(184) Burmese Days: Details

At a temple during a late night walk through Laputta with friends Binay and Sai "Baba"

On my last day in Laputta, most of the office stopped what they were doing and attended the funeral of a project officer called Mya Zaw Oo; he was a thirty-nine year old father and a devoted husband. He had worked with Merlin for less than 4 weeks.

Almost every day in the office I had heard a cart being pulled along the road, with a bell ringing and a man speaking words I could not understand through a speaker. When I heard it that day my colleague U Zaw explained to me he was reading out the details of the recently departed, in this case for Mya Zaw Oo.

Thirty-nine years old. Father. Worked for Merlin. Died on Sunday morning at 2:20 in the Pathein hospital. Heart attack. Funeral today at 11:00.

Later on that day I joined a procession through the streets of Laputta. There were hundreds of people joining a crowd that twisted through the streets; colleagues, neighbours, friends, well-wishers. Some people were walking beneath umbrellas, some were on motorbikes, some (like me) were on trucks. The man next to me explained how this was a normal response – people in Laputta give a huge amount of respect and time to the departed and their families, at least during the first few days.

The entire procession walked out of town to visit the home of Mya Zaw Oo's wife, which for me was my second time in three days. We all met with his wife, who bravely held back the tears and hugged her young baby daughter. The family even gave each visitor a bottle of water and some shampoo. I wasn't clear on the reason for the shampoo, but I imagine it was something to do with cleansing oneself after the funeral. As we left the house to follow the body, which was encased in a wooden box within a rich glass case, I stood not far from his wife who looked up at her husband and fell into quiet tears. His body had rested outside their home for two nights and now it was finally ready to move on to its end point.

The funeral struck me as being not unlike a church service, there being a religious focal point talking and leading the service, with the occasional mass reply of religious words in perfect familiar union. It lasted only forty-five minutes and then Mya Zaw Oo made his last trip, just a few minutes away, to be cremated.

We went back to the office, back to work. There was little expression of emotion anymore, and the mourning time was over. Four days ago he had been in the same office, introducing himself to the team at his first meeting. He had complained that day to a colleague of chest pains, but he had dismissed them. The day after that he was vomiting and it was only just before 2 on Sunday morning that he reached the hospital, too late to fend off what should not have been inevitable for a thirty-nine year old man.

I returned to Yangon and tidied up my things. The end of my 6 months had come to abrupt halt and I quietly thanked the team and made my last few walks into town, introducing some new staff to a few of my favoured coffee shops and reasonably clean restaurants, the sort of things I found necessary to stay sane for an extended period away from the UK.

And was it worth it? I had a lucky opportunity to be away in a very exciting country and to explore a part of the world I hadn't visited before. I learnt a good deal of things and I have met some fine individuals. But I had two other responses to the whole trip I hadn't expected: I experienced neither a feeling of success, nor of accomplishment, nor of having added value; and I realised the best experiences were the brief times I had with my family and friends. On the former issue, I am reliably informed this is a normal response in humanitarian work. There is generally no reward and no glamour attached to sitting in an office, speaking in acronyms, and making sure you remembered your first aid kit for the car. And on the latter issue; well, I think I should have known that before.

So I returned home, grateful to be able to do just that.