Conversations in Burma

I do have the blog post recording the end of my last visit to Rangoon mostly drafted, and I’ll post that eventually.  Right now, though, I wanted to share this.

 

I am in Rangoon again.  For work, this time.  That’s not what it says on my visa, but that’s what I’m doing, pretty openly – instead of furtively meeting with partners in cafes, I’m attending conferences in hotels, with agendas available at the door listing the speeches we’ll hear on land confiscation issues, on investment-related problems, on protesting against unsustainable development.

I am chatting with cab drivers about how cool it was when Obama met Aung San Suu Kyi.

I am standing, right now, at my hotel room window, and the sky just opened with a goddamned roar.  The rain is so hard that the air is white with mist, and since I’m overlooking an alley packed with corrugated-iron-roofed houses, the sound of it is like a jet engine.  Beyond the alley are skyscrapers of cream-coloured stone, warm lights spilling from the windows; off to my left are the dark outlines of palm trees and, beyond that, the massive golden stupa of Shwe Dagon Pagoda.  I’ve got the window open, my face half-tilted into the rain; it’s wonderful, as long as you don’t have to be out in it.

I really, really like Rangoon.  I like that it’s a big, grey, sprawling urban mess, but it’s got a unique character to it.  There’s no fashionable posturing, as in Bangkok, nor is there the feeling of anxiety that seems to attend it.  Everyone is in short-sleeved shirts and knotted cotton lungis, the women with flowers in their hair and yellow powder smeared over their cheeks, everyone’s strolling to and from work swinging their steel tiffin tins or leaning out of car doors to spit betel on the ground like they don’t give a damn, and everything is on Burma time.  In some ways, it feels like an archetypal Asian city – a maze of fruit and DVD stalls in front of each of the new Western shopping centres; bicycle rickshaws fighting it out with taxis; stray dogs everywhere – but to me, the clothes, the food, and the language all feel familiar now, after eighteen months working with Burma groups.  (And the food, oh, God – spicy, oily Arakan curries; sticky Shan noodles with spring onions and chili; parathas and chapatis courtesy of the Muslim vendors on every corner.  I love Thai food, but I love Burmese food even more.)  The differences is that in Chiang Mai, it’s all subdued, as my friends from Burma try to maintain their traditions while flying under the radar of the Thai folks around them, fitting in enough not to ruffle feathers.  Here, it’s out in the open and unapologetic.  I especially love seeing people I know from the border who’ve moved to Yangon.  I ran into one former colleague who’s switched out her pantsuits for a lungi, and started wearing powder, and jade amulets in place of Thai gold – but none of those changes compare to how happy she looks, how much more at ease in her skin.

And Rangoon is one of the few places I’ve been where, as a rare Westerner, I can walk the streets without being hassled.  Stared at, yes, but not hassled.  It’s such a relief.

Although on rare occasions, the staring is almost worse.

And on that note, I have to tell you this story because it’s really weird.

After dinner tonight (Shan noodles and a pile of light-as-air crispy wontons, aw yesss), I found a little shopping complex that was still open, and that had a supermarket.  This was lucky, because I wanted to get some rice mixes to take back, as well as something for the folks at the office.

Now, I want to make a couple of things totally clear.  First, there were other customers around when I went into the supermarket.  And second, I was in there maybe ten minutes – and I’d seen other people shopping about five minutes ago – when I started realizing that the employees were staring at me.

This isn’t exactly new in Rangoon, as I mentioned.  I figured they weren’t expecting a – I actually don’t even know what the Burmese equivalent of farang is, so let’s go with honky – in their store.  Or not expecting a honky to be buying dry noodle mixes and homemade palm sugar candy.  Or something.  So I ignored it.

An aisle later, I realised they weren’t just staring:  they were following me.

This was getting weirder and weirder, and I have to admit, I was curious about what would happen.  So I crossed the store.  They followed me, silently.  I went down a different aisle.  They all congregated at one end of it, in formation, like the Jets trying to corner a Shark in an alleyway.

I turned and looked at them.

They looked at me.

This went on for a bit.

Finally – finally! – one of them stepped forward.  “Miss, we close.”

Fair enough.  She gently took the few things I was buying out of my hands, and brought them smartly to the front of the store.

And then I saw it.  The entire staircase up to the next level of the shopping centre, as well as the whole balcony above it, were clogged with rank upon rank of young Burmese workers in matching uniforms.  At a conservative estimate, there were easily a hundred people.  All of them staring at me in dead silence.

They had all been waiting for me.

I won’t lie to you, it was eerie.  I tried to defuse the moment – “Oh, you were all waiting for me, I am so sorry!” – but, in true ahnah fashion*, they wouldn’t acknowledge the apology because it would mean, in essence, admitting I’d done something wrong, which is impolite.  So they kept staring.  I was blushing so hard you could probably detect it from space by now.  The cashier, who was the only one who, by contrast, wouldn’t meet my eyes at all, rang me up, and then – I am not kidding – I led a procession of over a hundred Burmese workers into the streets of Rangoon.

Just never tell the Burmese authorities that happened, okay? ;) 

*Ahnah doesn’t have a direct English translation, but I’ve talked about the Thai version – kray jai – on my blog before.  It’s being so polite, and going so out of your way to avoid posing any difficulty for someone, that you sometimes end up making everything really uncomfortable.  It’s also part of what stands in the way of speaking up if you disagree or don’t understand something.  Ahnah is letting someone stand on your foot for an hour, even though you’re sure it’s not deliberate, because you, well, don’t like to mention it.

(Incidentally, they told me they close at 9, and I was feeling really guilty about holding them up – until I got back to my hotel, a ten minute walk away, and checked my phone.  9:08.  Wow.  Quick off the mark, much?)

One more story from my time here… and I was debating how to tell this, as I sometimes do when I’m relating conversations in writing.  To me, a lot of the charm of these stories isn’t just what someone says, but how they say it – and I don’t mean “charm” in a condescending way, like it’s “quaint”, but just that the pattern of someone’s speech, the phrases they use – and, yes, even the mistakes – are all part of the fabric of the story.  So I tend to render conversations word-for-word, as best I can, rather than correct people’s grammar.  But I’m afraid that comes across as mocking people for whom English isn’t their first language.  I’m not – God knows, anyone who’s heard me attempt to speak Thai has some idea how much awe I have for people who are fluent in more than one language, and I can still say exactly four things in Burmese, except that I can’t say two of them in polite company, and I’m not supposed to say the third one for security reasons, so I can say one thing in Burmese.  So a Burmese person who can carry on a conversation with me in English, however much we have to stumble through together?  Has my admiration and my gratitude.

With that in mind, I’m going to tell this story with the quotes I remember intact, so you get the actual flavour of the exchange.

I had the greatest conversation with my young cab driver coming from the convention back to my hotel today (in his really odd-smelling cab – sir, please choose either a metric tonne of jasmine garlands, or a Glade lemon airfreshener.  Pick your theme and run with it!  This is not a good opportunity for cultural fusion!).  He started out asking whether I was American, and on finding out I was, pronounced this “very good”; I asked him whether he was from Yangon, which he was, and he then added triumphantly, “I am taxi driver!”  Which I took to be kind of like when I was first learning Arabic, and kept informing people in a loud voice that I was a student and my house was in East London, even the ones I met through school or at my house. :)

Then we started talking about the traffic (the perennial topic of conversation for anyone stuck in a cab in Rangoon, which is about half the population at any given time), the sights, and all the new developments around Rangoon.  He told me there were two huge new shopping malls downtown:  “In Myanmar, verrrry big shopping mall!  You American, small shopping mall!” he grinned.  And then he described some of the luxury hotels, adding, “One night stay, three hundred dollar!”  He sucked in a pained breath, and laughed.  “In Myanmar, very good hotel!  You American, small hotel!”

And then, out of the blue, he turned to me (we were stuck in traffic, don’t worry) and said, “Obama!  Obama come to Myanmar, very good!  Clinton come, very good!  Meet Lady Aung San Suu Kyi, shake hands like this –“  He demonstrated on himself, pretzling his arms together.  “Ah, my friend!”  (Obama also ill-advisedly kissed Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on the cheek, but I was too embarrassed to bring that up. :))

“Obama speak English very good!” my driver chirped happily.  I was a little weirded out by this – did he think Obama wasn’t American-born?  Had the Republican habit of describing the president with careful disdain as “articulate” travelled this far?  But then he went on, and I realised what he was getting at.  “Clinton speak English very good!  Number Two, Lady Aung San Suu Kyi, also, English very good!”  He waved a hand contemptuously.  “Number One – Number One is soldier, is government, is Thein Sein – English no good.  No good!”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the change that has happened in Burma:  a man openly praising Aung San Suu Kyi and talking scornfully about the military government to the stranger in the back of his cab.  And he brought it up, which means that he probably has this conversation with most of the foreigners he drives.  Wow.  It’s not enough, yet, not by a long shot.  But it’s pretty striking, nonetheless.

Aung San Suu Kyi is popular, he told me:  “Yangon, Lady Aung San Suu Kyi!  Mandalay, Lady Aung San Suu Kyi!  Inle, Lady Aung San Suu Kyi!”  He also credited her with doing more to help the people in practical ways than the government is willing to do.  The soldiers gave $150 to improve the roads, he told me; Lady Aung San Suu Kyi gave $300.  “Very good!”

I almost wish we hadn’t reached my hotel so quickly; I wanted to listen to more of this.  Hell, I was getting as much out of one conversation as out of weeks reading the Burma papers.  This wasn’t the first startlingly open political conversation I’d had in Burma – you might remember me talking about my guide on my last trip, and how he’d tell me in a low voice about people’s opposition to the mega-development projects – but he was a friend of a friend, and he didn’t really start talking until we were safely out of Rangoon.  This guy didn’t know me from Adam.

Things really are changing:  some for the better, some for the worse (I just got news of another anti-Muslim riot, this time in Lashio).  It’s a remarkable time.

Very good.