For over two decades \u2014 starting in her twenties \u2014 she was living and hiding in Myanmar jungles. She moved from location to location with a small group to evade the Burmese army, after soldiers had burned down her village. Sometimes, they slept in trees. If she was caught, the consequences could mean detention, sexual violence or death.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy whole life, I had to be afraid of everything,\u201d she said. Her English is limited, so she told the story in her native language of S\u2019gaw Karen, through a translator.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gay Lay is a Karen refugee. Karen (pronounced kuh-REN) people are a minority ethnic group from Myanmar (formerly Burma). Since Myanmar\u2019s independence from Britain in 1948, the country\u2019s government has worked to impose a single national identity \u2014 marginalizing and persecuting ethnic minorities like her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1000000121.jpg\")
Gay Lay at a garden in Philadelphia. (Courtesy of Clara Varadi-True)<\/p>\n
Many pivotal moments of Gay Lay\u2019s life took place in the jungle. She recalled learning of her husband\u2019s death. He had been conscripted \u2014 like all Karen men \u2014 to fight against the Burmese army. At the time, she was five months pregnant and already a mother to five.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While her first four children had been delivered in her village, this would be her second pregnancy to give birth virtually alone and in the jungle. At this point, she had already learned how to keep a newborn\u2019s cries quiet by holding them close to her chest, rocking and covering them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLike a hen, you had to pull all your kids around you,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gay Lay\u2019s children grew up in the jungle. The family farmed to eat, and moved constantly, living out of temporary bamboo houses.\u00a0 When they did so, they were always listening for the enemy.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though you had food, you had to hide it,\u201d she explained. Her family would wait until night time to retrieve their food.<\/p>\n
Gay Lay has been living in Philadelphia since 2010. In South Philly there is a whole community of Karen people with stories like hers. Unfortunately, many of us don\u2019t even know they\u2019re here.<\/p>\n
Who are Karen people?<\/p>\n
Karen people are not a monolithic group, but are culturally diverse, with different religions and even languages.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cKaren people first started coming to the U.S. as refugees, around 2006, so there aren\u2019t many generations of people who\u2019ve been living in Philadelphia,\u201d said Rebecca Winkler, a sociocultural anthropology Ph.D candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a founder of the Karen Community Association of Philadelphia<\/a> (KCAP), a new organization that began last March, to help Karen community members.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn Southeast Philly \u2014 like East of Broad, South of Oregon \u2014 there\u2019s around 500 people in that area,\u201d Winkler said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The exact number of Karen people in the city is unknown. Part of the KCAP\u2019s work is to gather better demographic facts about the Karen population in Philadelphia, who are often mislabeled in census data.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re trying to work on doing a more comprehensive kind of needs assessment, because people don\u2019t get counted as Karen, they get counted as Burmese, and then are often offered services in Burmese,\u201d she said. \u201cBut Burmese is, quite literally, the language of the army that caused people to have to be refugees.\u201d<\/p>\n And because they are such a niche and small population in the city, their needs often fall between the cracks. The KCAP was created to fill those gaps \u2014 helping Karen people navigate government forms and Social Security, as well as their legal and medical needs. In addition, the association organizes community events around the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is a small operation that comprises Winkler and two Karen women: Naw Day and Naw Doh. As two of the rare English speakers of their generation, Naw Day and Naw Doh have become designated helpers in their community. In fact, it was actually Naw Doh who translated our interview with Gay Lay.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know what our Karen people need,\u201d Naw Day said. \u201cI\u2019ve been trying to help in the past decade with free translation, social service needs \u2026 We don\u2019t have really the structure to build our community, right? So we try to volunteer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re only three of us right now \u2014 Rebecca, me and Naw Doh,\u201d she added. \u201cWe don\u2019t have much [support], but I would say we have a lot of things to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Immigration and culture shock<\/p>\n To come to the United States, many Karen people first made the journey across the Thai border to find safety in refugee camps. They are often there for years. Gay Lay and her family spent around a decade at one, before coming to the United States.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople were in prolonged displacement for many years, and the refugee camps in Thailand are not really official refugee camps,\u201d Winkler said. \u201cThey\u2019re in the jungle in Thailand, so people had to kind of build their own homes out of bamboo and try to forage and farm for things, and had very limited opportunities to do any kind of formal education.\u201d<\/p>\n As one can imagine after living in the Southeast Asian jungles for decades, starting over in South Philadelphia is an intense culture shock. <\/p>\n A video of Gay Lay with her daughter by Shira Walinsky (Mural Arts)<\/p>\n \u201cPeople arrived to Philadelphia and are suddenly inundated with all of this technology and the refugee resettlement infrastructure in the United States has been really kind of chipped away at over the last like decade or two,\u201d Winkler said. \u201cIt used to be that people, when they arrived, got between two and three years of support from a caseworker, cash payments every month, support, learning English, resettling, finding a job,\u201d she added. \u201cAnd now that\u2019s been stripped down to just three months.\u201d<\/p>\n People like Gay Lay may have been experts in survival, but all of the farming, foraging, weaving and building skills gained in the jungle are suddenly useless in the city \u2014 leaving many Karen people feeling helpless.\u00a0<\/p>\n Htee Da Win, a 36-year-old Karen woman, recalls the first time her case worker dropped her off at her new home in South Philadelphia in 2009. Naw Doh translated her story. It was night and the neighborhood felt foreign and unfamiliar. She had been instructed to keep her doors locked.\u00a0 Even though the place had multiple bedrooms, she, her husband and her two young children all slept in the living room. They were afraid to separate.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe were really scared,\u201d she said. \u201cWe immediately turned off the lights, because we didn\u2019t want anyone to see us.\u201d<\/p>\n Even though Htee Da Win\u2019s family was given food, including rice, when she arrived, they didn\u2019t know how to use the stove.\u00a0<\/p>\n Naw Doh, explained that this is a common problem. Three months is not enough time for a family to orient themselves to a new culture. She said she used to have to hide in her house, because she received so many requests from community members for help. As a woman, saying no to a request isn\u2019t really an option in Karen culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI turn out my light. I go upstairs,\u201d she said. \u201cIf they see the light, they\u2019ll come knock on my door.\u201d<\/p>\n Establishing a new home<\/p>\n Once a week the KCAP offers office hours to community members at the Bok building, from a room provided and leased by Mural Arts<\/a>. Anyone who is Karen can come and receive help.<\/p>\n Community members like Htee Da Win, whose husband recently died from a stroke. Like many Karen immigrants, he worked at a meat processing factory, a very physically demanding job that involved butchering, deboning and cutting beef.<\/p>\n Htee Da Win said that her husband was feeling pain, but ignored it because he did not want to miss out on work \u2014 and pay.<\/p>\n \u201cHe didn\u2019t want to miss his job. He didn\u2019t want to see the doctor,\u201d she said. \u201cYou know as a refugee, you have to pay the rent. You have to work.\u201d<\/p>\n The KCAP is helping her navigate life as a widow \u2014 assuring that her family receives all the life insurance funds they are due.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite her family\u2019s loss, Htee Da Win is still grateful to live in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n \u201cI count my blessings,\u201d she said, noting the government programs that have helped her, like food stamps. \u201cRecently my son received a college scholarship.\u201d She added that she is also grateful for the KCAP and her community in the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n The KCAP also works with Karen children that were either born in or spent the majority of their lives in the United States, to make sure that their language is being passed down. Naw Doh leads S\u2019Gaw Karen classes.<\/p>\n \u201cThey need to learn, because one year the Karen language could be gone,\u201d she said, noting that some Karen children have lost touch with the language and can\u2019t communicate with their parents. \u201cIt\u2019s really scary.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In addition to the translation and social services that KCAP provides, the association also helps set up community events around Philadelphia for Karen people. Many of them are avid gardeners and grow their native foods in their backyards and also at community farms, like Reinhardt<\/a> and Novick<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe garden is very important for us\u201d<\/p>\n In late September, on a sunny Saturday afternoon at FDR Park, the KCAP organized a potluck for the community \u2014 offering fruits and foods that you\u2019ve likely never heard of. There were sour leaves and hyacinth beans. Kids played and ran around.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything they grow is tropical, Southeast Asian vegetables,\u201d said Clara Varadi-True, the director of operations at Novick Urban Farm. The Farm has been working with Karen people for over a decade.<\/p>\n \u201cPhiladelphia is really hot and humid,\u201d Varadi-True explained. \u201cI think it\u2019s a great answer to climate change. That\u2019s been what I\u2019ve been talking about for the last few years, is that some of these vegetables grow better than traditional American vegetables in dirt.\u201d<\/p>\n At the potluck, there was an array of\u00a0 fried foods, meats, veggies, salads, noodles and spicy sauces. Working with soil is an important way for Karen people in the city to maintain culture and find connection with their home.<\/p>\n \u201cThe garden is very important for us,\u201d Naw Day said. \u201cIt makes us happy.\u201d<\/p>\n For Gay Lay, farming and growing produce is essential. She has 19 grandchildren, and nine great grandchildren.\u00a0 She is an avid farmer, working with Reinhardt Garden. She also has a plot in her backyard.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI love everything. I want to plant everything,\u201d she said. \u201cIn my backyard. I squeeze in everything, even in tight corners.\u201d<\/p>\n While the KCAP is still new, working with other organizations and giving Karen people the support they need has been impactful. Winkler said that even though their funding is limited, Karen community members like Naw Doh and Naw Day have worked hard to improve lives.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seemed really important for folks to be able to lead their own organization,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen communities are actually given resources themselves and can decide how to distribute them, and they\u2019re actually on the ground and part of the community that they\u2019re serving, they can do incredibly effective work.\u201d<\/p>\n \t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1000004455.jpg\")
Gardening at the Reinhardt Street Community farm. (Courtesy of Clara Varadi-True)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Whotle-group-outside-5-.jpeg\")
Many Karen people spent decades hiding in jungles before coming to the United States. (Courtesy of Rebecca Winkler)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/078de9b0-744a-4a4a-8fe3-f0eadf5a9b5d-1_all_10006.jpg\")
Htee Da Win at a community farm. (Courtesy of Clara Varadi-True)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/8005793946888643354.jpg\")
Naw Doh with a group of Karen children at the beach. (Courtesy of Clara Rebecca Winkler)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/078de9b0-744a-4a4a-8fe3-f0eadf5a9b5d-1_all_4135.jpg\")
A potluck with foods made by the Karen community. (Courtesy of Clara Varadi-True)<\/p>\n