Arrival!

So, after 6 months in the making, here I am in Yangon working with the international medical relief agency Merlin. My vain intention is to write a few notes along the way, partly because I know I won’t email people about stuff I’m up to and partly because I want to bore you all.

The long story short is I began as a ‘Field Management Development Trainee’ in Merlin’s London office, training to become a Merlin project manager within a year. Merlin runs a number of health programs in some of the poorest and most unstable locations across the globe. In Myanmar, Merlin has been running projects since 2005 following the December 2004 tsunami and has been instrumental in supporting the recovery from the 2008 Cyclone Nargis, which killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced many thousands more.

To this end, I’ve spent, so far, half a year being trained up to my ears in finance, human resources, health, media, security, logistics, resilience, and more. At this stage I can say I’ve been kidnapped, had a gun to my head, broken into computers, shouted “I don’t like your face” to a good friend of mine, been made to answer difficult questions on camera, watched colleagues pretend to cry because I haven’t helped a pretend baby, been electrocuted, learnt how to use the earth’s atmosphere to bounce high frequency radio signals at long distance, and survived in one of the most expensive cities in the world on minimum wage.

I’m not convinced the next 6 months will top that. But I will try to do everything I can to make it worthwhile and successful. I’m hoping to avoid any more electrocutions, but I can expect (to name a few things) diarrhoea, heatstroke, snakes, mosquitos, lizards, cockroaches, awkward “lost-in-translation” moments, loneliness, sightseeing locations, water fights, sunshine, karaoke, and plenty of awkward English-person moments.

After, what, 7 days here, I’ve not faced very much of that sadly. I’ve seen two lizards, which isn’t much to speak of. I even had a pleasant flight here.

Also the Merlin team here in Yangon are giving me a wide-berth for settling in. They’ve treated me to drinks beside lakes and cheap lunches in the shaded back-streets. Yesterday I bought myself a massage for about £3 and a cool watermelon juice next door. I’ve done all and everything that’s indoors because, not surprisingly, it’s hot here. And it’s getting hotter. On Saturday, my temporary flat-mate, Khangelani, and I visited the Shwedagon Temple, a towering golden peak above the city. The very hairs of the Buddha are supposed to be inside the temple, collected from Burmese traders who visited the Buddha two and a half thousand years ago and plucked from the head of the Buddha Himself. I would have enjoyed the beautiful architecture except that my feet were burning from the Sun-heated tiles so instead I spent the whole trip hopping around from one shaded area to the next. We all did, it wasn’t just my pitiful feet, so there is a design flaw in there somewhere. I’m now told to visit after the sun goes down (2 days too late, thank you).

Next up for me is getting to know the local community as much as possible and exploring a bit further beyond the street I live and work on. Updates to follow…