On Not Cooking in Yangon

A slip appeared, summoning me to the downtown international post office. I couldn’t read most of it, but I got the gist. Package arrived. Bring passport.

Many bureaucratic-gray counters greeted me, each with its own number and label. None of them fit what I thought I needed, though to be honest I wasn’t sure what I needed. Somebody saw my slip and waved me to Counter Two.

A clerk glanced at the passport, walked away, and returned a few minutes later carrying a long cardboard box that bore handwriting I recognized as my brother’s. In the large room sat several other officials. Business was slow. Everyone watched.

With a sharp knife the clerk slit the sides of the package, to reveal a slick new seven-inch fry pan. “The Original Green Pan,” said the sticker. Ceramic, non-stick, ergonomic, and dishwasher safe. Neither PFOA, lead, nor cadmium.

I smiled. I remembered that a few months earlier I had told my brother’s 11-year-old twin boys that I didn’t have much kitchen stuff here. (That was after explaining that I don’t much like to cook, but of course it’s common that people remember best the last thing they hear.)

I could picture my nephews getting excited when they saw this pan in the store, and my brother OK’ing their cute gesture, even as he surely knew the postage would cost more than the pan.  Besides, he may have thought, this pan was cool and green.

The clerk smiled too. He had already explained that regulations required opening foreign packages in front of customers to show that nothing was missing. I nodded then, and again when he mentioned the small “opening” and “storage” fees, payable at Counter Four. Now, with a wide grin, he said something I didn’t catch. Lots of the other officials laughed.

I asked him to repeat it but the meaning still went astray between his fair English and my poor Burmese. He called over a chuckling colleague, who asked, “Does the sender know frying pans are sold here in Myanmar?”