4 August 2010

Burmese Birthday

2 Somosas and a Banana Roti for 20 cents. Burma is quite the place. I spent the morning walking around Yangon in the rain, eating from street vendors and trying to find the friends I made yesterday. Not much luck.

Now, I am sitting on an over-air-conditioned bus to Mandalay. The man sitting next to me has "Freedom" tattood down his forearm. It is obviously an amateur job, but its a poignant reminder of what is missing in Myanmar. Freedom. The bus is just waiting to leave. 10,300 Kyat ($10.30). The taxi across the sprawling yet rural feeling city was 5,000 Kyat. Only twice as much to go across the whole country.

Sam, the kid that runs the guesthouse, talked to me for about an hour practicing his American accent. He prefers the American accent over the European and he is baffled by all the Europeans who don’t like Americans. He says we speak strong. He goes to the cinema with his friends in Shan State, near the highly touristed Inle Lake. He says they go to comedies and try to laugh when the foreigners laugh, even though they don’t understand why sometimes.

Last night the other man that runs the guesthouse told me about love and sex in Burma. “You are lucky. In your country, the women touch you back. Here, they just lay there and only the man touches, but you are not lucky because your women leave you. It’s hard to find lasting love in America. Is that true?” Yes, I told him. It’s so true. He recounted rural Burma life. You can only date in secret and in the dark, sneaking to the girl’s house in the night and whispering that you like her (only after getting permission from the villages head of bachelors). She will tell you to wait for her decision, maybe a week, maybe a year, but you have to go back every day until she says yes or no. If she says yes, you hurry and marry so you can have sex.

I got an email today detailing reports out of Eastern Burma, about attacks by the SPDC (the Orwellian name for Burma's military government: State Peace and Development Council. Unfortunately they provide neither peace nor development and don't even allow many residents to be part of their state) against rural villagers. They bombed and burned several villages this week. The people are fleeing… likely to Thailand. I feel so strange being in a country that is killing its residents. I am here on a bus with A/C and a flat screen TV and thousands of villagers are being hunted and killed in the same country. The police officer that stopped me from walking in front of a government building works for the same regime that is CURRENTLY killing its people.

I don’t know what to say.

I am on a bus. It’s my birthday.

There are no other foreigners

Maybe we are all foreigners

Lost in a world far from home

Strangers in a strange land

Talking, helping, hurting, killing

Will we ever get home?