Study Tour on Two Wheels

Here is our daily routine on a wonderful tour with Partners Asia of pastoral bicycle routes and bootstrap community-based organizations (CBOs) in southeastern Myanmar/Burma:

Wake up early, breakfast at the hotel, bike alongside rivers and among rice fields until noon, lunch at roadside restaurants, meet with inspirational community leaders about the kinds of work they’ve been doing without any outside help, rest, repeat. Pretty ideal schedule!

Our visits to CBOs in Hpa-an, Karen State, strive to create relationships built on common understanding. We discuss issues of concern to Myanmar people, and how those issues can best be addressed. None of the CBOs has met with Partners Asia before; they may not even have existed six months ago. We likely couldn’t have arranged permission to get together openly until the very recent past.

The first stop we make is at a converted three-story shop house that has become home to a group I’ll call the “Direction” Charity (not its real name; in this still very repressive country, it’s not clear whether talking to outsiders may be harmful to CBOs). Direction is a mutual assistance organization that has taken on several diverse challenges since its beginnings.

Initially Direction’s charter centered on providing money for respectful funerals. Collections were taken up to ensure that everyone, regardless of family circumstances, would be given a proper cremation. This effort funded even the construction of a new crematorium.

Later the organization tackled the lack of a local blood bank. Rather than store refrigerated supplies for possible transfusions, the group arranges so-called “live donations”—a donor’s blood is used immediately. Such a system bypasses the problems of cold chain, transportation, and storage. The CBO created an accurate and constantly updated database containing willing donors, their blood types and HIV status, and reliable contact information.

Direction proved effective with both initiatives. It then moved on to the education arena, where the community had identified a problem affecting a substantial majority of its children: dropping out of school and/or failing to pass the final, all-important high school exam.

Particularly in Karen State, which borders Thailand, many young people leave the country in search of opportunity. (The major crossing point is about 100 miles by road from Hpa-an.)  Myanmar’s failure to educate the next generation may compromise the success of the country’s current opening-up. Direction began offering free after-school enrichment classes for final-year students.

We watched two groups of 50 kids each sit in classrooms at the shop house. Written on the whiteboards were complicated arithmetic problems. Our visit was the first time foreigners had dropped by the CBO. The volunteer teachers stepped aside as we fielded questions from the students.

The next day we met a few of the Direction leaders, along with several other Hpa-an educators and a handful of businesspeople, who had banded together in late 2013 to form a CBO focused on improving educational facilities. This group funds improvements at area schools lacking such basics as tables, blackboards, and bathrooms. In three months it has outfitted seven schools, using donations collected locally. Direction gets its funding in a similar way—essentially door-to-door campaigning, appealing to neighbors’ sense of their duty to share with those in need.

Will Partners Asia ever make grants to either of these organizations, or to a large monastery school we visited, where the head monk appeared to be one of the region’s major power brokers? Right now it’s hard to say. Trust would need to be built up. Both the grantee and Partners would need to understand better why the other exists.

What’s clear is that any connection going forward between Partners and the CBOs of Hpa-an will revolve around local people who are leading projects that already have a successful track record. Partners’ support only furthers ongoing work; it never initiates. CBOs that have concrete plans and know what they need to achieve their goals stand a better chance of collaborating with Partners than do groups that wait for the government or international aid outfits to propose an idea or a project.

Good Enough

This is a story about one of those days when I mostly had no idea what was going on. In Thailand I have lots of those days. At first they used to bother me. I became angry at the country and its people because I wasn’t completely in control. Gradually I learned that I don’t have to understand 100% of what’s happening here. About 20% is usually good enough.

The story begins at a restaurant on the edge of town, where I joined a few Thai friends one evening. These folks go way back with me—they had all studied in Seattle during the early ’90s. Now and then we get together here to chat. We switch back and forth between languages. When I don’t laugh right away at their punch lines, they patiently tell the whole joke again.

This time one of them brought along a friend, Da. I had never met her before. She sat at the other end of the table and spoke very fast Thai. I hardly followed anything she said, but I didn’t ask her to repeat anything because I didn’t think she was really talking to me. At the end of the evening, I wasn’t sure she even knew my name.

Later I got a call from another old friend, Tik. Tik hadn’t been at the dinner, but she knows Da. She was calling to say that Da had invited me to her house for a meal on Monday. I was a little surprised that Da didn’t call me directly, but I knew she didn’t have my number, so it made sense that she would ask Tik to do it. I said I’d be glad to come.

On Monday I called Tik to ask directions to Da’s house. Tik said the dinner was on Tuesday. I didn’t say, “But you told me Monday!” because I know that plans sometimes change. It was even possible that I had heard the date wrong, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t. Instead I just said that Tuesday wouldn’t work for me, because I had guests arriving from the States. Tik said, “Oh, no! How can I tell Da?”

To me this problem wasn’t too difficult—just tell her. Yet I sensed Tik was worried about informing Da that I couldn’t join the meal. I knew that Da was slightly older than Tik, and I guessed that Da’s social status was slightly higher. In Thailand these things matter. No doubt the situation involved potential face loss, that most delicate and puzzling aspect of Thai decorum.

I said I would tell Da myself—just give me the phone number. Tik did. Before I had a chance to call, my phone rang. It was Da. She must have gotten my number from Tik. She said I really had to come over. I said I had guests. She said I should bring them. I said there would be five people altogether. She said no problem. I said we didn’t have a car. She said she would pick us up.

The whole thing was starting to seem pretty strange to me. I couldn’t figure out why a woman who hadn’t really even said two words to me in my life was now insisting that I and four non-Thai-speaking strangers should join her for a meal. The only thing I could guess was that I had something she needed. I had no hint what that something might be.

All five of us went to her place. It turned out she had invited many other people. We all sat down together at a long table. Delicious home-style food was already beautifully arranged. At one end sat my guests, next to a few Thais who could speak pretty good English. I sat at the other end, wondering when someone would provide a clue about why we were there.

The clue never came. It wasn’t a matchmaking event—everyone but me was already paired. A request to tutor somebody’s nephew? Nope. The conversation stuck to food and travel and the usual complaints about increasing Chiang Mai traffic. Even after we rotated seats for dessert, nothing emerged that qualified as an excuse for our presence.

My guests were pleased. “You sure know some nice people,” they said after we returned home. That was the confusing part—before we arrived, I hadn’t known those people any better than my guests did. I know them now. Or at least I know them about 20%. Which I suppose is good enough.