TABLE
OF CONTENTS
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Embarassment at Paying
Myanmar
I had so many
chances to feel
guilty for being “rich” throughout this voyage. I
also had several chances like that during a trip to Keng Tong, Myanmar.
I was sitting next to a monk of Hinayana
Buddhism from Malaysia,
who
wore a yellow robe, during my flight from MandalayYangon. After
some conversation, he asked me how much I
spent for the trip to Keng Tong. Actually,
I had been afraid to hear this question. I
spent nearly 600 dollars for this three night trip, and
I hesitated to
answer him because I was ashamed to have spent such large amount of
money. I know that 600 dollars is
equivalent to one third of the per capita income of Myanmar. I feel some kind of shame to do that and I
could not explain why I felt guilty. It
is the same feeling that I had in Vietnam.
As I expected, the monk was surprised with my
answer and proudly said that he only spent 300 dollars for his one
month trip
in Myanmar. He had been also surprised when I told him
about
Semester At Sea and the cost for the program.
Andrew, a porter
who
carried tons of water bottles for us during our entire day hike, said
he got
2000 kyat for this job (about $2). A
famous heavy drinker of a village, he brightly said “I climbed up and
down the
mountain, and I got only this much”. I
just smiled awkwardly.
I got a strange
feeling when I gave one dollar bill to an old woman in exchange for a
fancy
folk craft and the woman made a deep bow to me at the wayside in a
small
village. Since I saw the local people
making some handicrafts, I knew it cost more than a half day to make
the article I bought. I was able to buy
the
works that the local people had spent several days to make, only
because I came
from one of the economically rich countries. Someone
in our group said that it is good to spend money
for that kind
of work because it surely becomes the income for the old women rather
than the
income for government, and I agreed. However,
I still felt odd that I have the “power” to buy their work so easily. Maybe I feel shame to show off this power
when I pay for something.
However,
people in Myanmar
seem happy to me, though they look poor and children asked me for money
in a
village near Keng Tong. They were far
from miserable. Though the monk from Malaysia emphasized the unsanitary and
poor
aspect of Myanmar,
I somewhat envied their life in the village. They
surely had something that can not measured by
currency. Actually, I was eager to find
the evidence of
fear caused by the military dictatorship such as Monique Skidmore
mentioned in Darker than Midnight, which describes
her research on laborers who are refugees from Myanmar
at Myanmar-Thailand border. I saw some
such evidence, but I also
felt some peaceful moments in the small village near to Thailand
border. Although I think it is good to
develop economically if the local people hope to do that, but in fact,
I also hope
they can keep their lifestyle.
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