Can’t
believe it’s time to leave Myanmar. We
arrived almost two years ago, and here we are leaving in a couple of days. What a life-changing experience this has
been.
I
remember walking to Orange Supermarket with Tonia, needing to buy some food for
dinner, just hours after landing in Yangon.
Normally, one would just find a restaurant and eat there after arriving
at a new place, but our apartment wasn’t exactly near any restaurants we could
entertain (or at least wanted to). In fact, Yangon has no western restaurant chains to speak of. So we
had been given directions to Orange, and off we went.
Tonia was four months pregnant at
the time, which only added to the strangeness of moving to a new country. So many questions, but looking back it our
impending parenthood fit in nicely with all of the other transitions we were
facing. As we walked to the store it was
dark and it had just rained so the air was thick and warm. Yet what I mostly remember was the
smell. At the time we didn’t know our
apartment was located next to the chicken and duck market, and a factory where
they made fish paste. After a rain, this
wafted these fine smells every which way, so I commented to Tonia, “What did we
get ourselves into!”
Looking back on that first walk in
Myanmar, I think of how much this place has changed, and how much I have
changed. For example, before we left,
people would ask, “Are you going to be safe?”
We had heard Myanmar was a safe place, and after spending a little time
here you learned, especially as an expat, this was a very safe
environment. Well, that was with the
exception of things like the potholes in the roads, and the crumbling of the
sidewalks, or being in taxis without seatbelts.
This was even more so with a pregnant wife. I felt like the hole in the sidewalk spotter when
walking around the city, and I was glad to do it. And the taxis drove quite slow, not to
mention the old, hole in the floorboard, creaky cars, so you rarely saw
anything more than a fender bender accident.
Fast forward to now, and the many
of the sidewalks have been rebuilt or are in the process of being rebuilt, the
roads repaved, and the old cars replaced with newer ones. In less
than two years! Except not that all
of this is great, at least in my eyes.
Tonia and I, and now Diego get a kick out of it when we get in an old
rattletrap taxi. Traffic has become much
worse, which is always one of the effects of progress, and some prices have
gone up too much.
So how has Myanmar changed me? Now I will say that my overall self hasn’t
changed all that much, but mostly I’ve realized I don’t need that much to be
happy. I haven’t had a cellphone and
haven’t really missed that. No car, no
problem. Cash only, I haven’t spent as
much! We haven’t had many of the
conveniences I had become dependent upon back in the U.S. , and without them I
rarely felt I missed them. Admittedly, I’ve had a difficult time with the
slow Internet – I guess that has been my one vice I am unwilling to compromise
(and even that has improved somewhat). Most
importantly I have Tonia, and now Diego, and that is all I need.
Now a reflection on living in
Myanmar wouldn’t be complete without talking about its people. The Myanmar (Burmese) people are some of the
kindest people I’ve ever met. Perhaps
that is cliché to say, but I really believe it.
This isn’t to say they don’t have their faults. One could just follow what is happening in
the country now, shoot, just follow its history and you’ll many problems. Yet we seriously contemplated staying an
extra year simply because you will be treated very well. A quick anecdote to illustrate the essence of
the people here – this past October I went to a screenprinting shop to have
some t-shirts made. After I had placed
my order the owner of the shop went to his desk and fished out something and
handed it to me. It was the cap of my
memory stick that I had thought I had lost.
I had left it there the last time I had visited which was six months
prior, and when the shop was at a different location. Stories like this are a dime a dozen.
To end I’ll share my list of the
things I’ll miss in no particular order.
I’ll miss the sounds of the streets.
Whether it’s the monotone droning of the men saying prayers at the
monasteries, the men shouting out the stops on the buses, the women shouting
out what they’re selling at the markets, the gongs of the mobile food vendors,
the honking of the cars, or the music from the lottery carts, I will miss them
all. I’ll miss the smiles of the people,
even the betel nut stained ones. I’ll
miss the little plastic stools at the food and tea stalls. I completely don’t fit on them, and they make
me look like Will Ferrell in the movie ‘Elf’, but they’re great
nonetheless. I’ll miss shopping at the
food markets – at least the fruit and vegetable part, and not the meat
part. I’ll miss all of the food vendors,
even though I rarely ate their food. I’ll
miss walking or riding my bike to the store, and even though I’m not a good
haggler, I’ll miss negotiating for better prices with the taxi drivers. By the way, the Myanmar people aren’t very
good negotiaters themselves, since they think five percent off is a pretty good
deal. I’ll miss the first rains in
April/May to begin the monsoon season, though I will not miss the constant
rains in August/September. I'll miss drinking seventy cent Myanmar barley pops with friends. I’ll miss
the L’Opera tennis tournament, the Monsoon volleyball season, and the American
Club softball season. I’ll miss
navigating the many potholes on my bike. I’ll miss going out to restaurants and having
the waitstaff play with Diego, while Tonia and I get to eat uninterrupted. I’ll miss our nanny Bridget, who loved Diego
as much as Tonia or me. I’ll miss too
many others of the local people we’ve met, who have lived through a lot of
crap, and will rarely if ever complain about it. On a side note, we have made quite a bit more
money (which still isn't much) than they ever will, and they will never make you feel guilty about it,
and are very gracious when you give them anything. In the end you still feel a dissonance, but
it is still great how they make you feel less awkward about it. I’ll miss many more things, which I hope to
write about in more detail in the future.
Teaching abroad has made the world
a much smaller place for us, and to all the friends we’ve made, we hope it
stays this way so we can see each other again in the future.
