The Shield Bearers

"I talked with a few of the actual frontline shield bearer kids. They said it’s OK to be scared. What you have to do is you keep coming back, try to get used to it, build up resistance to all these noises and feelings and things happening around you. They didn’t actually feel fear. What they felt was pure rage." -- Coco

Never have I heard anyone talk in such a vivid and open way as Coco did about his experiences at ground-level in Yangon since the military coup. As much as we read, as many videos as we watch, all the photos that we see, and in post after post-- none of it has ever come alive more than when I spoke with Coco about his own experience here.

This quote here gives some small indication of what I mean... during this part of the interview, after he describes being so scared by the sound of live ammunition that, as he memorably recalled, "I almost pissed my pants," he went back to the frontline kids, the shield-holders. Although just 15 or 16 years or so in age, they were by then veterans of the conflict. And although Coco, a licensed doctor basically double their age was frozen in fear, they begin to talk to him compassionately, as a tutor, encouraging them by trying to paint normalcy on a situation so terribly horrific.

And, they confessed they no longer felt fear when in those moments... only pure rage.