mad dogs in Myanmar

Mad dogs and Englishmen , they say.

Have come back in out of the midday sun. Went to the Rangoon war Cemetery with a blue hat, but little else to protect me from the blazing heat. Walked the grass rows with bronze plaques. Found a Dennis Murray. The name of my uncle. But it wasn’t him, but my uncle John Keith who died in the war. Found many young men who died in June and July of 1945.

a war grave

Must have been the fall of Rangoon. How brutally unfair must that have seemed to their families back home?

Yangon ( nee Rangoon) is full of cars and cars that are pretending to be taxis and buses that weave alarmingly with young men hanging out of their open doors yelling at people on the side of the streets selling the advantages of his particular vehicle.

Yesterday evening I walked to the museum. I had to cross a main road. There were yellow stripes crossing the road.  A zebra crossing. I saw a Myanmar woman cross half way. “ Safe bet,” I thought. “She lives here. She knows how to do this.” I stood beside her and started to hyperventilate as buses aimed right for us. She moved back and for as they rattled by missing us by inches. I moved with her.  I grabbed her arm in panic. She smiled at me curiously. I made it to the other side to tell the tale. But that’s it for me and the Yangon streets. For this lifetime.

the Inle Lake Fishermen

The Shan boys and their boat going home after the celebration

packing up after the market

I have been spending time in a little town called Nguang Shwe. That has recently got a traffic light. Nobody knows quite why. And nobody really obeys it. There are a few trucks, lots of motorbikes, many bicycles and people. Nguang Shwe is on the northern shore of  Inle Lake. We spent two days on longtail boats careering around the communities who live on the Lake. 



They have these vast floating gardens where they grow tomatoes and cucumbers that they harvest and take to market. They paddle from one house to the next. To the shop, to the man who mends outboard engines,  It was Shan state national Day, so there were all these young men returning from a blessing at the Golden Pagoda. Some were rowing, some were being towed. All were laughing.

This is what I have found in Myanmar. That people smile. They know you have a camera. They know that you live different lives to them. They try and sell you a skirt or a scarf or a carving or postcards, But when you say no for the nineteenth time, they smile and know they tried their best. When you watch an old lady lift an enormous basket of metal containers to take lunch to the people in the field and you take her photo, she smiles and says, “ I am not beautiful, I only have two teeth.”

When you are taken to a tiny village that has no roads just dirt tracks winding through the houses and you go into a wooden barn where a woman is squatting in front of a pile of burning sand into which she puts the wafer thin discs of dried rice that pop up like poppadums, she smiles and offers you one. When you pass by a group of men who are practicing for a firework contest that they will have the following Friday with home made rockets and a target of a red flag some 500 metres away, they smile their betel nut red smiles and laugh and giggle as they show you how they make one and then send it hurtling through the air where it misses the red flag by a half mile.

sorting out the good garlic from the bad

making the rice cakes

playing football

It won’t always be like this. It can’t be. Tourism will become a bigger industry and the villagers will adapt and there will be a different orchestration to their simple life.

There are now fancy hotels on the Lake. Which makes no sense really, because the lake is a highway of sorts with the villagers ploughing back and for in their noisy boats with baskets and schoolchildren and tomatoes. The lake is not blue and clear and calling for poetry. It is brown and full of fish. And although the kids jump in with abandon and women at every jetty are squatting down scrubbing and wringing out their family washing, it is working water.

playing a game at lunchtime

crushing the peanuts for oil

There will be more fancy hotels and exclusive restaurants and travelers who are looking for an experience that living in that kind of luxury can’t give them.

And there are no strollers. It may sound silly. But there are no wheels for little people. They are held until they can walk on their own and then off they go.

The first day I was here I saw all these people with yellow smudges on their faces. Squares, circles. Dots on their noses.

Turns out it is their sun block. Made from the bark of the sandalwood tree. Thanaka. They cover their faces with a thin film and then make the designs.

On our little village trek with Nye when we ate our rice cakes we saw fields of soy beans, lentils, sunflowers and turmeric. We saw barns full of corn cobs. We walked under awnings of long beans and purple edged beans. We heard of cures for hepititus , and high blood pressure; indigestion and thin blood. We saw chickens and bullocks.

“ They don’t buy anything, this village.” Said Nye. “ They have everything.”

The Myanmar Buddhists have rules. Don’t lie. Don’t steal.  Don’t kill any living thing.

They do eat meat. But they don’t eat cows. Out of respect for all  the work the cows have done for them in the rice fields. They don’t even use any of their hides for leather. The cow is cremated when they have reached the end of their lives.

Things must change. Under the last government, (the military one,) China has been loaning money to get highways and bridges built. One of the many problems that the new government ( The Aung San Suu Kyi One) faces is how to reverse these agreements without bankrupting the country because they don’t want to be beholden.

Until now you could only join the diplomatic service if you came from a military family. Because Aung San Suu Kyi married a foreigner she can’t be Prime minister. Because a change of constitution ( whereby you can’t be prime minister if you marry a foreigner can only be changed by a vote of 75% of the government and 25% of the government is allocated to the military….. blah de blah

She is their hope.

And they know it.

They, the people of Myanmar moved my heart. Their sweetness. Their endurance.