Moralising

In my life I've raised my voice a few times; it turns out I'm quite capable of venomous words when the situation calls for it. One such time was in Dar es Salaam during when Becky and I had to collect a visa. We queued for hours and reached the end of the line.

“No, sorry, you need to go in the other line,” said the man.

I felt my temperature rising, and not just because there was no air conditioning. My hands screwed into tense fists. “Fine,” we said. “But why didn't anyone tell us anything?”

Another hour or so later and we reach the end of the next line. “We don't take shilling, only dollars.”

“What? Why? Nobody's said anything – that man over there didn't tell us, and he saw our money?”

“Look, just come back tomorrow, it's okay.”

“No, we can’t do that, the visa runs out tomorrow, we have to come back today!”

A short while later we return with dollars, queue up again, and with only one more person in front of us we see the cover get pulled down. “I'm sorry we're closing,” said the lady.

Cue lots of shouting and demanding to see the manager, like good expats do. Culturally, we Brits don't often cede to authority, or to someone saying you can't do something. We always like to argue and say “why”? Usually if such behaviour is necessary, it's good practice to think first and share one's grievance with care and sensitivity (which I didn't necessarily display that day). I'm not particularly proud of it, but we got what we wanted and our visas were extended, even if we suffered the appalled gaze of the locals.

Here in Myanmar displaying anger or any emotional response is looked down upon. One should always take no for answer if given from someone with more authority than you. Don't shout, don't cry, try not to laugh too much, and – above all – do not get angry. It makes for a veneer of very peaceful people, which is comforting and nice. If someone from Myanmar doesn't like an idea you have, they won't say anything and instead will just keep quiet. And smile. That sometimes works for me because, if you listen closely enough, silence can speak for itself.

But sometimes those cultures clash. We had a meeting a few days ago and discussed the need for more mobile phones, because some people are working in areas so remote there are no phones and no way to communicate with the outside world at all, except using newly installed mobile phone masts. They are incommunicado, on the dark side of the moon.

“Let's get them mobile phones,” I suggested.

“No we can't,” said the local staff (all of them, and very politely too) “the Department of Health [from whom you need permission] won't let us.”

“Have you told them how important it is we have them?”

“No,” said one, “we heard from someone else that we can't get phones.”

“Who?”

“Someone from another organisation.”

“So not the department of health?”

“No.”

“So, let's chase them. Push them for it.”

Silence.

Two days later I checked the actions and it was not there. I asked why not, and I was told the same answers about the department of health, so I put it back on the actions to do anyway.

Myanmar has an authoritarian culture, where you do as the big players say. You always follow orders from superiors, and you never question things. I read Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers recently, in which he described the crash of Korean Air flight 801 in 1997. In that case, 228 people died because the first officer and flight engineer of the flight both feared contradicting the pilot and telling him his course of action was wrong. Culturally, in Korea too, you simply don't contradict or challenge a superior.

We obviously didn't witness anything quite so tragic in our small office, but I did recognise the similar, root difficulty – my suggestions must have seemed too challenging for them, and perhaps even rude. Maybe it was. But I thought it a shame there is a fear to approach the department of health when people's safety is at risk in remote villages, just as the first officer did not say anything to the captain, even when more than 200 lives were at risk, including his own. Sometimes silence is a good cultural – and personal – trait, sometimes it’s not. We can learn from each other.

Soon after the meeting, I got a welcome and reassuring email from a colleague with a fitting thought for the day. It made me think about the one time silence is inexcusable. It read:

‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor’ – Desmond Tutu.

Holiday

Becky came to join me in July for a Burmese holiday, and it involved sewing, giving presentations, and getting rashes.

She arrived at the airport on a Friday morning and I was obviously pleased to see her; 5 years of marriage and we’d not had a week apart until I took this trip. We stayed initially at a hotel with wooden floors in the bathroom (note to all hoteliers – please avoid doing this, it attracts eye-melting smells). We visited the usual tourist areas of Yangon, the pagodas, the city centre and the restaurants.

Shwe Dagon Pagoda

Our plan was always to get to the beach though, to do some serious nothing. In our time together, we've only had one holiday, which was our honeymoon in the Peak District in the middle of January (a tad cold). We also had a good trip to Spain, but that was with her parents so technically it doesn't count. And I don't count Zanzibar because: a) we had no money; b) we were with friends; c) we stayed for 2 days before discovering we'd been burgled in our home in Dar es Salaam.

This was going to be a proper holiday. We had 3 choices of beach: Chaung Tha, which is the oldest of the tourist beaches and very popular with local people; Ngwe Saung, which is affordable and relatively easy to access; and Ngapoli, which can only be reached by plane. We chose Ngwe Saung because we could get there by a single coach, and we had found a hotel called Emerald Sea Resort that had a bungalow on the beach for a discount price.

Ngwe Saung Beach Bungalow

We were very fortunate, actually, because no one else was there. Most of the restaurants and the resorts were shut. At the Emerald, the staff ran around solely for us; the rainy season does not attract tourists. A waiter even taught us some origami. As we had hoped, the bungalow had a stunning view of the sea at sunset too, if the clouds were ever kind enough to give us a peek.

Sunset with Bextra

And there was a family of cows on the beach.

After travelling back on a hot coach and discovering new heat rashes, our next stop was the Baha'i Centre of Yangon to attend the Martyrdom of the Bab celebration on 9^th July. We had visited the Baha'i Centre the week before and had been taken aback by their kindness and hospitality. They arranged for us a visit to a village about 2 hours west of Yangon that now claims a population of Baha'is numbering many thousands, more than 90% of the total population. We jumped in a small car with our guide, pelted along the new roads into the depths of the Delta and arrived at Daidanaw by midday. We were invited into the village's large meeting hall, which was built in a compound that also housed the village primary school and the shrine of Siyyid Mustafa Roumi, whose remains are now buried at the same spot he was murdered in 1942. Next door to the centre was a home for the village elderly.

After a short meal prepared especially for us, we saw a large crowd gathering in the hall and we were invited to meet them and join them in a Q&A session. The Daidanaw Baha'is don't get the chance to meet outsiders often – not only has their country been isolated from the world for so long, but as villagers with little economic resources, they are isolated themselves. Even with forty people there just for us, they apologized sincerely that there were not more.

“It is the harvest season,” said one, “everyone is working.”

Daidanaw Baha'is

It was nice to learn that some of the community there had visited Haifa, Israel in 2011, as part of the first wave of Burmese Baha'is to visit the Holy Land. They had saved money for many years or else had been supported by their local community to go. And by some stroke of luck, Becky and I had been on the very same pilgrimage that year and had already met them, not knowing we would meet them again at their homes 2 years later.

The story of the Baha'i faith in Daidanaw is in parts illuminating and tragic – several Baha'is were killed there in 1945 – including Mustafa Roumi – and hundreds of properties burned to the ground and looted by a large mob, because the village was seen as being influenced by foreigners. In 2008, it was also hit by Cyclone Nargis. The village today remains resolute and unique in both Myanmar and the world; it's not every day you can walk down a street in which almost everyone – the shopkeeper, the taxi driver, the gardener – is a Baha'i.

After thanking the Baha'is both in Daidanaw and in Yangon for their time and their sacrifices, we could see the end of the holiday rear its head, and feel the approaching panic of returning to work. The final few days are a blur – Becky managed to pull down a mosquito net by mistake and we spent hours looking for a sewing kit to fix it. I also fell sick the day before Becky left, so that the last time she saw me at the airport I was hunched-over and pale.

And now that we're both back at work – and healthy – there are just over 30 Burmese days to go…