Myanmar Journal: Fire!
The following thread is being written by a vipassana meditator from the tradition of S.N. Goenka who is currently in Myanmar, who has played a pivotal role in the organization’s mission. For his safety, personal details have been obscured, but he has made it his desire that his observations be read by meditators everywhere.
6 am morning; These days an especially peaceful time of day. Sleep is difficult to come by during the night even with the security perimeter we have set up from 8pm to 4am. People worry that police will come and arrest citizens during the night or 5,000 kyat people will come in and cause trouble. So at 6 in the morning the majority of people are now sleeping. Suddenly an electrical fire erupts in front of our apartment. This same line was smoking yesterday but because the electrical department is on strike no one was answering the phone when people called to report it. But this morning it breaks out in flames and I am tongue tied and cannot remember the Burmese word for ‘fire’! So, I just start shouting ‘fire’ in English but no one is waking up. As you probably have heard the banging of pots and pans is nowadays used for a variety of reasons most importantly to announce that police or 5,000 kyat people have entered to Quarter. So, with no one responding to my calls, I just started banging and everyone woke up while our security people (who I call ‘Minute Men’) start running out and everyone is clearly frightened.
Fortunately most people on our street quickly saw it was a fire but on the neighboring street they of course were unaware of the nature of the alarm but certainly heard me banging away at the pot. Things quickly settled down but sure many were shaking their heads thinking ‘oh….just the crazy foreigner’. Sorry, sorry, sorry! I’ll serve to you tea………
Someone did go over to the electric department to alert them of the fire. At night they are in the office because they stand guard to make sure that the police or 5,000 kyat people don’t try to cut the electrical service (which the police attempted to do a couple of weeks ago). In more normal times 4 or 5 mechanics would respond to such a call but today we had to be satisfied with only one responder along with a trishaw driver carrying the extension ladder. Fortunately, the fire burned itself out and was limited to the wires only. Good thing given that the fire department is also on strike! Such is life here these days.
I’m sure years from now the only thing I’ll be remembered for is being the crazy foreigner who woke everyone up from a deep sleep, scaring the heck out of them on an otherwise peaceful Friday morning all because he forgot the Myanmar word for ‘fire’.