Episode #68: You Can't Go Home Again
The ending line of Jessica Mudditt’s Our Home In Myanmar puts a startling cap on her account of her life in Yangon in the 2010s. She writes, “Myanmar’s sudden returned to a dictatorship means that I have inadvertently written a history book.”
This is the subject of the current episode, which charts Jessica’s hard-won attempts to live in Myanmar during the last decade. We explore insights that she gained during the country’s period of dramatic social and political change following the 2015 election, when Myanmar’s future seemed so bright, and how they can help us make sense of these very dark days of 2021.
Jessica was primarily motivated to come to Myanmar to witness and report on the 2015 election, arriving a full three years in advance in order to be better positioned to understand that historic event. “It would have been an incredible moment where everything that everyone was working for,” she said, “that would culminate in Myanmar ending a 50-year dictatorship and becoming a democracy.”
However, it was all easier said than done, as Jessica recounts in detail in her book. She had to find a way to acquire a visa, find a steady job, gain adequate income in what was becoming a very expensive city, and secure an apartment during a real estate boom—each of which presented its own unique challenge. But ultimately she preserved, and somehow, between reporting on the human hair trade and snake meat recipes, she did manage to stick around for the monumental election. Between 2012 and 2016, she wrote for a number of news services, including The Myanmar Times, The Global New Light of Myanmar, Irrawaddy, and the UN's news service, in addition to working a stint at the British Embassy.
Her description of the aftermath of the 2015 election sounds surreal to anyone following along in 2021. She writes, “Just as I began wondering how the ruling party would react to the walloping they were getting, a story came in with a quote from the army’s commander-in-chief, Min Aung Hlaing. ‘Just as the winner accepts the result, so should the loser,’ he’d told reporters after casting his vote in Nay Pyi Taw. It was a strong sign that the election results would be honoured this time around. We cracked open a bottle of Mandalay Rum just after nine o’clock. Ko Aye Min Soe held up his glass and said, ‘To the peacock!’ ‘To the peacock!’ we shouted, laughing and hugging.”
Of course, everyone knows what happened 2021. Jessica did not see it coming, thinking when she heard the news that it must be a “hoax” or a “terrible joke.” Sadly, it was all too real, and she has been left applying what she learned during her time in Myanmar to better understand how things are currently playing out. Early on in May, she argued in an article for GQ why Myanmar needs international support, and recently interviewed Dr. Sasa about Australian support for his National Unity Government.
Jessica has struggled to understand the extremes of humanity that are found in Myanmar. “I've never understood how you can have these two types of people in one geographic area,” she says. “You have these uncouth brutes who have no humanity. And then you have some of the most gentle people in the world like, Burmese people that don't carry knives or guns. They don't curse, they don't raise their voices. They there is a beautiful gentleness to Burmese people. They are not materialistic or greedy.”
She attributes part of this nature to the country’s Buddhist influence, but admits being shaken as her stay in the country coincided with a growing monastic nationalism and a rising anti-Muslim sentiment. “I think the people are so much better than that. They are such beautiful, kind hearted, generous people in so many ways. And that this blind spot with the Islamophobia is not doing them justice,” she says. As her then-husband was from Bangladesh, this prejudice affected her more than most other Western expats, as they had to confront many forms of overt as well as subtle discrimination. One of the more painful encounters involved finally securing the home of their dreams, only to be tested by the would-be landlords by being served pork snacks before the contract signing; since Muslims are not allowed to eat pork, if they had refused the snacks, that would have signaled their religion.
Of all the ongoing tragedies now facing Myanmar, the one that particularly grabs at Jessica’s heart, is the wholesale destruction of the journalism field. Her time in the country coincided with young journalists taking their first, hesitant steps amid the growing freedom to report the news truthfully, after the country’s long history of press repression. She bore witness to the tentative growth in real time of an entire field, as state censorship gradually lifted, and its bogeyman—the state censor himself, referred to as “The Man in the Clouds” by her colleagues—resigned. It was exciting to see young Burmese reporters and photographers exploring what was becoming possible… and yet now this has all been crushed, with so many journalists on the run, imprisoned, or killed. “Journalism is a crime in the military,” she remarks sadly, “even though we know that journalism is not a crime! It's absolutely a blackout there.” With resistance groups now defending their communities against the military’s aggression, and while the third wave of COVID rages, getting the real story out has never been so vital, and yet also never been so challenging.
Still, Jessica reflects on the situation with optimism. “I believe that the people will get there in the end, because they are so determined… The alternative is to live a life of total darkness. And I've heard a number of protesters say this is the last fight… I'm really hoping that this is turned around sooner rather than later because I think Min Aung Hlaing’s days are numbered, to be honest… And people say, ‘Let's clear the decks.’ I've heard people say, ‘Let's clear the decks of the NLD as well. Let's start again, build from the bottom, and a society that's inclusive, and we can avoid some of the mistakes of the past.’”