first cry last Friday in the shelter where 275 Calhoun County residents were bused, courtesy of the county. Little Katrina is the third daughter of Ku Paw and Pah Yu and is also welcomed by two brothers. Katrina the storm child, was appropriately named after a previous hurricane.

Ku Paw gave birth to the tiny Katrina in the bathroom of the shelter with the assistance of Dr. Mark Burns. He is not a pediatric doctor. He is a geriatric psychiatrist and professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, but also is a medical doctor. “I hadn’t done any deliveries since medical school,” he said. “But that is something you don’t forget.”

Dr. Burns had volunteered to see to the health issues of the evacuees in Church Hill Middle School in New Braunfels. He was about to go home when a nurse, Peggy Bielke, told him “someone is having a baby. I ran down the hall and found her in the bathroom in active labor. Peggy gave me some gloves. Ten minutes later a healthy baby girl was born. Emergency Medical Service arrived five minutes later and took her to Christus Santa Rosa Hospital.

While Ku Paw gave birth to her fifth child, Dr. Burns made his 25th delivery.

“She was so quiet, she never made a sound,” said Burns. He and nurse Bielke were assisted by 14-year-old Wah Moo Paw, an eighth grade student at Travis Middle School. Wah Moo Paw helped with translations since Ku Paw does not speak English.

Ku Paw returned home Monday evening driven to Port Lavaca by New Braunfels City Councilwoman Kathleen Krueger.

Ku Paw and Pah Yu are both employees of Inteplast. They are in the area thanks to Dr. Kwi, who had been advised of their plight through the United Nations. She had gone to the Thailand refugee camp to do dental work and to teach some of the Karen dental treatments. She also donated dental instruments to the refugee camp. When some Karen were having problems getting jobs because of their lack of English, a UN agency called Dr. Kwi.

Kwi talked to Benjamin Wang, manager at Inteplast, who agreed to hire the Karen as packers,

Dr. Kwi, always a guardian angel for the Karen, worked with the Calhoun County Emergency Management to get her people to safety when the storm threatened. She said she is so grateful to Mary Bonuz who did the paperwork for the evacuation. “Mary Bonuz of EM was wonderful,” Kwi said. “She made everything work so smoothly.”