Stranger in a Strange Land

Making Ends Meet

Mr. Ye’s (alias) story is incredible because it is so ordinary. He is a spry, rail-thin man of 59 with large, elfish ears and tattoos covering both his arms and chest. And, as is the case with most Burmese, he has had to work all of the angels in order to survive.

Mr. Ye was born into a wealthy, prominent family in a small city in the middle of the Shan State, which is located in Eastern Myanmar, or Burma as it was then known. After finishing high school, he enrolled in university in Rangoon, the nation’s capital. Almost immediately after he arrived in Rangoon, Mr. Ye met, fell madly in love with, and successfully courted a local nurse. Too preoccupied with his new love to concern himself with his studies, he quit school and returned home with his bride-to-be. Upon returning home, he was not greeted with the congratulations he’d expected, but, rather, the wrath of a father who believed that his son was wasting his talent and ruining his future. His father’s disapproval of the union gradually dissipated and abruptly ended in 1962, the year the military re-seized control of the government and began to nationalize (read: take) land, houses, businesses, and farms throughout the country. With the exception of one of the two houses Mr. Ye’s father owned—the very house in which Mr. Ye, his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren still reside—and a gold ring with a large ruby and seven precious stones that Mr. Ye wears to this day, the family lost everything. When the government seized his house, Mr. Ye’s father went into a state of shock from which he never recovered—he spent the last ten years of his life as an invalid, paralyzed and unable to move or speak.

In his youth, Mr. Ye was a great tennis player; he claimed to be the best player in his city, which had a population of roughly 20,000. He further boasted that, because he was such a good player, he was “allowed to play at the Shan Palace, a great honor.” Today, Mr. Ye’s tennis and ping pong skills give him access to something extremely rare in Myanmar—a nonstop supply of electricity. Because he lives across the street from a General with whom he plays tennis and ping pong, the General provides Mr. Ye’s house with electricity from a backyard generator.

For the past nine years Mr. Ye has worked as a trekking guide. Since he spoke very little English when he began leading trips, the insights he provided his clients into the local flora, fauna, and culture were limited at best. Now he speaks near-fluent English and takes most travelers on a two-day, one-night trip up and down a mountain. The headman of a hill tribe with a population of roughly 700 provides travelers with three meals and a night’s accommodation for under $3. The village headman, who owns a hundred-acre farm with seven horses—one for each of his children—is an old friend of Mr. Ye’s. Indeed, Mr. Ye and I were barely able to sit down after our 5-hour trek up the mountain in 100 degree heat before the headman offered us each a glass of moonshine—the locally produced rice wine. Since it was past noon and, therefore, not technically morning, I decide to join the headman and Mr. Ye for a few drinks. The conspicuous lack of women in the village surprised me until I realized that, with the exception of a few men who work with the oxen tilling the land, all of the farm work and child rearing is done by women—the men tend to sit around, smoke, drink, and wait for the women to return from the fields at night. Once we were good and tipsy, the headman prepared a meal, which consisted of rice, bamboo shoots, soup, and small fish that had been fried and mixed in a chili sauce. While the food was copious and edible, it seemed as if we were always eating leftovers—our lunch morphed into that night’s dinner, which then became breakfast the next morning—and new dishes were added only when another was finished.

Drinking before lunch is a bad idea when the afternoon ahead consists of trekking several hours up to, and then back down from, an even more remote village. Yet the booze didn’t seem to effect Mr. Ye as I struggled to keep up with him. Once we arrived, I was greeted by every child in the village, all of whom could only utter a single phrase in English: “bye bye.” As sweet as it is to be greeted by small Burmese children whose faces are covered with Thanakha paste (which serves as both sunscreen and make-up) yelling “bye bye,” I’m always a little on edge because every place has at least one kid who, upon seeing a foreigner, recoils and begins to cry.

Perhaps it was the second bottle of rice wine that put him over the edge, but it was not until after dinner that Mr. Ye began to talk about the government. He knew that he was risking jail time by talking to me, but he was willing because I could “tell my friends about the realities of life in Burma.” Mr. Ye detests the military regime, and guessed that “99.9 percent of the people hate this crazy government.” He continued, “People cannot survive—everything is too expensive. The price of rice has doubled in the past year and the price of an egg had increased from 1 kyat 30 years ago to 200 kyat today.”

Beyond inflation, his main gripe with the government was the discrepancy between the extravagant life led by the Army elite and the destitute poverty in which the majority of the people live. “When General Than Shwe’s [the leader of the junta] daughter was married a year ago, she was given $50 million worth of precious jewels,” he fumed. Even several of Mr. Ye’s friends, all of whom are senior military officials, admitted off-the-record that the government was an institution run for the benefit of the military, not the benefit of the people. Given the number of perks members of the Army enjoy—sending their children to special schools, 24-hour electricity, access to resorts, wealth—most Burmese do not need the corroboration of a top military official to realize that the Government is more interested in self-perpetuation than the welfare of the population.

Even though Mr. Ye makes a good living as a guide, he can barely make ends meet. But he is one of the lucky ones. Later in the evening, Mr. Ye reflected, “Although we do not pay rent, and my son and I are both trekking guides, and my wife is a private English tutor and my daughter-in-law is a Baptist Minister, we barely have enough money to feed and clothe ourselves and my two grandchildren. We barely have enough money to survive.”

“Making Ends Meet” is the second article in a series by J.R. Siegel about his trip to Myanmar.

© 2008 The Hypermodern.