A Ride Through Grace
We are sharing a series of journal entries that the author, JH, contributed following an invitation from Insight Myanmar for publication on our website. She includes the following message: The following entries from my journal along the Burma-Thai border were first shared more than 18 years ago. On the advice of a respected teacher, they were distributed only on paper, so as to protect involved parties while raising awareness. Later, when the Internet became available, many of us still hoped in our hearts that these descriptions would soon become obsolete. Finally, I offer these words here in realizing that certain details remain far too accurate. May they bring benefit. Please forgive my youthful ignorance and arrogance. Errors are my own.
“ Through the alley by one of three hundred temples, past mutts and beggars, rich gem salesmen, hawkers of wares, monks, nuns, and techno teens with tight jeans, and across a narrow cement bridge we ride, down the little hill to her hut with jiggling rulers in wire handlebar baskets.”
Burma Border Journals #13
That afternoon I stand with hand on the door latch to my room, about to go visit a colleague across the way, when I hear a voice. Immediately, I recognize the friendly yet shy sound of a longtime medic. He is calling my name. Opening the door and emerging, I find him in motion. “Would I like to join him for a bicycle ride in the countryside?” Yes, without a doubt, but I would need a bike. Not a second passes before the public health worker I intended to visit spontaneously meanders up the walk with a bike. “Look, I just got a bike. Want to give it a try?” I mention the proposed outing and need; she happily forces her new bike on me without hesitation. I have learned here not to refuse. That’s how things are here; you just think it and it appears.
We pedal ten minutes out of town eventually up a winding dirt path into a painting of the Thai landscape. When we come to the top of a small rise; my friend points at the bike asking, “Does that one have brakes?” His tone of genuine curiosity and concern for my safety implies these are not part of the standard package. Houses recede in the distance; we pass only the occasional Nat shrine, a tiny house containing offerings for the spirits, that they might be happy here and not roam elsewhere causing a ruckus. The land swells and pitches ever so slightly, like the gentlest surf. Thick swaths countless shades of green, all cultivated, texture tells the crop. Bushes and berry vines congregate in depressions where the soil moistens and the track muddies. Blue, black, yellow, and red birds, the size of my palm to that of a jay, sing there. Palms stand like sentinels, their swaying fronds happily waving us onward. Infrequently, the sun illuminates the bent form of a figure tending his field, face beneath pointed and wide-brimmed hat. For the time being, no other roads or structures are visible, nor do we search the horizon for them. Our breathing grows easier, expands as if to fill each plot, but meeting only spaciousness merges with boundless teeming life, in quietude. Poverty and Heaven.
We come upon a three walled barn-like building. Only the roof of new thatch gives away its recent construction. Inside, there are no partitions. In the far quarter, on a well-swept floor, five or six people squat around burlap bags, plastic pails, and metal pans, chatting gaily. They pluck leaves and prepare herbs in multiply hued aromatic piles, cut vegetables in preparation for a feast. A row of colored drawings on paper decorates each wall at the height of small person. This is a new refugee school. Registration has gone smoothly, finishing just yesterday. They accepted a few more students than was anticipated, but the families were lined up, yearning. Please, take my daughter, take my son! Two of the men come up to greet the medic. They talk seriously for a few minutes and make a list on a scrap of ruled notebook paper. Then we are off.
The school will open tomorrow morning. The building is ready. There will be feasting and celebration. The school supplies have not yet arrived. That is the object of our quest this evening before the sun goes down. There has been a last-minute donation toward that end. We cycle into town, at no small risk to my companion. We rumble past feudal fiefdoms of factory holders and farm landlords, open-air huts and shared toilet seats behind rigged screens of plant material. Chickens cluck and shuffle around on the uneven dirt. Refuse is deposited near some shrubs; the dust holds it down as if it has been and will be in that spot a long time. The workers have a small break at five o’clock each evening. They stream out from their respective tasks and feel the light on their skin. They converse around the make-shift cantina, in tones conserving of energy. They will toil well beyond my bedtime. The medic gives me a Coke. I politely decline. So, he opens it for himself and tries again. I accept the water, realizing he means to keep trying. It comes of course with one of the many shaped straws they slurp through in this land. Later it spills from my bike; I am not so practiced at single gear mountain-biking through most beautifully inhabited ghettos with bottle in hand. Embarrassed at my fumble, I consider what it took to have that water here; the gift was no small commodity.
At the mini market, the medic is like a giddy child, picking out just the right pencils. He chooses the kind made of plastic with graphite pellets that cycle through when dulled. We are thinking of the kids the next day, how happy it feels to give this gift, how happy that they will receive and benefit. Then we find blank booklets. This one is too thin. This one too many pages. This one is just right. We sort through the rulers too, decorated with pink and green and blue, cartoon characters, loopy-looking numbers. Finally we take our selections to the front counter, and a woman in uniform smiles, taking the samples with which we present her to find them in bulk somewhere in the back.
The medic rummages in his bag for another scrap and then carefully itemizes our expenditures, for the school and for the donor. We attempt to call the wife of the man at the school on the cell phone, for she has a truck nearby and it has been pre-arranged that she will ferry the load. The number as written contains one illegible digit, and despite trying every possible iteration, we cannot reach her. We leave the heaviest of items at the counter and head out to find her at home before the store closes. Through the alley by one of three hundred temples, past mutts and beggars, rich gem salesmen, hawkers of wares, monks, nuns, and techno teens with tight jeans, and across a narrow cement bridge we ride, down the little hill to her hut with jiggling rulers in wire handlebar baskets. I fiddle with the bike lock in somewhat of a hurry, feeling that we are racing both with the setting sun and with the menacing clouds that seem ready to dump their contents upon us at any moment. He notices my rush and immediately apologizes for including me in the assignment. “No, no,” I say with an instant gush of gratitude, “I love this and your company.” “I want to share with you the regular life,” he adds. “Yes, I know I sometime get very busy, but please we relax now, always. We get enough. We get what we need.”
May this writing heighten awareness about the plight and great beauty of the people from all parts once called Burma. May it bring benefit to all who are described herein and to all who read it. May you be truly happy.