Day 13, Yangon: REST

I did not realise how exhausted I must have been in the past week, until a knock on my door woke me up. It was housekeeping, asking if I wanted the room cleaned. I got up, irritated that they were disturbing my much-needed rest. Then I looked at my phone (which was useless as a communication device because I was not getting any roaming service here, but was very useful to tell time) and saw that it was half past one in the afternoon!

I sent the housekeeping staff away, saying I preferred to rest and for them to skip the cleaning. Then I freshened up… and went back to bed! Hah!

Watched “Patch Adams” on HBO. I almost fell off the bed when he started to read the first lines of Neruda’s sonnet to this girl, as they were being drowned in a room full of multi-colored balloons. I liked the movie. Maybe too full of idealism and passion for the cynics in all of us, but still, I liked it. And he continues the reading the sonnet in bed on the first morning they wake up together… and finishes reading it to her as she lies in a closed casket, barely above ground. If you wanna read the sonnet again… see Day 2 of this blog!

Anyway, I cried. Especially at the oddest moments of the movie. I probably needed it. Just to cleanse tearducts and relieve the soul. Felt good.

Off to dinner in a bit, with a mother of two and a mother-to-be. Women-talk.

Day 12, Yangon: Workshop ends.

Workshop ended today. With sparks and fire! Yup! Just as we were finishing the last hour of the workshop, the electric wires on the far end of the workshop venue let off a spark and then burst into fire!

We had been conducting this week-long workshop at the new building of the Yangon YMCA and construction is still going on in some parts of the building. I think we were the first to use the training hall. Electricity had been on and off the whole week. And today there was rain pouring for most of the morning. It was slowed down to a drizzle in the mid-afternoon. We were almost there, with me egging one of my local co-facilitators to hasten the brainstorm and organize in matrix form the technical support needs of program partners. Then the sparks, fire, smoke! Everyone seemed dumbfounded and frozen of a few seconds. Then some participants reacted in various ways… some running to put off electrical switches, some just running to the door. I look around and there is not one fire extinguisher in sight!

Anyway, after crawling fast in the electric line’s wire casing, the fire fizzles out on its own and leaves a trail of burnt paint and the smell of burnt wire. No one calls firemen, and no one from the building seems awfully worried!

We asked the participants to evacuate the hall and I just went straight to a closing activity at the building’s ground floor lobby. I tried to lighten the mood by saying that I hoped the fire was a good sign… that everyone was fired up with energy to begin the projects in the different sites! Eeoowwww, hard try! Everyone laughed and we ended in good spirits, despite.

Looking forward to some rest this weekend.

Day 11, Yangon: more on Windows

Peeling yellow paint and faded
cement finish crumbling
between window frames
revealing red orange bricks
underneath. It is mid-afternoon
and all the upper windows
remain closed, as they have
been in the past few mid-
afternoons. They usually get
opened at day’s end when
the sun starts to set and the
open windows cast shadows on
the outer walls.

Birds chirp. Pigeons and ravens
perched on rooftop edges, flying
past my window; fluttering from one
ledge to another, balancing on
electric wires.

Cumulus, cirrus clouds all
around. Barely there, this blueness
of Myanmar skies. Wind blowing in a
dense breeze filled with
remembrances of last night’s
drizzling rain.

Day 10, Yangon: Work pics!

Here I am at work…

… and the participants at work…

… and here I am at day’s end…

Day 9, Yangon: Uggghh!!!

Period pains. Struggling through heat, unpleasant smells, broken English in alien accents, cramping pain from lower back to the very end of my toes. Can’t have all good days. Of course I did not bring medicine. And of course I cannot lie down in bed and sleep half of the pain away.

As the workshop breaks off for lunch, I hop onto one of the rickety taxicabs and head off for the tiny grocery shop near my hotel. Asking for ibuprofen, I am handed a pain relief ointment. I shake my head and tell them its a capsule or tablet I was looking for. So I am handed some boxfuls of antibiotics. Then came the antacids, cold relief tablets, vitamin E capsules… all wrong. In the end, I settled for tylenol. Paracetamol should work too. At least if my cramps don’t go away, some secret headache might.

Day 8, Yangon: Windows

Day 7, Yangon: Shwedagon Paya

“The great golden dome rises 98m above its base. According to legends, this stupa – of the solid zedi (stupa; bell shaped monument) type – is 2500 years old, but archaelogists suggest the original stupa was built by the Mon, sometime between the 6th and 10th centuries. In common with many other zedi in earthquake-prone Myanmar, it has been rebuilt many times and its current form dates back only to 1769.

Visible from almost anywhere in the city, Shwedagon is located to the north of central Yangon, between People’s Park and Kandawgi Lake.” – Lonely Planet: Myanmar

“You were born in on a Monday, ruled by the Moon, and the sign of the Tiger.” He was a 27 year old Buddhist monk in dark red orange robe. As I sat on the floor tiles (still warm from the Myanmar all-day sun) staring up at the stupa, he probably saw me a good prey to practice his English skills on. He explained that around the stupa were planetary posts, which is based on the day of the week you were born. Born on a Monday, 39 years ago, he explained that I had to offer 39 water offerings. This meant scooping water and pouring ten cupfuls on the tiger at the base of the post, another ten on the first buddha’s head, ten on the 2nd buddha, and the last nine on the marker for this planetary station of the Moon.

Now I know why I am such a lunar addict… or should I say, a lunatic? Hahaha.

Day 6, Yangon: Day off!

Saturday here, and had a nice day out in Yangon with Choo and her two kids, Nikolas and Shamyi. We went to a lacquerware shop and then had lunch at a place called J’s Irawaddy Dream — a wood and glass structure beautifully set in a small but lush garden.

After lunch, we went to a glass-blowing factory being run by a local family.

It was nice driving about town and chatting with Choo, exchanging small talk with the kids… or not-so-small talk — with Nik (11 years old) insisting that Yangon was soon going to “eat up” the whole country. He meant the city was growing bigger, and in his mind, the city can grow big enough to “eat up” the rest of the country’s space. I also met Migo, a gorgeous golden retriever who is the sweetest thing and had me swooning the second I saw her running up to me as I got off Choo’s car. We didn’t have enough time to cuddle up more, but I did get to see Nik and Migo’s dance, with the Migo prancing on his hind legs, paws on Nik’s shoulders. And Shamyi throwing herself unto Migo and then playfully jostling around until they found themselves all comfy lying on the floor… their blond hairs merging and their faces all content.

Continued on with the afternoon joining Choo as she brought Shamyi to gymnastics class, checked out a local furniture shop, and brought Nik to play with his black American friend at this house with a sign that said “diplomatic residence.” Without the kids, we found ourselves shopping for Burmese sandals. Too soon, it was time to pick up Shamyi again. Mom and daughter then dropped me off at local spa/massage place, where I had: a hair wash, upper body massage and foot massage. I fell asleep for what seemed like most of the massage time. Boy, did I need that massage!

Looking forward to a night out in town with Choo. Hope you are all having a nice weekend!

Day 5, Yangon

T.G.I.F. Almost 8pm here and I am so ready to drop all the work and treat myself to a good meal! I feel so tired and my nape is an aching reminder of the stress this week has been. Same deal today — work with the local project team and then shifting to coordination work (long distance) for the forthcoming workshop in Cambodia.

We were able to finalize the workshop session plans for next week. Five full days of working with potential partner organizations here in Myanmar. It will be intense for me, full days of either coaching the local facilitators or doing the actual inputs (especially the ones on program interventions for groups deemed “vulnerable” to HIV/AIDS). My head will be spinning by day’s end, as it usually does after a full day’s hum of a foreign language and the struggle to understand English spoken with some other accent! All these simultaneously ringing around! Plus keeping sharp about how the facilitators are handling the sessions, what the participants are saying (and not saying), and jumping in when the situation calls for it. How fun is that?

But seriously, it has been interesting. Just being able to have a preview in the past days of the situation of both the vulnerable segments of the population and how the different players are responding to the situation. Already, questions that have played themselves over and over in my work trips in the region have become obvious here too. Of how so-called “development” agencies have come in with their models of intervention, some claiming to strengthen communities and foster participation (while some not even pretending to examine their ways of working) — but in the process changing the dynamics of communities by creating new dependencies and ignoring the traditional modes of social support. So even as I come in with these “participatory planning processes” and “intervention frameworks,” I don’t really know if I am doing harm or good in the long term!

Sigh. I think I need a drink.

Day 4, Yangon

11:22p.m., Yangon time. I am dead tired.

It was a full day of intense work with our Myanmar program team — drawing up an HIV/AIDS intervention framework for next week’s project design workshop and meeting with the team to check on the progress of finalizing the detailed workshop session plans.

At 6:00p.m., I was off to an internet cafe and shifted to working on the Avian Flu workshop preparations for Cambodia! It meant clawing through numerous email correspondences and working out all the logistical needs so that all the coordination with ministry of agriculture/FAO/WHO, etc. and the workshop suppliers (hotel, language interpreters, etc.) can continue to roll out in our hands (Bless Raul and myself as we team up on this in the coming weeks!). Working through the long list of logistical and coordination tasks, I am reminded of all the events and production management we had done in Manila ages ago!

Now my brain feels about ready to burst!

And to think that there are wonderful stories to tell…
… of Maha, a Kachin goddess
… of Sarah, an Indian princess
Beautiful women with rich stories and clinking laughters. Each with their own version of women’s crosses, passions, hopes. Each in their odd way reflecting my own, in the way that disparity, distance and the differences of cultures unite those who know how to celebrate.