Wonderful Work in Rakhine State

The privilege of village work again came my way. Over the past month I traveled throughout lush, underdeveloped sections of Myanmar as part of a large UN survey about what households eat, earn, and grow. My role this time was closer to the ground than on the earlier surveys, when I was supervising supervisors.

Picture me in the village headman’s house, listening to him read out the members of all 49 households from memory. He stops from time to time to spit betel or to offer some side commentary about each name. A local civil servant writes each name onto a form. Someone over her shoulder checks the spelling, while someone else prepares 49 numbered slips to pull out of a hat for the lottery that will determine which 12 households get interviewed today. Various elders come and go.

I was again impressed by the undivided attention of the respondents to our questions. They surely knew somewhere in the backs of their minds that the cheroot they didn’t quite finish after dinner last night was still waiting in a special pouch that hangs from the bamboo roof beam. Yet they waited until our queries were finished before pulling it down and taking a puff.

At one house I recall a playful argument over the correct name for a fish species, which like so many other things in this country goes by several labels. When we learned that the fish were caught and not bought, an additional section of the questionnaire was then required. Nobody complained. Even after 90 minutes of such back and forth, seated on a bamboo floor, interviewers and interviewees alike seemed willing to keep talking forever.

Almost nobody wore a watch—somehow they just knew when it was time to head out to the paddy fields, or to traipse home from school, or to shoulder a metal jug and make a trip to the pond for the evening’s drinking water.

As before, it was a privilege to watch the rhythms and hear the stories of village life. I learned to recognize the vocabulary used when talking about how high the water gets in July and August. When I couldn’t understand, I could at least admire the pride of a 70-something woman who lives alone on income sent by four of her sons. Later I learned that she had outlived her fifth son. Her tight, unwavering way of staring at our team may just be the way she has always looked at people—or it may be how she copes.

Then there was the 60-something man whose situation looked to me meager, but not rough enough to explain certain coping strategies he said he had used during the previous seven days: cutting the number of daily meals, sometimes eating rice only, and so on. It emerged that he’d had to reduce his sole income source—firewood gathering—because a snakebite had swelled his hand large enough to prevent him working. On our survey form there’s no spot to mark “snakebite.”

Another family had spent a hefty sum on something the interviewer penciled in beneath the “other” heading in the expenses section. I had wondered about an earlier written-in answer, in the migration section, but decided not to probe it. At this point in the process my job is mostly to skim the surveys in search of major errors. It turned out the two Burmese-language footnotes were related. The eldest son had left home to join the Burmese army, a rare enough choice in this fiercely proud ethnic (non-Burmese) region. More surprisingly, he had stopped sending home any of his paycheck. How come? He’d deserted. The family was now supporting him as he stayed on the run.

Every village was unique. Some collect crabs, some grow betel, some rely on relatives in Malaysia, some do all of the above. The people described lives that were just as interesting and complicated and troubled and joyful as any in urban jungles… minus such extravagances as electricity and motorized transport and phone connections. We learned about their complex systems of rice and livestock exchange. I believe the accounting abilities of some villagers would rival those on Wall Street or in the City of London.

Under Water

The monsoon always pounds Myanmar during July and August. But this year the heavens (and surely many earth-based causes) created hundred-year flooding.

I watched the rain fall from inside Rakhine State village homes. For the past two weeks, I followed survey takers from the government’s Department of Rural Development as they asked female heads of household an hour’s worth of questions about hunger and poverty.

The answers kept returning to the rising waters. A few households reported hunger, but rarely because of shortages. In this part of Myanmar, emergencies are more common than food gaps. Sometimes we were told that flooding had left people with no dry spot to cook the food they stored, so they went to bed hungry. Lately the water has risen as high as six feet, said our informants. This difficult situation is compounded by Rakhine State’s crazy politics, which often translate into horrifying injustice.

In one village near Taungup, farmers described having to essentially pay to work. Floods wiped out their first crop and their seed stocks. The local landlord (one government official owns the whole village) offered to advance them their wages in the form of rice. Because of interest payments, they’ll still owe at the end of the harvest.

Yesterday Myanmar’s president declared this state a natural disaster zone, along with Chin State and Magway and Sagaing Regions. Personally, I’m safely holed up in a hotel (the only guest at a place that can hold 300 people!) where I'm humbled by the adaptability of the local people. They continue to go about their routines despite the deluge. Many of them put on shoulder-width conical hats. They know they’ll get drenched, but at least the rice will get planted. Some families add layers of bamboo flooring to their homes as the water rises, and bring livestock in to join them.

While I wait for the storm to let up, I stay at the hotel, trying to track the movements of five survey teams that are still in the field. One team is stuck on an island where ferry service stopped a week ago due to the tropical storm. I hope they’re OK there. I haven’t been able to contact them directly because mobile phone connections to much of the state have been down for the past three days. My fingers are crossed that the team isn’t in danger, just maybe wet and discouraged. When we were last in touch, I told them that the survey is less important than their safety. Hope they listened—during training I could see they were quite serious about this project.

The hotel TV features flicks starring Stallone or Jackie Chan. If I switch the channel to CNN I get non-stop coverage of a plane fragment that’s supposed to solve a several-month-old mystery involving a flight that left Malaysia one night and was never heard from again.

Last night an Austrian couple showed up in the dining room. I asked them if anyone had mentioned that it rains in Rakhine State during July. They said no, they were shocked! They had booked a 12-day holiday! I laughed a little bit and suggested they could proudly tell all their neighbors back home that they were in Myanmar when a state of emergency was declared. They did not smile. Their expressions said, “No laughing matter.” This morning they were gone.

The “Up” in “Upbeat”

Among the best places to rise and shine is the back of a bicycle. It’s hard to beat early morning rides for putting the “up” in “upbeat.”

These days a few pals and I meet up once or twice a week before sunrise for a quick circuit to downtown Yangon and back. Our halfway point is a pier where local folks do group exercise to sounds from a boombox.

Their choice of tunes are the best part: jazzercised versions of Beethoven's “Ode to Joy” and the overture from Bizet’s Carmen. They follow up that routine with group laughter.

We’re back home by 7, at the office by 8:30, feeling positive. How could we not be?

Missed Connections

Surely you know the parallel meaning problem: when you talk or type past somebody without ever really discussing the same thing. Sometimes even close friends or couples experience conversations that edge by each other, either by design or by accident.

Let’s say two people are planning how to spend some free time together. Both might already have their own plan, making it hard at first to hear the other person’s idea, or to imagine that a different idea could even exist. With luck they know each other well enough to eventually get on the same track: “Oh, you wanted to go shopping first and then watch the video. OK, no problem. We can do it that way.”

Here in Asia the parallel meaning problem can have many added causes: culture clash, status difference, language gap, crackly phone connection. I prefer to think that most of the time such disconnects are innocent and unintentional, as in this recent text message exchange during a village survey project I was supervising:

Me (8:04 pm): Have a good day tomorrow in the village. Let me know how it goes.
He (8:07 pm): By car.

Now and then I can tell that somebody doesn’t want to answer a question directly, as in the case of a done deal:

Me (7:31 am): Don’t go by boat today. Bad weather coming. Too dangerous. Please let me know that you are safe now.
She (3:35 pm): We are finished with that village. We will go back to town now.

The problem gets trickier when fed by the risk of that most delicate of this continent’s threats: face loss. Sometimes people here deliberately derail two-way communication when they fear they will suffer a disgrace. I suspect that’s what was going on in this exchange:

Me (8:15am): Please let me know if u can get rate info. If not, just tell me u can’t. No pressure. Better than letting me guess. Please phone soon.
He (10:57 am): Sorry I’m late for information because of one funeral of my relative.
He (10:58 am): I will send that information right now.
He (10:59 am): Now I could not contact them, please wait.
Me (1:19 pm): What time can I call u?
Me (4:08 pm): Are you still there?
He (4:09 pm): Sure.
Me (4:10 pm): What news about rate information?
Me (4:35 pm): Can u help me?
He (4:37 pm): I’m waiting. For u.

My mistake. The more I persisted, the more desperate this guy’s attempts to fog the situation became.

In between the text messages, he also avoided answering his phone. When I tried to use a go-between, he dodged her too. In the end, cornered, he claimed he had been waiting for more information from me before he could proceed.

I should have known from the beginning that face loss was behind his foot-dragging. Early on, I should have tried another source or given up on getting that rate. Even though I was getting pressure from above, you would think I had been here long enough to see that one coming….

Such a Deal

The magicians at the photocopy shop here crank out new business cards in less than a day. Usually a box of 50 (4,000 kyat, or around three dollars) lasts me long enough to decide that I want to tinker with the wording. This time I decide nothing needs changing—just a refill.

I return the next day to pick them up. The owner hands me a box he says contains 108 cards. Is he playing around with me? I know that number often shows up in Buddhism and other spiritual contexts around the planet. There's also something astronomical—the distance from the Earth to the Sun, or energy lines, or whoknowswhat. But I was very clear about only needing 50. I ask him how much I owe.

"8,000 kyat."

He can see I’m a little annoyed about paying double what I expected.  

“Eight cards for free!” he smiles. What a great country.

Is Myanmar Poor?

You decide.

• Most daily incomes are less than the cost of a latte in the West
• Few people are hungry
• Huge natural resources wealth ends up in very few pockets
• Only about one-third of the population is connected to the electricity grid
• Two-thirds work in agriculture
• Good statistics about the economy are rare, partly due to the huge influence of smuggling and drug-related earnings
• Foreign aid pours in

On Heat in Asia, after Several Days in a Row of Temperatures above 40 Degrees Celsius

"Fish manage better; fish, as the tanks dry, wriggle into the mud and wait for the rains to uncake them. But men try to be harmonious all the year round, and the results are occasionally disastrous."

~ EM Forster, A Passage to India

After Eight Days Away

On returning to burgeoning Yangon, the first thing you notice isn’t the city’s attractive sides, of which there are many. Rather you see the clutter, the thread bareness, the cobbled-together nature of life in SE Asia’s once-bad-boy brother.

Here is the smiling though smudged pair of children, scurrying along the corrugated iron fence that hides a construction site. At first they seem bound for a secret entrance, nimbly skipping over ditches that only the experienced would know to look out for. On reaching the comparative seclusion of a droopy-limbed tree, they slow. Will they suddenly drop into the rabbit hole that allows them access to the other side? Is another pair, hiding and counting slowly somewhere just out of sight, about to begin the seek phase of the game?

No, these kids have reached the peeing place. Not an especially private choice of toilets, alas, but perhaps the easiest spot to get the job done quickly so the day can move forward. Mom and older sister have to hold it in until after dark before they can venture out on a similar errand, but nobody pays particular notice to these two, being just the latest in a long line of village children whose families have brought countryside customs to the big city. They’re not too recent—brother knows enough to stand watch while sister squats. Then he turns and splatters the fence before they skibble off.

Now comes the old-style loudspeaker, shaped like an ear trumpet, pushed and pulled through the street market by white-shirted men broadcasting a virtuous Buddhist message. Inevitably this procession ends with a donation—small change, usually, but every little bit helps. These things add up.

Around the corner is parked the most recent string of vehicles imported from Japan, windshields still marked in grease pencil with shipping numbers or destination identifiers of one kind or another. These cars and SUVs will be scrubbed and spruced at one of the many auto detailing establishments along this thoroughfare. The owners’ instructions will specify that while everything else must emerge spotless, the windshield markings are not to be messed with—the better to indicate the car’s vintage to jealous admirers in the neighborhood.

Now finally you’re almost home. Grandma holds court on her usual corner with this morning’s cheroot cheerfully lit. A bus coughs. The rummager-recyclers make their way back to wherever.

Ah, Yangon. Welcome back.

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.