Rickety

Most locations in today’s Myanmar tend toward the rickety and the untidy. Even elegant spots designed as showcases contain avoidable flaws—a stain, a lack of symmetry, a piece fastened with packing tape.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that few places here appear completed. Wires aren’t hidden, caulking is uneven, extra tiles are left stacked in a corner to be collected on some future day that never arrives.

Some of the structural flaws I notice may have become invisible to local eyes. People here might not find it unusual to discover a motorcycle parked in a corner of the hotel ballroom. Nor to mind that an extension cord used in the kitchen travels out the window, along the building’s exterior wall, then back into a bedroom… where it plugs into a socket whose plastic cover plate went missing in 1965.

By contrast, personal grooming is highly valued. As elsewhere in SE Asia, in Myanmar it’s important to keep up appearances. In Thailand I observed people going to great lengths to hide or downplay difficulties. Sometimes they would flaunt a new watch or car while making sure nobody ever saw their substandard housing.

Maybe here the veneer is thinner. It’s possible that most Myanmar people don’t have enough extra to be able to put up a front. The door that doesn’t quite close properly might not stem from a lack of caring, but rather from a lack of money or tools to fix it.

Accepting things as they are might also be easier than fighting against reality. Choosing not to mind a flyspecked front window or an intersection nearly blocked by community trash may be a sane response to a crazy system. (Though I have to say I draw the line at the widespread habit here of tossing heaps of garbage into every running stream. Where do people think it’s going to go?)

Probably I too should spend less energy wondering about exterior maintenance, or about the stacks of yellowing brochures piled up in the lobby of the National Museum. Yet I don’t think I’m wrong to be concerned about a lack of follow-through here. Finishing what you start results in more than just personal satisfaction—it sends a message about priorities. I prefer “Okay, so it’s not great, but it doesn’t have to be that bad either!" to “It is what it is.”

Full Bloom

Everybody’s up in the treetops this morning, collecting yellow flowers. I had to dodge ladders while out for a run.  Men are throwing big sprays of fragrant blossoms down to waiting women.

I phoned around to find out what’s the deal. A friend told me that the padauk (Pterocarpus macrocarpus) only blooms one day per year. Today’s the day.

Often it happens during the three days of the traditional SE Asian New Year and Water Festival, 13-15th. Some Burmese say it’s not really time to celebrate until the padauk blooms.

A popular song this time of year translates as “Padauk Gifts of Love.” People know that young couples are getting serious when the man presents his sweetheart with a bunch of padauk. Older folks offer blooms to the Buddha.

It’s strange to me that the padauk’s day should fall in April, when many other trees’ leaves are curled up and dry. Temperatures here this month tend to scorch. I’ve heard of night-blooming cacti that only flower once a year. The padauk shows up in broad daylight. How does it know?

Change of Lens

It’s Thai New Year here in my mother-in-law’s village. The house cleaning, temple visits, and water blessings all feel familiar. Yet I’m looking at this seaside community with new eyes after the past several months helping to lead a UN poverty survey in rural Myanmar.

What would the survey teams learn if they asked their income, food security, and ease-of-credit questions here along the Gulf of Thailand? Compared to the places we interviewed last month, this village appears prosperous. It’s likely getting moreso as city folks discover it.

There’s also probably more need here than a casual glance would suggest. About 60% of the district’s land is planted in coconuts. What I hear from family and neighbors suggests that this labor-intensive business isn’t as profitable as it once was. Many trees are getting old. Others are destroyed by coconut hispine beetles. I notice while running on the back roads that farmers are replacing their orchards with pineapples.

A few statistics I found online indicate that incomes in this district average much less than what farmers make elsewhere in Thailand. My guess is that the tourism revenue in this village isn’t staying local. Neither is the next generation—young people from here head to Bangkok for work. Their parents can't always afford to hire helpers. When they can, often they employ workers from Myanmar, who accept low wages.

Even though the UN survey is finished, and I’ll be looking for new work when I return to Yangon next week, I still find myself thinking like a rural planner. It would be interesting to know what information the village leaders here are using as they chart the future.