Rebecca Henderson

Did you know that in the 1990s Aung San Suu Kyi asked Western tourists to begin a boycott on travel in Burma to prevent their money from entering the coffers of the junta?

I didn’t either, until I started planning my trip. I respect Aung San Suu Kyi and would like to support her in her stand for democracy. But I decided that since I’ve spent the past ten years giving my tourism dollars to Communist governments in China, Vietnam, and Laos, and I don’t agree with them any more than I do the junta, then that aspect of the boycott doesn’t jive with me. Visiting people in the Burmese countryside and trying to get a better understanding of what their lives are like—that was a major purpose of my trip, and surely The Lady would agree with that. Thank goodness, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t ask her if she agrees—several weeks before my trip, she spoke from house arrest and encouraged tourists to come back to Burma.

Despite the newness of the lift on the boycott, we met quite a few people on our trip who speak very passable English and whose livelihoods depend on Western visitors. Guesthouses, restaurants, drivers, shop owners—everywhere we went, we found someone who could help us or translate for us. Early October is still the end of rainy season in Burma, so the number of travelers was at a low point for the year. Hopefully business will pick up and the empty places we visited will begin to draw more customers as the weather cools down over the next few months.

The evidence of tourism as an industry was particularly noticeable in Bagan. Since the whole area is an archeological zone, businesses and factories haven’t developed nearby, which helps the town maintain a quiet, rural feel. The bulk of the available work in Bagan is in catering to tourists, both national and international. When the owner of the vegetarian restaurant told us he wouldn’t send his children out to earn quick money off of tourists, he was referring to the abundant number of people waiting outside and inside the ancient stupas, trying to sell souvenirs at a high mark-up. Lacquerware bowls and bracelets, sand paintings of Burmese scenes, longyi made of cheap material, postcards printed circa 1980, the photocopied Orwell novel.

Erin and I were met by a small gang of children outside one of the more popular pagodas, and they wouldn’t stop bugging us to buy something from them the entire time we walked around the grounds of the site. One girl asked repeatedly if we would come look at her father’s sand paintings. Another offered to let me trade for souvenirs using as payment a Tibetan bracelet I was wearing. Giggling, cute, and annoying, they made me feel like the Pied Piper of Bagan as we made our way en masse around the premises.

The most persistent of the bunch was a little boy, probably 8 or 9 years old, who kept calling me señora and wanted me to buy some bamboo bracelets coated with lacquer. I told him I wasn’t going to buy anything until I was finished looking around the pagoda, and then I’d think about it. “OK, I’m waiting here for you,” he said.

Four steps later, he was at my side again offering the bracelets. “Wait here, and I’ll come back and buy them,” I said. “But stop following me.”

“OK, señora, I’m waiting here for you.”

A minute later, he was back. He was so darn cute, I couldn’t get mad. What decent Texas girl could get mad at a Burmese kid for addressing her in Spanish?

We repeated the whole process several times, me telling him to wait, him saying he was waiting here. Finally I clued in to the fact that he wasn’t trying to be obnoxious—he genuinely didn’t know the meaning of the English word wait. I let him follow me around and then bought the bracelets for $1 before I left. The last thing he said to me (and as far as I could tell, it was a complete non sequitur) was, “Mei guanxi. Weishenme?” Chinese for “It doesn’t matter. Why?”

I don’t know why either, kid. I’ve been asking that question for years.

Next in the “Burmese Days” series:  ”Con Artist“

Shortly after our group arrived in MN village for a three day visit and time of working in the coffee fields, my young friend YGS spotted me on the path to the public outhouse and waved me over towards her.  She was sitting on the second floor porch of a neighbor’s house, chatting with two other girls between 6 and 9 years old.  After finishing my business, I climbed up the stairs to give my greetings to my young friends.

YGS rambled and giggled on and on, catching me up on all that I’ve missed in the past few months since she had seen me—her dad going off to work in a factory in the east, her getting hepatitis A and spending several days in the hospital, her dad coming back because of the illness, their selling the family dog as meat to help pay the hospital bills, her eagerness to start second grade the next week.  I didn’t have to do much prompting to get her to tell me about her experiences in town when she went to the hospital, the older of the two sisters with us adding a detail here or there when YGS left something out.  The younger sister sat between us, her eyes going back and forth from face to face as we talked, like she was watching a tennis match.  She’s too young to have started school yet, so she can’t speak much Chinese, but she did her best to keep up with our conversation.

I was feeling drained of energy from the drive up the Mountain and from our first afternoon of pulling weeds on the coffee terraces, so I suggested to the girls that we have a cup of coffee together, knowing they wouldn’t enjoy it, but wanting to be polite and offer it.  YGS eagerly accepted, and the other two followed hesitantly.  I made myself a cup from one packet of 3-in-1 instant coffee, sugar, and creamer, and I used a second packet for the girls to share in two cups between the three of them.

We sat on a low bench together, looking out at the village path ahead of us, watching as people came in from the fields.  We held our improvised coffee mugs (one metal tea cup and two plastic cups) gingerly around the rims to keep from burning our fingers, blowing on them as we made small talk.

Soon my cup was empty.  The three girls were still passing their cups between themselves, pretending to take sips and making excuses about how hot the coffee was.  I caught a glimpse of the youngest making an overly dramatic gagging face after she tasted it, before “accidentally” spilling half of it on the edge of the porch.

“I know coffee can taste bitter,” I said, despite the fact that 3-in-1 packets are about 95% sugar.  “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to drink it.  I won’t be upset.”

YGS made a couple more attempts at being polite by drinking it before asking me, “Do you think pigs like to drink coffee?”

David and Julie’s pig pen is directly under the porch we were seated on.  The temptation to pour her cup over the edge into their trough was visibly creeping across YGS’ face as she gazed down on those pigs.

“I don’t know.  I’ve never given a pig coffee before,” I replied.

She thought about it a minute more, then shook the idea out of her head.  She dumped the two cups of coffee on the ground next to the outdoor water faucet and gave them a cursory rinse before handing them back to me.

(I took a picture of YGS and myself last year, and now she asks me to take one of us together every time I visit.  My wet hair was no excuse not to take one on this recent visit.)

I’ve been baking a couple of batches of muffins and cleaning out some papers and books on the shelf in my little office, promising myself that I will go for a run around sunset as a reward for being so diligent in straightening up on a Saturday afternoon.  I found this piece of paper in a stack of notes.  It is the handiwork of YGS, a display of her first grade talents:  her name written in Chinese and the numbers one through ten.  You can see my similarly first grade level Chinese writing next to my English name.

Her drawings made me smile when I found them just now, and I thought posting this picture would be a nice way to procrastinate the rest of my organizing.

When my friends from the Pacific Northwest came to visit B Mountain in January, they saw that the kids in MN only have one basketball to share among 115 elementary school students.  Sometimes they will play on the court at school with smaller toy balls, or they may even kick around a piece of fruit as a soccer ball.

The Northwest group decided to get the students of MN village several balls as a gift.  After we drove back to town, they purchased the balls, along with a pump, and we stored them in the supply room at the café until I could go back to the Mountain for my next visit.

The balls were included in the truckload of stuff I drove up the Mountain last week—along with household supplies for Adam’s family, a bag of clothes for Julie’s new baby, a bicycle her sister asked us to deliver, and a couple of rice sacks of baked goods and fresh vegetables.

I asked David what the most appropriate way would be for me to hand over the balls to the kids.  He said, since their house is right across the path from the school’s basketball court, they could keep the equipment there in their house.  This way any village kid could use it, not just the students at the school.

The kids didn’t take long to figure out that David and Julie had several balls in their kitchen, and now they come over every day before and after classes to get the balls and play for a couple of hours.  On the fourth day after we brought the equipment up to the kids, I counted about 50 of them running around the court, yelling and laughing and pretty much going nuts.  There were two half-court basketball games going on (older kids at one end, younger at the other), and some variation of soccer/dodgeball/kickball going on with a soccer ball right at the center of the court.  Chaos seemed to be prevailing—and the kids were obviously having fun.

Next in the “Back-to-Back Trips” series:  ”Village Noises“

Lydia’s grandmother spends most of her time these days caring for the two-year-old daughter of her youngest son, while he and his wife work their fields.  The tiny girl will hardly let anyone besides her grandmother hold her, and she would tear up any time I made eye contact with her.  I spent the entire visit trying to avoid looking directly at her—though I did sneak in one picture that promptly caused her to wail.

Precious because she is the youngest, the little girl is treasured even more by her family because of the desperate circumstances out of which she was saved.

Several years ago, Lydia’s Number Six Uncle and his wife had a baby girl who became strangely ill very suddenly.  Before they could get off the mountain and into town for medical care, it was too late.  Their only baby was gone.  For years they tried to have another child, but were left with empty arms.

Everybody’s business travels fast and wide through village networks, and Number Six Uncle and his wife’s childlessness was well known in the area.  So when a man from a nearby village stumbled across a baby girl in the dirt off the side of the road, abandoned and covered in insects, people immediately thought to bring the girl to Number Six Uncle’s house.  He and his wife adopted the tiny, helpless girl, no more than three or four days old, and today she is the toddler in front of me, much beloved by everyone in the family.

As Lydia and I set off to return down the hill, her grandmother walks to the edge of the path with us, her youngest granddaughter tied to her back in a carrying cloth.  She prompts the girl to tell us goodbye, and finally the little one looks directly at me.  She calls me “auntie” in local dialect, then sticks a small hand out to wave and says “bye-bye” in a quivering voice, fighting back the tears.  It’s safe to talk to me, now that I’m leaving.

Next in the “Lydia’s Home” series:  ”Shen Nong Temple“

Recently my best language practice has come from David and Julie’s young daughter.  She has been in alphabet class with us every morning, and I’ve seen her quite a bit at the café in the afternoons.  If I’m seated, she likes to be in my lap, regardless of what I’m doing.  She particularly likes to sit and watch my fingers as I type on the computer.  David saw her sitting with me while I was typing up a spelling worksheet one afternoon and asked her, “Are you bothering Yi Bei Cha?”

“No,” she replied, “I’m reading.”

At only three years old, she hasn’t been exposed to much Chinese yet, so we can only “converse” in B language.  Our conversations are, as you might expect, not particularly profound, since they are limited by the fact that she is three and I don’t really speak much B language.  But she is endlessly patient in repeating something over and over until I understand her; usually, she is motivated by wanting something from me.

Some phrases I now understand very well, thanks to her tutelage:

Hold me.

Put me down.

I want that.

That’s mine.

Play with me.

Can you open this for me?

Some phrases I can now say without thinking, due to high repetition:

Do you want this?

Don’t play with that.

No, that’s mine.

Be careful.

Come here.

You’re beautiful.

And she has very intuitively picked up a couple of words in English that need little explanation.  When I can’t find the B word quickly enough to get her to stop doing something she shouldn’t be doing (which happens often with 3-year-olds), she has no trouble understanding the English word no in the right tone of voice.

Her other English word surprised me one day when I walked in a room where she was seated, eating an orange.  She looked up and noticed me in the doorway, grinned and waved and gave me a sweet, baby-voiced “hello”.

(In the picture above, my little helper is sitting with me in front of my laptop at the café, while my favorite 5-year-old pops into the picture.)

I realized last week in MN village that I’ve entered a new phase in my relationship with the ladies there.  They trust me to watch their babies.

Leah has let YGS hang out with me for hours on end for quite some time now—but she is 8 and able to stay out of trouble on her own for the most part.  This time around, David and Julie’s 3 year old girl became my new shadow.  If I was sitting, she had to be in my lap.  If I was standing, she would reach up her arms and say in B language, “Hold me!  Hold me!”  Julie was free to leave the house without taking her daughter along, since she was comfortable hanging out for longer periods with the foreign lady.

The women in B villages often depend on relatives, neighbors, and friends to help take care of their babies.  If the mother is busy around the house or needed in the fields, another lady will tie the baby on her own back and care for her while the mother is away.  Colleen’s younger sister recently had a baby girl, who is the darling of two or three households along the village path.  Leah (who happens to be Colleen’s aunt) and her oldest daughter often watch the baby—even though the oldest daughter is only 11 years old.  She ties the tiny thing on her back and goes about her business (or rather, her playing).

On this trip, I was standing in the path talking to several of the elementary school age girls and letting them read their homework to me, when the bell rang for them to return to class.  Leah’s daughter was in the group, with the baby on her back, and needed to pass her off to an adult.  I was the only one in eyesight—so I untied her and let the girl go back to school.  The baby looked at me, unconcerned, and fell asleep.  I took her back up the path to Colleen’s sister, stayed and talked for a while, enjoying the sweetness of cradling a sleeping baby, and passed her back to her grandmother when I needed to leave.

Now, the tricky part about holding babies in villages is that they don’t wear diapers, or even pants sometimes.  Colleen’s niece was wrapped up in several layers of blankets because it was a cool afternoon, so I wasn’t worried about getting wet.  But the next day, I was handed a slightly older baby girl and warned, “Careful, she doesn’t have on any pants.”  So I put to use what I’ve observed many times, and I sat on the low stool on my friend’s porch, cradling the baby in such a way that her little bottom was aimed at the ground, not my clothes.  Sure enough, within ten minutes there was a little puddle on the porch—but I was completely dry.  While proud of my accomplishment in avoiding the pee, I must say I’m still a believer in diapers.

When I go to MN village, I can be sure that little 8 year old YGS will seek me out as soon as she gets word we’ve arrived.  Her mom comes to greet me now, too, but she doesn’t stick around to chat.  YGS is my shadow, though.

On our latest trip up the Mountain, as soon as YGS got out of school for the day, she was by my side.  She ate meals with us, went to the tea fields with us, did whatever we did, while her mother worked in their own fields and cared for a sick relative’s baby.

YGS just started first grade.  She was very proud to show us how she’s learning to write—she wrote out the numbers to 10 and her name in Chinese characters, using her finger to write invisibly on my knee, on the table, on a window.

The two of us don’t have deep conversations—she’s 8, and my language is lacking.  But I want to follow the example of Jesus and let this little child spend time with me, that I may bring blessing to her along the way.

MN village sits on the side of a mountain, with houses situated closely together along paths going down the mountain from the main road. Above the main road are a couple of tiny shops selling bottled drinks, cigarettes, and a few snacks, a small clinic run by a couple of village doctors, and one of the two public toilets in the village. Just above that row of buildings is the village temple.  Nothing in the village can be situated higher than the temple, so any new construction must take place below the main road.  Colleen’s house sits near the bottom of the main path leading down through the village.  At the very bottom of the path is the village school, where children can attend first through sixth grade.  The school is also the location of the second public outhouse in the village.  The path runs past the school, past a small warehouse where tea leaves are processed, and then out to the river and onto a dirt road leading to other villages further off the main road.

Just as I made it up to the main road and really didn’t have anywhere else to go look for the others, I saw Colleen and little YGS walking up the road from another set of houses on a smaller path at the outskirts of the village.  I waved at them, and YGS began skipping and jumping the whole way down the road to meet me.  We walked back to Colleen’s house, and YGS and I sat chatting out on the big porch-like balcony outside the kitchen while Colleen helped her mom with some things inside.  Any fear of me that YGS had at lunch was now gone.  She talked away about anything and everything, the way that six-year-olds do, and she climbed all over me, sat in my lap, held my hands, played with my hair.

All throughout the village, every bit of land that isn’t occupied by a house or a pig pen is covered with vegetables or fruit trees.  From the balcony, we could see several different kinds of produce growing, and YGS quizzed me on the names of them all.  She would point to a tree or a vine and ask me what it was called, and if I couldn’t tell her the answer she would teach me the word for it.  I asked her about her family, whether she went to school yet, what grade her older sister was in, anything I could think of that a six-year-old would be able to answer.

When we exhausted discussing every plant and animal within view of the balcony, YGS said we should go out and play.  I found it endearing that she felt comfortable enough with me and didn’t seem to care that I was an adult—she just wanted to go out and play.  So I let her lead me by the hand outside and down the path to another area where there were different plants growing.  We covered the names of all those plants and discussed our favorite fruits.  That inspired her to show me this one particular tree growing near the stairs to Colleen’s house.  It had small green fruit growing on it that YGS said was really sweet and delicious, and she wanted me to try it.  She climbed on a fence under the tree to grab at the branches and pull them down so she could reach the fruit, but she decided the fruit near the bottom weren’t very good.  I pulled a couple of higher branches down so she could reach them, but she still couldn’t find a piece of the fruit that she was satisfied with.  She pointed to a couple of bigger pieces, smaller than a golf ball, and I plucked them off for her.  She inspected them, turning them over a few times, and decided they should be good.  She showed me how to peel the outside green layer off and eat the inside white part.  She began raving about how delicious it was, but in my experience, fruit that is bright green is unripe and sour.  So I was quite surprised when I hesitantly took my first bite and found that it had no flavor whatsoever.  She asked me if I thought it was sweet and delicious.  I decided that I didn’t need to politely agree with her or pretend to like it—she’s six.  Six-year-olds aren’t culturally offended very easily.  I told her no, I didn’t think it was sweet.  She said to try another bite.  I told her I didn’t want to eat the rest of it and gave it to her to eat, which made her just as happy as if I had enjoyed it myself.

Part 6

YGS is a little girl I met last summer who sort of latched on to me–I’ve been back to her village twice now since returning to Asia, and both times I’ve been able to hang out with her some more.  She’s really a hoot–not at all shy, follows me everywhere, climbs all over me if I’m sitting down.  We’re not sure how old she is–she isn’t sure how old she is.  Last year she told me she’s 6.  This year she told my teammate that she’s 7, then she told me she’s 8, then she said she really doesn’t know–but she plans to start 1st grade next year.

On my latest visit, she asked if I know how to bake a cake–I told her I do.  She asked if I would make one for her–so I promised to bake something chocolate for her the next time I come to visit.  Judging from the way she downed my bag of M&Ms, she should enjoy a nice batch of brownies.