This is Burma

A few weeks ago, I had a day with heaps of time to kill and a hardcore hankering for some quality time with my email, so I headed to the nearest internet café.  When I walked in and inquired about using a computer, the employee informed me that the internet was not currently working.  That was fair enough, but due to my incessant need to plan, I asked a few more questions to determine when I should return or where else I might be able to find a connection.  What I gathered from this dude’s broken English was that there was no internet in the entire country.  Furthermore, there would be no internet for one month.  I became completely fascinated with this absurdity and began asking other people about this predicament.  The same answer kept finding me:  for about one month, the internet would be operating extremely slowly or not at all everywhere in the country because there was an underwater cable that had been damaged (one woman claiming that fish had been eating the hardware). 

This is Burma.

In essence, this is why I chose to spend nearly four weeks in this country.  I wasn’t drawn there on a mission to temple hop (though I certainly achieved that) or to see some wonders of geography (though I saw some pretty things) or for the lovely weather (it was often oppressively hot or oppressively rainy).  I went there because of the fascinating socio-political climate and to experience a minimally westernized nation that exists in one of the most heavily tourist trodden parts of the world.  Indeed, it was fascinating.    

Burma is the type of place that really makes me wish I was a bit smarter, a bit more informed…quite frankly, a bit less of the American stereotype who is clueless about international politics.  At the same time, I know that’s just not how I am wired.  I will probably always depend on my super smart friends and my experiential learning that comes through travel to explain these world issues.  I think it’s sort of the Skinner way.  I want to see it and feel it and converse about it.  There has got to be an emotional and/or experiential component to reel me in. 

What I’m trying to say is that I am far from an expert on Burma, but I’m going to do something radical and write a travel post (including some non-emotional facts about Burma) on my travel blog. 

Here’s the skinny:  Burma was a British colony until 1947.  The dude who was considered the father of independence, Aung San, was assassinated not long after.  In the wake, there was all sorts of chaos.  And, eventually, in 1962, there was a coup that has now led to the world’s longest ruling military dictatorship.  As you might imagine, this has been bad, bad, bad:  a bonanza of human rights violations, ethnic cleansing, a massacre in 1988, and the country’s leading lady of democracy (Aung San Suu Kyi -- Nobel Peace Prize winner who also happens to be the daughter of Aung San) under house arrest for almost 15 of the last 22 years.  For reasons that I only vaguely understand, the crazy military dictatorship decided to begin easing up on things in the last few years (I’m in the middle of reading a book called ‘Burma: A Nation at the Crossroads’, so perhaps when I finish the book I will understand that piece of the puzzle and can report back.)  After an election a little over a year ago, there is now some civilian representation in government.  Many (but certainly not all) political prisoners have been freed, and some of the crazy laws have been eased (like, now, the newspapers can actually report on the news).  So, there seems to be hope for democracy and reconciliation, but people are not quite joining hands and singing Kumbaya.

I felt that this political situation was evident in some ways, but it was generally only detectable if you were looking for it.  The Average Joes were not walking the streets with their heads down, sad and afraid.  The military men were not walking the streets, busting heads.  People were just living their lives, doing their thing.  I have no doubt that just about every single person in the country has a sad story to tell related to the dictatorship, but on the surface, people were smiling and laughing and generally overflowing with gentle kindness. 

Having said that, there are surely signs of the government’s legacy of crazy control.  The whole country shuts down by 9pm.  I don’t know what that necessarily means, but I know it means something.  Burma is markedly behind its neighbors in terms of level of development, particularly in terms of technology.  I haven’t seen such a lack of mobile phone use since the US in 2001.  There are power outages across entire cities for several hours just about every day.  The isolation from Western culture is impressive.  I mean, men are wearing skirts (which I thought was smoking hot and highly practical, by the way).

*Um, so this guy was NOT one of the smokin' hot babes, but he was a total nugget.

Perhaps most telling of Burma’s isolation was the fact that there were so few white folks around.  As a tourist who tries to tone down her tourist-ness, it felt nice to be in a place that was not full of people like me.  There were certainly other travelers, but the numbers were a small fraction of what you find in Thailand.  (Of course, I always find this sort of conversation amongst travelers to be slightly ridiculous:  we like to go places where we don’t see many people like us…but then by going there ourselves, we are increasing the number of people like us who are in that place.  What gives me the right to go somewhere and complain about there being so many tourists if I am, in fact, a tourist as well?) 

Being a tourist is currently my lifestyle, so I give the role a lot of thought.  What Burma made me think about was that tourists, perhaps, should take on more activist responsibilities.  (Well, I guess I sort of believe that as human beings we have a responsibility to be activists, but that is material for another blog post…)  Bad things are happening all the time, all over the world, in every country I have visited, and, most notably, in my very own homeland.  So, let me be clear that Burma’s human rights issues did not exactly open my closed eyes to the world of injustice.  Burma was, however, a reminder of all of those bad things happening all over the world.  And, it was a reminder that there are a whole bunch of people like me that go to these places where bad things are happening to have one hell of a good time.  Then, what?  Well, then we go home and go back to our jobs and maybe save money until we have enough to go to some other country that is ohmygodsocheap. 

This is how I think about it:  If someone walked into my house, just to have a look, and noticed that I had a broken refrigerator and then left saying, “Interesting.  That girl has a broken fridge.  That must suck.”  And, then, more and more people did the same thing – like, one million more.  If no one ever stopped to say, “yo, do you want some help with that fridge?  I’m kind of a handy man, and I know a guy…”  I would be a bit irritated.  

I don’t know how to fix a fridge.  I’m not even sure I know a guy who knows how to fix a fridge.  But, I don’t want to be that asshole that doesn’t even try to provide my useless help.  So, that’s the point of this blog post.  I just want Burma to know that I see their broken fridge and to inform others about it.  I mean, maybe someone reading this blog is a skilled fridge repairman.

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A few asides:

1.        The one month internet crash ended up being false.  I was able to check my email the very next day.  Someone explained to me that there was one news source that printed a story along the lines that I heard.  I have no idea if there was any truth to it, and, if there was not, why anyone would want to spread such a rumor.

2.       I call the country Burma, not Myanmar (as you will see it labeled on maps).  Here is why:  "Burma's democracy movement prefers the form 'Burma' because theydo not accept the legitimacy of the unelected military regime to change theofficial name of the country. Internationally, both names are recognised."