Myanmoirs of a Hero .... by Adam (2005)

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The Christmas tsunami disaster unleashed with it some profound, philosophical lessons. For me, it brought home the principle that you should never let catastrophe interfere with your fitness routine. If you do, you may next find yourself neglecting proper skin care or your fashion accessory selection. And to do so would mean the terrorists win. Or God wins. Or something.

Several days after the tsunami, I was in a teashop in Rangoon when staff announced that Burma should expect another earthquake in about 30 minutes. Crowds emptied onto the streets, scrambling for protection from the inevitable crumbling concrete. Refusing to surrender to the disaster-mania, I headed for the gym.

No earthquake struck. So, while others were cowering from Mother Nature, I was shaving another micro-point off my body-mass-index. The tsunami made heroes of many. And yes, I offer myself up among those gallant role models, demonstrating that courage endures, even in the most horrific of tragedies.

Yes, during the recent holiday/tsunami season, I visited Burma , golden land of a thousand human rights abuses. I have been working with the Burmese political opposition for 5 years now, and felt I had earned the right to trample over the tourist boycott supported by opposition leader, Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Perhaps you need a bit of a Burma primer. Burma is in Asia . (I’m starting with the basics, so you won’t expect to meet for coffee on your holiday in Bermuda ) It’s a distinct and spectacular realm crammed in amongst India , Thailand and China . And it rather resembles a tossed salad of the three cultures. Serve up the laidback Thai Buddhist passivity, chuck in the decisive severity of the Chinese then spit a fat Indian loogie over the top, and you’ve got a good sense of what Burma holds.  

The country is ruled by a posse of sadistic military chaps once chillingly referred to as, "The SLORC" (the State Law and Order Restoration Council). The SLORC ruled onomatopoetically, launching rape and torture campaigns, burning down ethnic villages, splattering the streets with the blood of protesters etc.. One day, after hiring an American PR firm, the SLORC decided they would profit from a name change. The SPDC (State Peace and Development Council) was born.

The generals also renamed the country ‘ Myanmar ’ in an effort to scrap one of the relics of British colonialism. The opposition, however, favours the use of ‘ Burma ’, mostly out of protest. I prefer to call it ‘Bennifer’, but it has failed to catch on in either circle. (I think it successfully implies a union of peoples from a variety of ethnic groups – of which there are dozens living in the states of Bennifer.)

After years of submerging myself in tales of vicious SPDC shenanigans, I expected the streets of Burma to display more outright symptoms of suffering under the harsh rule of a dictatorship. But when you start visiting the world’s political shit-holes, it shocks you how much normal life eclipses the political gloom.  Sure, tyrants tyrannize.  But at the same time, markets bustle, children play, lovers grope, music is sung, noses are picked and food is cooked (often simultaneously).

Actually, there is some outright evidence of iron SPDC rule on display. Anyone lulled into a false sense of democracy need only look up at the crimson billboards advertising government malevolence with slogans like “Those Who Oppose us are Our Enemy”. And SPDC soldiers, recognisable by their petite, green, stripper-esque cowboy hats, are everywhere – guarding temples, poking around in parks, picking their teeth with bayonets.

But the real evidence of oppression is contained in private conversations with the people. I was invited to lunch in a Burmese home in Mandalay . After the cheerful sharing of rotten-tea-leaf salad, I was cuffed with the unexpected question, “What do you know about our government?”

I had to be discreet travelling through Burma . When you work for the guys trying to topple the tyrants, you don’t exactly distribute your CV on arrival. So I replied with a timid, “Um… just what I’ve read in magazines.” What followed was my host’s surprisingly loud-voiced laundry list of whinges about life in junta-controlled Burma . (…jail time for uttering forbidden phrases, universities forced shut, friends arrested and tortured...)

I was taken aback at the openness of the discussion. But before long, the arrival of a grinning, brown-toothed caller smothered the exchange. The uncle introduced the swarthy weirdo as the manager of the “Union Hotel” (described in Lonely Planet as a popular hang-out for government spooks). He scratched at his longyi (sarong), sucked on a toothpick and made kissy noises as my hosts and I steered the conversation toward less controversial topics like mosquitoes and flower arranging. At long last, our new friend came to the end of his toothpick and excused himself. We returned to politics, but at a hushed level.

One of the dangers of encouraging tourism to a dictatorship is that busloads of fat sightseers will return to their native countries with tales of a harmless, golden paradise. “I didn’t see any torture,” they will chirp.

And in the cities, life appears to be pretty good for those who stay in line. Providing you keep your mouth shut and your pay-off purse open, you can get by.

In fact, the capital Rangoon presents itself as an appealing, palm-treed theme park of South East Asian cheeriness. There are three small shopping malls, one ATM (that doesn’t work), gorgeous hotels, cobble-stoned markets – all fringed with delicately groomed greenery and peopled by affable locals. Its population approaches that of Bangkok . But tight autocratic control and stunted economic development have largely allowed it to escape the noodles of traffic overpasses, the murk of exhaust haze and the architectural rot of the Chinese shop-houses that dominate other Asian cities.

The chief source of pollution is actually the Burmese mouth. Burmese men (and some women) like to chew betelnut. Like nicotine, the betelnut concoction pecks at the brain’s pleasure zones, keeping fat-cheeked chewers buzzing in narcotic joy. But betelnut generates more than stimulation – it produces a juicy purple sludge that churns around in the mouth like laundry water. But this brew is not recommended for clothes washing unless you want your whites tinted the shade of a bruised scrotum.

Chewers instead spit the cheek-mud into the streets or onto the lower bodies of passers-by. Occasionally, my legs or feet would feel the tinkle of an oral excrement splash and I would look around to see the shameless, purple-toothed culprit staring back at me with a look that says, “It’s our culture, picky-ass.”

In an episode eerily paralleling the still unfolding Asian tsunami tragedy, the waters of betelnut struck on my overnight bus from Pa-an. My seatmate was a self-assured chewer who looked like he was carrying a toaster-oven in his left cheek. He spent much of the ride barfing his purple saliva into a plastic bag hanging on the seatback in front of him.

Midway through the night, the bag slapped to the ground, releasing a surge of putrid crud. My neighbour continued his slumber as I scrambled to save my worldly belongings from a plum-coloured saliva bath. No Swedish tourists were killed in the incident, but the swell of purple juice left a permanent stain on my new shoulder bag and completely soiled my crossword puzzle.

Travellers who step off the beaten tourist path can discover that Burmese citizens face daily adversity that surpasses even the most horrific of betel-juice accidents. Outside of Pa-an (the drowsy capital of Karen State ), workers toured me through a brick factory. After the shame of realising that even this ancient technology was beyond my powers of scientific comprehension (you can bake mud?), I turned my interests to the conditions of the workers.

Factory workers’ families live on-site, in shelters weaved from rice or wheat or other breakfast cereal ingredients. But instead of allowing themselves to gorge on their whole-grain huts, inhabitants apparently eat… nothing. Or at least that is what they feed their kids. Distended bellies poked out from doors as I explored the compound. The kids were encrusted with dirt and snot and were lucky to be covered with a torn soccer jersey. It was heartbreaking imagining these little guys growing up with nothing, lacking even the most basic nutrition, health care and education.

Sadly, they might be considered lucky compared to the families in the rural ethnic villages. Villagers often face regular visits from ferocious Burmese army units stationed nearby who carry out village burnings, rape, forced labour and other atrocities. Reports of abuses pour out of the ethnic areas faster than a tourists’ first curry dinner can fill a toilet bowl.

After years of hearing such typical human rights abuse stories, I still had no exposure to opinions from those that might support the government. That changed when I made my first SPDC friend.

Ok, Kyaw isn’t exactly SPDC. But his family is very well-connected. We were internet pen-pals before my arrival and I had shunned any urge to turn discussions political, just in case. Good thing, because it turns out his mom is a pal and colleague of Khin Nyunt’s wife. If you follow Burmese politics closely, as I’m sure you do, you may remember Khin Nyunt as the recently ousted PM, recognized as being slightly more flexible than the current pool of stiffy despots.

Anyway, my friend’s career prospects deflated faster than a balloon at a John Kerry rally after Khin Nyunt was dragged off to a hidden location with “health problems” – soon to be re-designated “corruption charges”.  (BTW, Much like Charlie Brown, Burmese use their full name for everything and do not distinguish between proper or surnames. Thus, Lucy would say “You’re a blockhead, Aung San Suu Kyi”, not “Aung”)

Hanging with my SPDC friend allowed me to examine my habit of happily demonising those on an opposing side. I tried to climb inside the mind of the dictatorship apologist. Most of it seems bred of ignorance. And fed with scraps of the selfishness we all possess.

Indeed, Kyaw was very kind and generous with me. He didn’t force me to dig a ditch near his army camp. He didn’t rape me with a rifle-barrel or steal my chickens. I’m sure he has no idea these things occur as often as they do.

If Kyaw’s goal is to work for the interior ministry of his government, is that so different than working in the HR section of the US State Department or flogging sour-cream-and-onion eyeliner with Proctor and Gamble? Most of us are cogs, differing only in the number of gears separating us from the nasty hub. Why should all of his personal dreams die, while the Shell Oil lawyer’s can live? Or, rather, maybe we should all question what we do and how we do it.

I learnt that near the top of a dictatorship’s food chain, can loiter not just monsters or bogey-men, but normal people – folks who are decent but politically disengaged and are given to living their lives somewhat selfishly and ignorantly. Normal people like you and me (or like you, anyway). I will give pause before labeling others as evil or repulsive again. Well… except maybe Republicans or SUV drivers.

So the wretched conditions in Burma continue, mostly hidden from the tourist’s view. I struggle with the tourism boycott issue, but I now lean toward opposing it. What is its goal? To starve the country into a revolution that is never going to happen? That’s neither fair nor effective.

Bringing tourist money to the regular people just might be the only way to ease the suffering. So I did my duty. With each purchase of a DVD I knew I was improving the lives of the regular folk. Regular folk like the poor, honest Chinese mafia boss who tirelessly pirates all of Hollywood ’s newest releases. I knew that each massage I endured brought justice closer to Burma . Each mango shake was a sip towards democracy. Call it philanthropic, call me courageous, use whatever label you must. But I did what I had to do. It’s not that I am a hero. It’s just that I am a better person than you are.

But there is a hero in all of us. You, also, can bring your tourist dollars to beautiful, suffering Burma . Do it for justice. Do it for the people. And do it for the pirated DVD’s, which are less than a dollar apiece.

Please see: Burma Photos