They Call it Myanmar

Yangon, Burma

I have found myself relatively uninspired to write about places where I spent a significant amount of time on duty which, unfortunately, includes Burma. I spent the first 48 hours during our time there staring out at the port from the comfort of the ship. This is unfortunate because Burma is a pretty wonderful place. It is also relatively large and difficult to travel around in the three days that I had available. Semester at Sea hasn’t been there since 2006 so we were the first voyage to return in seven years which was a big deal for all parties involved. The equivalent of a Burmese governor even came and toured the ship. It was all very exciting.

Burma itself is shrouded in mystery. We watched a documentary on the ship called They Call it Myanmar: Lifting the Curtain. While “lifting the curtain” sounds a bit dramatic, it’s actually pretty accurate. It is only recently that Burma “opened” to the outside world. According to that documentary, it is the second most isolated country in the world, behind North Korea I’m sure. And what’s with the two names? According the film, Burma was the name given to the country by the military regime, but Myanmar is more inclusive of the other cultural groups that also live in the country so either name can be considered correct. During a pre-port seminar, we even saw a Coca-Cola statement about how proud they were to come to Myanmar and be there for its people, just like they were after World War II in the US and the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany. We also saw the Burmese version of a Kentucky Fried Chicken, which by the way we have seen in every country we’ve been to. Capitalism at its finest, ladies and gentlemen.

I tried to spend my three days in Burma wisely. The first day, I went to the village of Thanlyn with a couple of other staff members from the ship. We hired a cab driver to take us there and somewhere along the line, he turned into our tour guide and eventually our friend. He took us to the local temple, the street market, and the pagoda in the river, which in and of itself was really cool. By the end of our time together, he was telling us about his children and teaching us words in Burmese. My favorite was when he pointed to my friend Kevin who was sitting beside him in the front seat and said “friend.” This cab driver even helped me wipe pigeon poop off myself after we startled a flock of the mangy birds.  These are just a couple of examples of how incredibly kind and wonderful the Burmese people are.

In addition to visiting the local market and the infamous golden Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, I also had the opportunity to serve as a trip leader for an orphanage visit in the town of Thanlyn. It was a monastic school/orphanage run by local monks. According to the documentary I saw, these monastic schools aren’t quite up to snuff with the traditional public schools, but the well-intentioned priests do the best they can to educate these children. Even though the public schools are supposed to be free, there are all types of fees that prohibit poor families from sending their children to school. Many children do not even complete primary school. Many children drop out and work in order to help support their families. It was interesting to see how school works for children in other countries, though. I look forward to sharing this with my future students somewhere down the line.

There have been a lot of complaints about these so-called service visits and about this idea of poverty tourism. It all started after Vietnam when students could no longer ignore the staggering poverty that exists in the ports we were visiting. In Japan and China, it was easy to avoid. Stick to the big cities and you’ll be fine. In Vietnam, even if you just stayed in Ho Chi Minh City, it was impossible to avoid. People were shocked at the living and working conditions that existed there. I think that some of them were even more shocked to realize that this level of poverty may also exist within 20 miles of their home in the United States, but that they’ve just never interacted with it before. The service visits to orphanages and schools in the poorer areas of these countries were just as surprising for many of our students. Students sign up thinking they’re actually going to perform some type of volunteer work, leave somewhat of a lasting contribution at these schools and orphanages, but thus far the formula for these service visits has remained the same: drive into an impoverished area, interact with the poor children for a couple of hours, return to the comfort of the ship, eat a nutritious meal, take a hot shower, and sleep in a warm bed. I have a thousand ideas on how to make this process better. Actually, my Semester at Sea dream is to create a venue in which students can actually perform some service in these areas while learning a little something in the process. Engaging with people… letting a community defining its own needs… … learning about the larger issues and why they’re important…  I blame NCCC for all these crazy ideas. And for that I thank them.