Star Power

Myanmar struggles with the idea of women as decision makers, particularly when the woman holds a public role. Yet the recent election saw a jump in the number of female office holders. Their representation in legislatures nearly tripled, from 5% to over 13%. That number still lags behind the country’s neighbors, and is far lower than the target of 30% that the UN claims is needed for parliaments to represent women's concerns.

Both health and education policy stand to gain in Myanmar because of the improved gender balance among legislators. Also, in this country there is one woman whose presence counts as several.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s victory helps build an alternate reality for Burmese women. She combines Eastern and Western, establishment and outsider, politician and activist, prisoner and freebird.

She even claims a certain military legacy, as her father, a general, is considered the founder of the modern armed forces in Myanmar. He remains an idol throughout the country, despite having been assassinated 68 years ago, when his daughter was just a toddler. It’s fair to say that nobody will ever again hold a pedigree like hers.

Plus, what villages, states, and institutions of all kinds in Myanmar always wait for is a hero. Ordinary people don’t think of success as coming through teamwork, but rather from following an inspiring leader.

Therefore the Lady’s years as leader of a majority party will be critical for making change here. Concerning the peace process in particular, she may have a unique set of attributes. Her father gets credit for a 1947 agreement, never implemented, that would have given ethnic groups a degree of autonomy that they have never truly possessed under a central government here.  

It’s unlikely the new political chapter now beginning here will lead to anything resembling what the West considers “women’s rights.” In past statements, “Mother Suu” has made clear she doesn’t consider herself a feminist. Even if she had such an agenda, the country’s general culture, and the military’s specific culture, might not be receptive. Yet simply by continuing to be at the front of the parade, she can’t help but ensure that a long line of women marches behind her.

Election Wrapup

Seven days ago people here slipped out early to polling stations and then came straight home. Many families even stocked up on food in case things went badly.

Despite the event being worthy of celebration, the powers-that-be managed to make it feel scary. The small group of leaders in Myanmar were allowing a more inclusive system to emerge, yet guaranteeing their right to clamp down if that system became unstable. 

By evening on election day, fear of violence slowly dissolved, replaced by excitement and confidence. Here in Yangon, streets that had been empty in the morning began to fill up. It became clear that citizens hadn’t paid a price to participate. Two days later, on a bus traveling to Naypyidaw, I noticed people proudly displaying their purple left pinkies: proof that they had voted.

The country savored that election delight throughout the week as reports grew of an absolute majority for the party whose slogan is “Time for Change.” The National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, clearly has repeated its rout of 1990. Back then, the government refused to honor the outcome and instead arrested The Lady, as Suu Kyi is commonly known. This time, it appears the vote will be allowed to stand.

Which of course presents a whole new set of problems. The stunning results don’t instantly erase the countless challenges here. As one member of the ruling party was quoted as saying, “Our USDP lost completely. The NLD has won. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has to take responsibility now.” Among the headaches she inherits are tense relationships with ethnic armed groups, an out-of-balance economy, environmental damage, and pressures from neighboring countries.

The former junta has protected itself well by creating a complex political system that allows it to claim quasi-civilian status.

The Constitution provides its members a quarter of Parliament’s seats without having to run for them, plus control of key ministries and many other perks. The military can be embarrassed but never really lose. Some people suggest that despite the election outcome, real authority in the country remains with a few generals and a few wealthy families.

Aung San Suu Kyi and her party find themselves with all the responsibility but not enough power to create their “time for change.” Indeed, they’re in the weird position of needing to continue behaving as the minority opposition party, despite superiority in numbers. There can’t be too many places in the world where that’s the case.

The election season’s biggest losers may be Muslims. For the first time, they’re not represented in Parliament at all. Large numbers of them were prevented from voting, and parties that tried to run Muslim candidates often had their candidates rejected by the national election commission. Many say they feel less welcome in Myanmar than ever. Last month Yale Law School’s human rights clinic added its voice to other groups that claim genocide is being committed against the largest Muslim minority group in western Myanmar. Tragically, many people here aren’t shy about their anti-Muslim feelings. If the NLD were to take an inter-faith harmony stance, it might get a backlash.

Election observers throughout the country breathed easier this past week. Their biggest fear going into last Sunday had been some significant group refusing to accept the outcome. Advance voting wasn’t smooth, and on election day many townships were denied the chance to vote on questionable grounds. Yet the NLD, having won enough seats to pass bills and elect the president (a complicated process from which Aung San Suu Kyi is constitutionally excluded), was not likely to quibble with any irregularities reported. Military rulers this time showed no signs of repeating their 1990 annulment of the results.

Despite the many obstacles faced by Myanmar as it reforms the past several decades’ worth of mis-government, it’s still a wonderful time for the country. Lots of people worked very hard to carry out an election that for its peaceful nature alone can be thought of as a victory in itself.

Minbya Misfortune

Big flooding in late July and early August left its mark on many parts of Myanmar. The poorest regions of course suffer most. A British NGO sent me to check on one such region this week. Specifically, they want to know how well markets are functioning and what has happened to prices since the floods in Rakhine State’s Minbya Township.

Minbya was ranked by earlier flood assessments as among the most severely affected townships in the country. In many spots here, the water rose over 10 feet. Although Rakhine State is well-known for long and heavy monsoon seasons, nobody alive today can recall as extensive a flood in this region.

The NGO may decide to respond with a Cash-for-Rebuilding scheme, depending on what we learn about whether or not beneficiaries would have anywhere to spend the cash. So far it appears that the markets are open for business, that prices are up and sales are down.

This kind of assignment humbles me. The interviews we’re conducting with shopkeepers are nearly always cheerful, despite their descriptions of high water levels and stock losses. Yesterday we went by boat to an elbow in the Lemro River that is home to a market known as Pan Mrauk Gyi. Its location high on the river’s edge was a mixed blessing during July and August.

Shopkeepers in Pan Mrauk Gyi told us that flood depth and stock loss were generally lower for them than for sellers in the towns of Mrauk U and Minbya... except for the nearly one-third of shops that were swept away when the land slid at the center of the riverbend.

We interviewed one grandma whose wares were spread on the ground next to the new cliff edge. A makeshift green tarp above her kept the sun off. She said her shop formerly sat about 20 meters behind her, on the part of the riverbank that had crumbled into the deluge.

All of us became a little teary as she described what she had lost. There is no such thing as flood insurance here.

Got It Good

September in the States is really great. Back when I lived there, and was teaching elementary, I always used to tell the principals that I would prefer school began on October 1st and ended in July. That way we could still enjoy the beginning of autumn without being too busy lesson planning and so forth. In a way I sort of achieved that kind of schedule this year. These past few weeks found me in several parts of the American Midwest and Northwest. It was an easy decision to trade Yangon's worst weather for Washington State’s best. I managed several hikes in both the Cascades and Olympics.

I also became enlightened on concepts that pass me by in Myanmar, such as gluten freedom and gender fluidity and gun foolishness.

Not to mention: Paleo diets, the teenage music scene, and shops that sell pot. In some places I visited, kombucha and almond milk were all the rage. Just when my head had wrapped around those beverages, I was exposed to an astounding range of liquid refreshments with names from just about every zone of life: Double Bastard, Old Godfather, Spin Cycle, Justin Blabaer, Dirty Skoog, Dog Zilla, and Quadrophenia. Life in the US moves pretty fast.

It was also a delight to join in on family birthdays, to see a cousin officially join her first church as the senior pastor, and to hang out with delightful nieces and nephews.

Man, have I ever got it good. I’m feeling very very very lucky to be able to live like this.

Manage-for-Oneself-Land

Around here repairs tend to be of the make-do variety. Instead of pouring new pavement, you parquet the broken concrete pieces jigsaw style. Rather than rewire, you figure out which of the many old strands might still have some life left in them. If you can imagine yet another use for the perforated, preformatted steel planking known as Marston Mat, then you can be sure your supply will never run out here.

The ultimate example of this jury-rigging and MacGyvering took place on the way home from a bike race last weekend. Seven of us had told our friends and families to expect our return from Sagaing Region, north of Mandalay, by dinner time Sunday evening. Then, two setbacks.

First was that Ben won the race. Of course everyone was pleased by this result. But it did mean we couldn’t slip away until after the award ceremony.

Second was that the truck radiator burst. I’m talking about torn asunder. A serious schism. No bubble gum, black pepper, or eggwhite fixes for this badboy. We tried pouring in water, only to watch it gush right out the bottom.

No highway patrolman was going to rock up and ask how he could help. And there’s no such thing here as a roadside assistance organization like AAA. This is Myanmar, otherwise known as Manage-for-Oneself-Land. 

We had no duct tape, no matches, none of the things MacGyver would have pulled out of his bag. Only a truck full of bicycles, a knife or two, and some inner tube patch kits...

..."Hey, wait a sec," we said. If we have patch kits, that means we have inner tubes. And if we have inner tubes...

We set to work stripping the bikes of their tubes, slicing each one along its equator, and fashioning rubber bandages. After wrapping the radiator in bike-tube band-aids, we limped off down the road at 30 miles per hour. Home was about 225 miles away.

Topping up the radiator at the rate of about a gallon per half hour, we arrived in time for breakfast.

Low Inventory

Sometimes during the surveying job that just wrapped up, I had a chance to visit village schools. They slowly began to seem similar to me. Now and then I even wondered if even the students weren’t the same people, silently running ahead of me from village to village on unseen trails.

Typically what I found were one-room buildings containing between 15 and 30 kids, spread among five grades. The good news was that often each grade had its own green-skirted teacher, making for a pretty good ratio. The bad news was that student ages didn’t always match their grades, suggesting that kids start and stop often, in keeping with their families’ financial needs or migration patterns. All of the schools had space for lots more students than actually showed up. Rakhine State is known to have the lowest rate of primary school participation in the country.

On one of the visits I stayed long enough to take inventory. The school, which was among the better resourced I saw, contained the following:

12 very long, low student desks
5 plastic chairs (students sit on the floor)
6 blackboards
3 teacher desks and 3 bamboo pointers
2 flags
1 map of Myanmar
1 number poster
1 English alphabet poster that at first I could not figure out – maybe you can see the logic:
               AEFHIKLM
               NTVWXYZ
               OCQS
               BDGJPRU
1 five-gallon water bottle
1 broom and dustpan
1 Buddha image
1 vase under the Buddha containing dried-out flowers
no children’s art
no calendar
no books

The vision statement of Myanmar’s Ministry of Education aspires to “generate a learning society capable of facing the challenges of the Knowledge Age.” Yet education expenditures here, as a percentage of GDP, are among the lowest in the world. Perhaps it’s no surprise that families vote with their feet and don’t send their kids regularly. The primary school completion rate nationwide is just over 50%.

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.

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…