Years ago I spent a couple of 2-week periods in Burma (now Myanmar). Kipling said, “This is Burma, and it will be quite unlike any land you know about.” Though he was there only three days, Kipling got it right. The people I encountered there – Buddhists, Christians, Muslims – were sweet, deferring, and modest.
I remember our train trip from Mandalay (if Kipling had spent a little more time in Burma, he would have known there were no “flying fishes” in Mandalay) down to Yangon (formerly Rangoon). We traveled via the best train we could book. It was an ancient specimen, its shock absorbers long since absent. The train rocked side to side constantly, making it impossible to sleep. The journey, following the Irrawaddy River down to Yangon, was stated to take fifteen hours, but it was more like twenty. So, for all that time we rolled beside the river, the rice paddies, the palms, the green fields tilled by farmers, their plows pulled by water buffalo. The train stopped perhaps ten times at little towns, and each time the Burmese women with streaks of white make-up (called thanaka) on their cheeks came out to the train cars to sell the food they had prepared. We tried to guess which offering might be safe to eat.
Then, a little while out of each stop, the mouse came out, running, mouse speed, up and down the aisle, scrambling to get the crumbs of our meager meals. No one in the car made a move against the mouse. He would have been an easy target for a well-placed foot. But killing the mouse just didn’t feel right.
We finally arrived, exhausted, at the train station in Yangon. We all swore we’d never take that train again. Curious how the train is my best memory of Myanmar.
And then, the next evening, back down to the bank of the Irrawaddy for a meal at the Junior Duck. If you’re ever in Yangon, don’t miss the Junior Duck.
Yes, Kipling got it right – “unlike any land you know about.”
All of which explains my surprise and consternation over the Myanmar treatment of the Rohingya Muslims. The Burmese army made war against these humble people, genocide we might call it. Now nearly a million Rohingyas are in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Neither Myanmar or Bangladesh has adequate testing for Covid19. How many Rohingyas will die? We won’t know how many or why.
Perhaps the Myanmar government has a reason for their action. I don’t know their reason. Why in this gentle land, a land who lets a mouse live, were the Rohingyas set upon?
