The details of my life are quite inconsequential

Back to Burma - unpublished & unfinished report

“Hey! You faaat!” 

In the early morning light, the small man at the Hlaing Thar Yar Bus Terminal in Yangon (Rangoon) looked at me with obvious envy and couldn’t resist treating me with what is considered a great compliment in Myanmar (Burma). In this country, few people are fat and those that are, are almost always either the military or the police. Fat police and a skinny populace is never a good sign.

(Yeah, sure. Okay I'm fat. Thanks Pal. Now bugger off with your compliments.)

Myanmar. Burma. What can one write about a visit to this sad, sad country?

I sandwiched another visit to this country in between the violent protests of last September and October and just before the typhoon which crossed the Irrawaddy Delta in May. The storm, of tsunami proportions, left nearly 100,000 dead and 1 million homeless.

I last visited Myanmar (Burma) in February 2003. At that time the United States was on the brink of invading Iraq, and of Myanmar I wrote:

“The current military regime came to power in a 1962 coup, and lead by General Ne Win, they immediately launched the 'Burmese way to Socialism'…. The outcome has been one of the lowest standards of living in all Asia. To me it appears as impoverished as Cambodia. The regime remains as one of the most brutal and despotic in S.E. Asia. All dissent is rigorously suppressed and the jails are apparently full of political prisoners.”

I have just made another visit to Myanmar and would now note that the United States is still at war in Iraq, and current Senior General Than Shwe and his henchmen still have not acknowledged Aung San Suu Kyi’s victory and she continues under house arrest.

And the strife and misery continues. I am sure everyone saw the reporting of the Regime’s violent suppression of the peaceful protests last September and October when an estimated 100,000 people were led through the streets of Yangon (Rangoon) by hundreds of monks.

Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Prize Winner, and leader of the opposition, remains under house arrest as she has been for most of the time since her electoral victory in 1989. And could anything have been more odious than the TV shots of military leaders, in an apparent attempt to show their compassion, using the typhoon disaster as a photo op, handing out relief packages to the desperate survivors? This is not just a corrupt regime, it is a depraved one. But the ruling military junta, led by Senior General Than Shwe, maintains crushing control.

[Despite] protests mounted around the world, the Regime endures. An Associated Press report from the UN noted:

“Diplomats and analysts say Myanmar’s resources, including natural gas and oil fields that foreign companies are vying to tap, make many nations reluctant to impose economic sanctions or other measures as punishment for the bloody assault on pro-democracy demonstrators.”

How very, very sad, if true and the misery the people suffer is because of foreign greed.

But to begin. 

I flew into Yangon where I was picked up by the folks from Motherland 2, the little Guest House where I stayed on my last visit. Motherland 2 is a short walk from the center of the city, it is pin neat, has air conditioning, TV, and with breakfast, it costs less than $10 per night. The staff are all young, friendly, cheerful, and helpful. A young girl working at reception looked so young (I thought about 14) I had to ask her how old she was.

“Eighteen”, she said brightly.

“Horse hockey pucks!”, I replied (or words to that effect).

She blushed and then confessed she would be eighteen on her next birthday.

“You know Queen Elizabeth”, she asked? Sure.

“I have same birthday, September 7th.”

I thought she was talking about Liz II, of course. In fact she shares her birthday with Queen Elizabeth the First. No matter. She was ‘Queen Elizabeth’ to me after that and it seemed to please her greatly whenever I called her that.

I asked the young guy who served in their small restaurant how late they were open.

“All night”, he exclaimed. “I am Superman”. As is so often the case, workers sleep on the job. Superman slept in the restaurant and would happily get up at any hour to serve you.

At a different time, under other circumstances, it is easy to imagine having a great time visiting with these friendly, happy people. At this time, it is difficult. I find it near impossible to reconcile my relative immense wealth with their miserable poverty.

The most striking thing to me on my return is how little has changed. To be sure, there is a new and quite modern airport and visitors are not obliged to purchase Foreign Exchange Currency, as was the case 6 years ago. But beyond that, the lives of the people seem very much unchanged. In Yangon there are very few new buildings, most are a collection of old ones dating back several decades. Outside Yangon, housing is of the most basic nipa palm hovels one would ever see anywhere. The streets and sidewalks, in terrible condition in 2002, are in even greater disrepair.

Some of the oldest, most decrepit buses I have ever seen trundle down the street absolutely jammed with people. Dump trucks are used as buses – people sit, stand, and cling to the back and sides. Tiny little Mazda pickup trucks not much bigger than a golf cart, and once assigned to military officers, now have a canopy on the back and people squeeze into them for a ride. Toyota pickups are the most common public transportation. They have seats along each side and small stools for sitting in the middle. One fellow traveller told me of squeezing into one of these trucks with fifteen other persons, and as it continued to sit there, she asked, "When does this bus leave?" The answer. "When we get twenty four." I have seen more than 35 people crammed into one of these trucks.

Dad’s Burmese travel report was unfinished so we’ll end with his paraphrasing of Dr. Evil from Austin Powers:

The details of my life are quite inconsequential…. Very well, where do I begin? My children have relentlessly tried to improve my behaviour just because I have made claims, which they have said are outrageous, like I invented the question mark. Sometimes I have accused chestnuts of being lazy. You know, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My old age is typical, winters in Rangoon, boating on Inle Lake… 

(Okay, okay, again apologies to Austin.)