Lottery Day

It’s fun to be ignored here in my mother-in-law’s village. Most times I visit, Mom talks to me nearly non-stop. Today there’s a queue of people waiting to talk to her about their lottery numbers.

This scene gets re-created on the 1st and 16th of every month. The foot traffic increases steadily all morning until just before 1pm, when the betting officially ends and all purchased tickets get sent to some neutral site to await the televised drawing at 3pm. One time I walked in from the train station just as the frenzy was peaking. Mom didn’t even notice I had arrived for several minutes.

Another time, when I knew lottery day was coming up, I had the presence of mind to pick up one of the many titles published around the New Year that claim to have an inside track on lottery rhythms for the coming 12 months. Normally she accepts my gifts with a thank you before putting them down on the kitchen table and changing the subject. In this case the book hardly left her side throughout my visit. She proudly showed it to neighbors (though didn’t offer to loan it, I noticed), saying, “John knows what I like.”

How could I not know? This is a woman, after all, who has subscribed to the same daily paper for two decades, ever since her son was hired to write for it. Yet on last day of each month, and on the 15th, she also takes a competing paper, because she prefers its column about how to pick winning numbers. The delivery person doesn’t have to ask—she just forks over both broadsheets on those two days. How cool to watch life in a place where everyone knows everyone’s routines.

Tea Time

Soe Soe phones to say that she and a Western tourist from her guest house want to meet me for tea. She describes a small stand tucked in the corner of an old market near my place. Business has been a little slow for the owner, Soe Soe hints. The tea is made the classic way, she says. "Less sweet. You will never find 'no sweet,' but here you can at least request 'less' sweet."

We meet up and I see that it really is a small stand. There are only three stools, including the one used by the aging proprietor. He insists on giving up his stool so all three of us can sit. He serves me and the tourist. Soe Soe doesn't order anything for herself. I protest, pointing out that it's weird to invite but not to join. "He only has two nice cups," she explains. Once again Myanmar changes the picture in my head of how things are supposed to be.

Road to Mandalay

Mandalay mostly serves as a center for commercial trade with China. I passed through a few times during the past year but never felt any desire to stay long. Then a group I like proposed going up there this past weekend for a series of bicycle races. I agreed to go along but not to compete. I said I would cheer. To me this outing was about the people. The place struck me as hot and dusty, without much of the charm found in other parts of Myanmar.

After an early start by chartered bus, we arrived in Mandalay Friday evening with just enough time to change and head to a twisty course that had been set up on the edge of the city for an after-dark relay race. “John, you’ll never believe it but our team is short by one rider,” said a guy who has tried to convince me in the past that I’m a better mountain bike rider than I really am.

Such a rascal. I wasn’t falling for it. I said I didn’t bring any bike lights. I added that even if I had any I still wouldn’t be interested in speeding over a path full of potholes and low tree limbs. “Just humor me by taking a test circuit,” he said.

It took us about 25 minutes to try out the course. When we returned to the start line we were surrounded by that infectious energy that goes with such events. Music blared, announcements crackled, jokes made the rounds. I borrowed some bike lights.

Our five-person team didn’t win but we generated plenty of excitement as our impossibly fit anchor leg passed several other riders to make it close. The adrenalin kept me awake long past midnight. Gradually I drifted off, glad that I had joined but equally glad to be done for the weekend and mostly unscratched.

After not enough rest, the die-hards got up early Saturday for the road bike event: three laps, along major streets except for the detour up the city’s only hill, totaling about 30 miles. I remained sane, lingering over breakfast, checking the Internet to find out what else was happening in town that day.

I felt I had won the lottery when not only did I learn that the annual literary festival was happening, but that a main attraction would be an author who used to be a neighbor. Ros Russell and her family had an apartment downstairs in Bangkok before they were transferred to Yangon in the wake of Cyclone Nargis. They hosted my dad and me for dinner during our first-ever trip to Myanmar. During that meal Ros had described her secret life as a journalist in the then-censored country.

From the Mandalay breakfast table I wrote her a quick email. We met up before her talk, she singled me out in front of the crowd during her remarks, and I came away with two autographed copies of Burma’s Spring, which I highly recommend as an introduction to this colorful country.

Saturday evening, my road biking friends sounded jealous. “Not only was the heat brutal, and the hills killer, but a woman drafted behind me all the way and then passed me 20 meters before the finish,” said one, who I’m sure would admit to being a guy who prefers to be beaten by guys. He then suggested I would have a good chance of beating him in the next day’s individual mountain bike race, considering the difference in how we had spent our day.

Now that he mentioned it, I had been feeling lucky. Sunday morning I wasn’t committing to anything, but I did show up at the start line ready to ride. In the clear light of day, five laps of the same course we used for the night relay didn’t seem so very far. Somehow I found myself in the pack when the gun sounded. And somehow on the third lap I found myself passing yesterday’s road bikers. Even that gravelly dip and climb at around the halfway point stopped giving me trouble. As on Friday night, I came away with no medals, but a big grin. After all, this outing was about the people.

Now the challenge will be finding an excuse when the next weekend racing event comes around.

Halt

A new education law last September led to university student protests here over the lack of independence granted to universities by the bill. Students want a decentralized curriculum, the right to form unions, and the chance to be taught in ethnic languages.

Myanmar’s government always worries about student gatherings, regardless of the topic, because campus issues in the past have led to demonstrations over larger social problems. Already in this case Buddhist nationalists have weighed in, saying they oppose the mother tongue provision. Partly they may fear an increase in the amount of respect and freedom given to Muslims and ethnic groups here.

The military says that students cause “instability” in the country. The students say that the status quo is the problem. Starting two months ago, a group of students marched from Mandalay, headed for Yangon. Their march was interrupted by police in a small town called Letpadan, about 80 miles north of the city.

By then the government had offered to discuss amendments to the law. About 200 students remained skeptical that negotiations would lead anywhere. They chose to challenge the blockade. On March 10th, just before noon, initial restraint gave way to violence. After a couple hours, more than 120 arrests had been made.

At around 3pm that day, riding my bicycle past the university in Yangon, I came across a long police lineup, about 100 strong, apparently anticipating sympathy protests. Though I knew the march had been stopped in Letpadan, I hadn’t heard yet about the specific events of that morning.

Social media was full of the story when I checked a few minutes later. Already people were asking how much the country’s political transition would be set back by this confrontation. This news and the speedy mobilization of police in the city may not bode well for future tests of reform.

Also, the Education Bill is not the only current legislative controversy. A package known as the “Protection of Race and Religion Bills” would create new rules regarding interfaith marriage, choice of faith, and other elements of family life.

Wide Screen Entertainment

A friend owns a shop here with a large open front. Now and then I stop in to practice speaking Burmese and to watch the world pass by.

In the small lane we watch a beaming little brother in a cardboard box being pulled by his sister. Young couples pretend to have eyes only for each other as they stroll hand in hand, sneaking peeks to find out who has noticed them. Sometimes the show features a contest between taxis to see who’ll back up first—the lane is too narrow for both to pass at once.

Our vantage point keeps us current with the hot hairstyles. A blonde tidal-wave look seems to be in fashion among the whistling drinking-water delivery dudes.

And I haven’t even mentioned the screwy dogs, the neighbor feuds, the blocked drains.… Who needs TV?

Contact

It used to be that people here looked each other in the eye. No longer.

During the last few months, the number of cell phone subscribers and shops seems to have exploded. Pedestrians, diners, shoppers, and alas, drivers now reflect the glow of their screens.

I now must look carefully to avoid collisions when I bike or walk around town. Reports say mobile penetration has passed 20%—a doubling since mid-2013.

During that time, two new companies have begun competing with the former government monopoly, leading to much lower prices. I paid $150 for my phone number when I arrived here 16 months ago. To buy one now would cost me one hundred times less, or $1.50.

Unfortunately, connectivity isn’t always better. Just like on the roads here, there’s more traffic trying to use the same old routes.

Ceasefire, cont.

Ethnic armies here have come out of the woods lately. Maybe a ceasefire agreement with some of them is getting closer.

We’ve seen this movie before. At least 30 times in the past quarter century, the central government penned truces with armed groups from inside what it sees as the country’s borders. Many of those accords, usually signed with only one group at a time, gradually came apart.

Now talks have been going for over a year about a ceasefire between the Myanmar government armed forces (aka Tatmadaw) and a collection of between 15 and 20 different groups, depending on the day and on how you count. These organizations have little in common except that they have fought against the central government. They represent peoples who call themselves, among other names, Chin, Lahu, Kachin, Kayah, Kayin, Mon, Pa’O, Rakhine, Shan, Ta’ang, Wa, and no doubt several more that I have overlooked.

The agreement as currently worded has a pretty limited scope, but it does plant the seeds for an end to decades of fighting in some areas of the country. The potential for development and investment in those areas is of course appealing to an outgoing president trying to polish his legacy during an election year.

Dialogue stalled in recent months, meaning that a symbolic deadline came and went: February 12 is Union Day, a national holiday in Myanmar that remembers the signing of a 1947 ethnic group accord that was never realized. Hoping to regain momentum, some actors, including the president, his two vice presidents, and the speakers of both houses of parliament, today signed a “Deed of Commitment for Peace and National Reconciliation.”

Some of the groups at the table have existed for over 60 years; others less than 30. The smallest of them are thought to have fewer than 1,000 fighters; most claim between 3,000 and 8,000; one may be more than 25,000 strong. Almost none speaks the same language; all must use Burmese for everyone to understand. Included in the mix are animists, Buddhists, Christians, and communists.

Because of the chance that bystanders might miss out on political gains, lots of long-quiet groups are adding their voices, and sometimes even their arms, to the conversations and conflicts around the edges of the country. Daily active fighting continues, especially in Kachin and Shan States. Just three days ago a fresh conflict flared up along the Chinese border.

For its part, the Tatmadaw says (at least publicly) that its 300,000+ soldiers don’t attack ethnic people, but rather fight against “enemies threatening sovereignty of the country, illegal trade of natural resources, and drug traffickers.” The senior general was quoted recently as tallying “1,557 major battles and 16,571 minor ones… to safeguard Myanmar” between 1948 and 2015.

If asked about what he fears most, the general would likely say “dis-integration of the union.” The armies opposing him would probably counter that abusive central government policies lead to that very disintegration. Some of the ethnic groups feel their members have been forced to leave Myanmar because of violence, forced labor, or other human rights violations. Other groups have been pushed off their land in various ways, and now live primarily in internally displaced persons camps—as many as half a million people, again depending on the day and how you count.

Then there is the fraught question of Burmanization. Myanmar contains many cultures and languages. The dominant group, the Bamar, makes up much more than half the population but lives on much less than half of the land. In upcountry ethnic areas, many of Myanmar’s non-Burmese people resent suggestions that they should conform to Burmese ways of being, speaking, worshiping, or whathaveyou. They don’t feel Burmese, and don’t like the assumption that they should want to share the same army or even the same country with Burmese.

So any agreement coming out of this year’s talks and today’s Deed of Commitment will surely be only a starting point. Left out will be questions like a rotating commander in chief for the army, a federal military structure, and how to handle groups that choose not to sign this time.

It’s good for the country to have this dialogue, even if expectations are low. It will be important to continue conversations about weightier political and economic issues, such as resettling displaced people, defining self-rule, and moving toward an amended constitution.

Fine Circuit

Recently I ran the Yangon Half Marathon. The course passed in front of some stunning colonial architecture at an hour when I’m not usually downtown.

The beautiful facades at sunrise made me think about the city proposals under debate to establish historic districts, or at least to protect specific historic buildings.

I hadn’t expected this section of the route to stand out. The Yangon River lies across the road from the buildings I was admiring, but you can’t see it. A mile-long wall of stacked shipping containers blocks the view.

Now I began to imagine a waterfront without the port. Several schemes in recent years have suggested moving ship facilities further downstream, closer to some newly built industrial zones.

Then the race course turned north toward Shwedagon Pagoda. We ran slightly uphill toward the temple, at exactly the moment when the sun hit the top of its spire. Gorgeous!

Finally we ran alongside a large lake, originally designed by British city planners as a reservoir. Now the lake’s gardens offer one of the few places in town to be surrounded by nature.

Such a fine circuit, linking the historic, religious, and scenic parts of the city!

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?”

Traffic and Bicycling

For five days on either side of New Year’s, a small group of us from Yangon went biking up north. Now that we’re back in the big burg, traffic feels like it doubled while we were away.

According to the latest numbers, Myanmar owns 15 times fewer cars per 1,000 people than Thailand does. But most of this country’s cars must live in this city. Every day the bottlenecks here come closer to matching Bangkok’s.

I’m inclined to get around on two wheels no matter what in 2015. A bicycle nearly always beats a taxi. Another plus for us pedal pushers: Yangon law forbids motorcycles.

In this climate, cycling means carrying an extra shirt to change into at the destination. Sometimes it also means traveling further than a car would, to avoid risky major arteries. For me those drawbacks are worth it.

The other day I gave myself plenty of extra time. I was headed to an office in a part of town I hadn’t visited before, planning to ask a favor from some people I’d only met by phone. They had sent me a map, but somehow its streets didn’t match the real signs on the ground.

To not be late, I stopped at a garage for directions. The mechanics pointed me back the way I’d come. In turning around, somehow my tires passed through a puddle of oil and grease.  I tried to rinse it off with a water bottle I carry.

Soon I was back on my way. I smiled, now that I was on the right road, still with plenty of time to spare… until I saw that my off-white trousers were becoming hardly white. Damn! To show up looking like a leopard wasn’t going to work for this appointment.

I rescheduled. Do I now need to start carrying a spare pair of pants? Either that or…

Dust

Yes, the rain is over and gone.

No, the flowers have not appeared on the earth; the time of the singing is not come, and the cooing of the doves is not heard in our land.

Yes, it is the time of the dust.

No, it’s not weird that shopkeepers and homeowners throughout Myanmar begin their days by sprinkling handfuls of water into the road out front to keep the dust down. This ritual takes place even at the airports… on the terminal floor. In neither setting does anything really change as a result.


Near as I can see, in Myanmar, dust bats last.

Re-Pats and the Outsourcing of HR

A friend here runs a placement agency. She called and suggested I apply for a Midwife Educator job here offered by an NGO connected with The Johns Hopkins University in the States. I laughed and explained that I don’t even know how to spell “midwife.”

My friend said not to worry, that the NGO wouldn’t be able to find anyone in the country with the high qualifications they were looking for. Just put your name in the hat, she urged. She thought my resumé, which includes a long stint with a public health agency, would intrigue the NGO enough that they would ask me in to talk about what else I might be able to help them with. Which is exactly what happened. I start this month on a sort of retainer basis as their knowledge management consultant.

I’m pleased to take on this challenge. The NGO is staffing up quickly, from 4 people to 40 in the next six months, so they’re looking to establish some good habits early. Equally interesting to me has been the inside glimpse this episode provided me into decisions faced by so-called “re-pats”: Myanmar-born workers who left during the bad old days and are now wondering if now might be the time to repatriate.

According to most estimates, between 10-20% of Myanmar’s workforce lives outside the country. You find them mostly in Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, but there are other pockets of relatively skilled, relatively English-fluent Myanmar people in Japan, the Middle East, and the West. Agencies like my friend's are cropping up to help these folks find the best matches between their talents and the country’s needs, from finance to telecom to tourism.

Some of the returnees are just testing the waters. They’ll rent out their Singapore condo while weighing the tradeoffs. If their expertise is IT, they may find themselves as big players in an area that has never really existed here. In other fields, making meaningful contributions may be harder, given Myanmar’s sometimes outmoded, entrenched ways of doing things. For example, as my friend noted, potential public health re-pats may shy away from the challenges of fixing a broken system.

Sore Spot

One of Myanmar's 14 provinces, an ethnic state let’s call R State, is a sore spot.

Roughly three million people live there. About one-third belong to Group M, the other two-thirds to Group R. These two groups have lived alongside each other for a long time. They’ve rarely gotten along very well. They follow different religions, and they're often easy to tell apart through skin color and dress.

(I use initials because the problems of R State, while severe, aren’t unique. They have implications and echoes throughout the whole country. For a short backgrounder on the specifics of R State’s dilemmas, click here.

Group M and Group R have moved in recent years toward a permanent segregation in R State. In 2012, extremists organized mob attacks and home burnings. As local police looked on, about 140,000 people became homeless. Three years later, the resulting internally displaced person camps still house more than 10% of Group M's entire population.

This suffering sometimes gets the attention of the international press. The conflict has a long history. Racial intolerance, colonial mistakes, migration pressures, and heavy-handed governance all intersect to create what the New York Times has called an “appalling apartheid.”

R State’s issues surfaced often during a panel discussion I attended last week in Yangon. A few faith leaders came together to comment on local media portrayals of religion. They noted that even though journalists could do a better job of understanding religious principles, pure doctrine is rarely the problem in R State. When people there talk about faith, they’re often talking about nationalism.

Nationalism is a big deal in Myanmar. People here often define themselves and others by ethnicity first. The government keeps a long official list of recognized ethnic groups. All of the seven states ringing the country’s borders are named for their leading group. Many of those groups follow a different religion from the Bamar, who make up about 70% of Myanmar’s population. Bamar dominate the seven interior provinces, which are known as “regions” and are named for geographic features.

Ever since a military coup in 1962, Burmese military leaders—nearly all Buddhist Bamar—have partly justified their nationwide grip on power by saying that Myanmar’s many ethnic and religious minorities lack the skills to self-govern. In fact those groups have never truly been granted the chance to try. Federalism, or power sharing between national and provincial governments, is a controversial concept here. Tensions in R State may have ripple effects on the chances for federalism, and eventual civilian rule, to succeed in the other states.

The generals may warn that without them at the helm, people will be freer to act on their racial prejudices. Regardless of the truth of that claim (some people say that the armed forces actually inflame those prejudices), hatred in Myanmar toward Group M is pervasive and extreme. Feelings go beyond the negative views in other parts of the world towards Islam, the religion of Group M. The presence of Group M here stirs a snake pit of issues, from caste to carpet-bagging to commerce. Many people who looked like them dominated Burmese business during colonial times. The country’s largest share of Group M lives in R State.

The panel audience’s questions strayed from religious differences to other causes of trouble there: economic opportunities, demographic trends, and citizenship rights. About a quarter of R state’s population doesn’t have citizenship at all, ever since passage of a 1982 law that omits the majority of Group M from the list of recognized ethnic groups. Group R does make the list.

At the panel, questions also arose about interfaith marriages—specifically, about the belief widely held among Myanmar Buddhists that Buddhist women married to Muslim men will lose everything if their husband dies or divorces them.

Especially in a province like R State where everyone is poor, the notion of taking away marital property doesn't sit well, and has led to calls for outlawing such marriages. Parliament has also drafted legislation that would limit religious conversions and birth rates. Population growth is a hot-button issue. Group R fears that some day it will be outnumbered in the state that bears its name.

Way back before Myanmar was a country, R State was its own kingdom, tucked between the Bay of Bengal and a long mountain range. Group R speaks a language that is closely related to Burmese. The English translation of its name is “people who protect their race.” Ever since the British in 1824 decreed that R State would be absorbed into Burma, Group R has actively struggled to run its own affairs, arguing as do many other ethnic groups here that because its land is ancestral, it should be in charge.

Group R’s political leaders find that their prospects improve when tensions and the risks of violence are highest. They intensify the situation in R State by putting restrictions on citizenship, movement, health care, education, marriage, birth registration, and even food and water for the majority of Group M. Human rights researchers write of Group M that its members have also suffered arbitrary arrests, forced labor, torture and death in detention, rape, and the denial of due process and fair trial rights.

All of these provocations happen with the blessing of the central Myanmar government. Journalists have labeled the largest subset of Group M, a people estimated to number nearly a million, as the most friendless people on the planet.

You might think that such obvious human rights violations would prompt an outcry from the UN and other humanitarian organizations, and you would be right. Some go as far as to label the situation a state-sponsored genocide. However, Group R has successfully portrayed itself as a victim too, arguing that the generals are the real villains, and that international aid favors Group M. Indeed, nobody has it easy in R State. The region’s low level of economic activity and poor infrastructure mean that many people leave—nearly three quarters of Group R under age 30, according to some estimates. (Most Group M members aren’t allowed to migrate—even out of their townships—without permission.)

With desperation similar to migrants leaving Libya for Europe, many from Group M pay traffickers to take them by boat from R State to Malaysia or Thailand, only to be turned back or sunk en route. The state’s long coastline along the Bay of Bengal makes it prone to weather-related disasters.

What might improve things in R State? For starters, as in all the ethnic states, it’s important to promote harmony and pacts through increasing opportunities for dialogue and teamwork. At the moment, Group R and Group M hardly ever see each other, let alone talk. There’s seldom such thing as an information sharing event attended by both communities. Schools are rarely integrated. Likewise in the rest of Myamar: Islamaphobic bias appears in local newspapers every day, despite most writers and readers never having had a real conversation with a Muslim.

A speaker at this week’s panel discussion cautioned against framing Myanmar religious issues as Faith A compared to Faith B. Instead, he said, write about good people compared to bad people, because all faiths have their share of both. Another panelist urged journalists to track down available translations of religious texts, to create knowledge that goes beyond stereotype. Simply using correct terminology goes a long way toward creating dialogue, he said.

Obviously, reconciling R State requires more than nice words in the press. To plant seeds of tolerance and fairness there, group leaders might consider making economic plans together. That way, they could begin to get infrastructure that works. However, to produce good electricity, roads, ports, and so forth, R State will have to keep lots more of its laborers, from both Group R and Group M, than are currently sticking around. Outmigration, as in the whole of Myanmar, frustrates development.

Indeed, over the long term, if R State and Myanmar want to survive, they will both need to figure out how to be multi-ethnic. Identifying with a cultural community and a country at the same time isn't easy, as we see everywhere from Catalonia to Kurdistan to Scotland. At the state and national levels here, leaders must truly take into account grievances from members of all groups, not just the ones who look, speak, or worship the same.

View image | gettyimages.com

Big Agenda

Obama visits Myanmar tomorrow and Friday, his second visit in the past two years. Some of the questions he wrestles with every day are familiar to the government leaders here: How to govern a country so that minority groups feel included? How to manage natural resources sustainably? How to make rules that guarantee a wide sharing of benefits?

These questions are interrelated. Answer one, and you’ve partly answered the others.

One writer, trying to address them all with a broad prescription, suggested that

…the solution lies in unifying a diverse group of interests that could move away from the extraction, violence, and poverty of the past….

This unified group would have to include reform-minded elements in the government and parliament, democracy forces (including the National League for Democracy and ’88 Generation), nationalist military officers who want national development, progressive industry and business interests including “good” cronies, and ethnic groups…. This will be very difficult because elements within each group may prefer the unsustainable present to a better future. (David Dapice, 2013)

The top priority for a broad coalition of this kind, Dapice writes, would be the election of state governors and local parliaments. This federalist approach also assumes the meaningful taxation and sharing of natural resource revenues.

Elections will be on Obama’s mind when he chats with his hosts. In the coming year this country will decide who is eligible to serve as president.  The current constitution bars Aung San Suu Kyi from that post. Obama will certainly bring up this issue with both the Naypyidaw leaders and The Lady herself. Also, new members of Parliament are scheduled to be chosen about a year from now in a vote that most people expect will be dominated by members of Suu Kyi’s party. The U.S. president, through the Embassy staff here, will push to make that balloting fair and on time.

He’ll also have China on the brain, having just come from there. Offsetting the rise of China in Asia explains much of Obama’s agenda on this trip. Human rights won’t top the list as it did in forming past U.S.-Myanmar policy. Now that most economic sanctions have been dropped, a more important issue will be making things easier for American businesses.

To be sure, Obama will bring up the humanitarian situation here, especially in Rakhine State, and he’ll discuss press freedom. Gender equality will come up. He may even talk about teaching critical thinking in a culture that discourages the questioning of teachers and elders.

The challenge of the federal approach mentioned above may not be one that Obama has much standing to do anything about. The level of social trust here remains very low, especially between ethnic groups and the government/military. If you think that’s an easy problem to fix, just ask the people of Ferguson, Missouri.