စိတ်ထဲရှိသမျှ

“We had livestock, a chicken farm,” she said. “We sold them one by one to stave off hunger. Now, we’re down to three chickens, two ducks, and this trishaw, which we’re trying to sell just to buy a bag of rice for the month.” The sun blazed like an angry god that day, sweating me like a pig. We walked across the parched paddy fields, now littered with waste. We were heading towards a cluster of huts. I found a woman there in her early thirties sitting on the doorstep, having her lunch. A few chickens and ducks were roaming near a battered trishaw in her

ခရစ္စမတ်ပိတ်ရက်မှာအိမ်မပြန်ဖြစ်တော့ဘဲ မြေက်ဦးကိုသွားမဲ့အကြောင်းပြောတော့ အခန်းဖော်ညီညီက လေးမြို့ချောင်းနဲ့ မဟာထီးဘုရားကို ရောက်အောင်သွားဖို့ တိုက်တွန်းတယ်။ မြောက်ဦးကိုရောက်ပြီး သုံးရက်အကြာမှာ လေးမြို့ချောင်းခရီးစဉ်ကို ကျနော်စတင်ပါတော့တယ်။ ကံကောင်းချင်တော့ ကျနော်တည်းခိုတဲ့ဟိုတယ်မှ အလုပ်နေတဲ့ receptionist ညီမလေးက သူ့ဦးလေးအသိလှေရှိကြောင်းနဲ့၊ ယုံကြည့်ရတဲ့အကြောင်း ပြောပြလာတော့ သူ့အဆက်အသွယ်နဲ့ပဲသွားဖို့ ကျနော်ဆုံးဖြတ်လိုက်တော့တယ်။ နောက်နေ့မနက် ၆နာရီ မထိုးခင်လောက်မှာ Tuk Tuk ဆရာအကိုတစ်ယောက် ကျနော်ကိုလာခေါ်တယ်။ မြောက်ဦးမြို့မစျေးအနားမှာရှိတဲ့ လှေဆိပ်ကနေ လှေစီးရမှာလို့ ကျနော်ထင်နေခဲ့တာ။ မဟုတ်ဘူးဆိုတာ

I am a great believer in equality and treating people with dignity regardless of their racial, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds. I have always been proud to say that I was brought up to treat people around me this way, and I have held pride in saying that. However, there was this particular time that shook my long-held beliefs, questioned me, and even cast a shadow of doubt on me. Before I tell you the story, I must explain where and how this happened so that you can fully comprehend it. Two weeks after my arrival in Maungdaw,

သူ့နာမည်က တွတ်ပီတဲ့။ ပိန်ပိန် သေးသေးလေး။ ကျနော် ငယ်ငယ်က အတိုင်းပဲ။ နာမည်အရင်းတော့ မသိတော့ဘူး။ တစ်ခါတော့ ကျနော်ကို ပြောဖူးတယ်။ ဒါပေမဲ့ မေ့သွားပြီ။ ဆိုတော့ သူ့သူငယ်ချင်းတွေ ခေါ်သလို ကျနော်လည်း တွတ်ပီပဲ ခေါ်တော့တယ်။ တွတ်ပီနဲ့ စသိတာ august 2021။ နိုင်ငံရေးအခြေအနေကြောင့် ကျောင်းတွေပိတ်ထားတော့ တွတ်ပီတို့တွေ လမ်းပျော် ဖြစ်နေခဲ့တဲ့ အချိန်တွေပေါ့။ တစ်ရက် ကျနော် ရေဆင်းကူးတော့ သူကို ကမ်းစပ်မှာ ကျနော့် စိတ်အထင် အရှည်သုံးတောင်လောက်ရှိမဲ့ ဖေါ့ပြားနဲ့ တစ်ယောက်ထဲ လိူင်းစီးနေတာတွေ့တယ်။ မိုးတွင်းကလ ဆိုတော့ လိူင်းတွေက ရှယ်ကြီးတာ။

This dates back to san chaung days of 2021, between late March and early April. Not long after we got defeated and lost our ground on kyun taw road, we moved to establish our new base in the lower part of san chaung. We stationed and made theyat taw st as our meet-up point to carry out daily activities. On one specific day, lily and I took on a scout role on za lun st. This turned out to be the day, we met and befriended our two sisters, Ma Cho & Ma Yu, as we would later address them.  Following the successful event, we got invited to lunch at

မောင်တော သူငယ်ချင်းများ အားလုံး ကို နှုတ်ဆက်ပါတယ်။ တရားနဲ့သာ ဖြေကြပါ။ “ဘာဖြစ်လာမလဲ” ဆိုတဲ့ မနက်ဖြန်များစွာနဲ့ ပြည့်နေတာကြောင့် “ပြန်ဆုံမယ်”လို့ ကျနော်မပြောတော့ပါဘူး။  Farewell to all Maungdaw friends. Seek your solace in Dhāma. Since tomorrow (s) are filled with uncertainties, I can’t say our paths will cross again. Today, I close Chapter 3.  Since shit hit the fan, the years 2020 and 2021, now regarded by the citizen of Bruma as a moment of monumental transformation in Burma’s history, I’ve been keeping a record of my life as I live through it. The first two chapters were about happiness

A bamboo birth certificate.  Zartar manuscripts like this one with astrological and religious content are rarer now. I’ve seen a few in museums outside the country. This is the very first time ever I had a chance to hold it in my own hand.  Back in the old days, as I’ve been told, when a child was born, an astrologer would draw up a chart taking into account the week, the location of the stars, moon, and sun and the time of birth in accordance with the Myanmar lunar calendar. This was a common practice and believed that the time

A one-side story is never considered complete because there will be a few missing pages – Jonathan. At the end of the day, as we fell into separate beds, exhausted, I came to the realisation that we agreed on nothing and made no compromises, if only for or if there were.  I returned to MRA. Not alone, but with Ester. I am always a little scared when I finally visit a place I’ve always wanted to see. I can’t help but think the place will never be as good as my anticipation of it. But MRA is an exception; this town never disappoints me, regardless of the times I’ve visited. It’s now early March, but we still feel the

An extract from my journal: On our return journey, the boatman informed me we would stop at a village named ကုန်းချောင်း (Kone Chaung) by the river for lunch. As the boat approached the riverbank, a few rudimentary bamboo huts concealed behind the wild bushes came into view in the distance. "These people here are seasonal workers but not a native," the boatman explained. "They came from the outskirt of Mrauk-U to do bamboo business here. You would be surprised that some of this bamboo even made its way to Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships. Yes, that far," he assured me. The tide was low. Under the baking sun,

ဒီနေ့က ကျနော်မွေးနေ့ဗျာ။ ပုံမှန်ဆိုရင် မိသားစု၊သူငယ်ချင်းတွေနဲ့ ပျော်စရာအမှတ်တရတစ်ခု ဖန်တီးဖြစ်မယ်။ ဒါပေမဲ့ အခု မိုင်ပေါင်းများစွာ အဝေးတစ်နေရာကိုရောက်နေတော့ I will take things as they come လို့ပဲဆုံးဖြတ်ထားတယ်။ Today’s plan ကတော့ရှင်းပါတယ်။ အားလပ်ရက်မှာခရီးထွက်နေတော့ မနေ့က မသွားဖြစ်ခဲ့တဲ့ ဘုရားတွေ ဆီကို သွားမယ်။ နေဝင်ချိန်ကို ခံစားမယ်။ ပြီရင် local အရက်ဆိုင် တစ်နေရာကို သွားပြီး chill မယ်။ ဒါလောက်ပါပဲ။ ပထမဆုံး အနေနဲ့ the most famous five pagodas ထဲက တစ်ဆူ ကိုသွားတယ်။ ဘုရားရှေ့က ဆိုင်မှာ မုန့်ဖတ်သုပ်စားတယ်။ ဘုန်းဘုန်းတစ်ပါးရောက်လာပြီး မုန့်တီသောက်တော့ သူအတွက်လဲ ရှင်းပေးလိုက်တယ်။ မွေးနေ့ လှူဒါန်းခြင်းပါပဲ။

The main difference between developed and developing countries would be progression and stability, whether politically or economically. If one visited the developed countries some years ago, they are bound to see what one saw back then remains unchanged mainly despite the time. If there was, only be an unnoticeable minor modification. It would be like a pick-up-when-you-left-it-a-decade-later scenario. Sadly, the same thing can’t be said for developing countries. Let alone a decade, even a week, can change things dramatically. I’ve got many examples to support this theory, but I will start with

မေယုမှာ မိုးရွာရင် တစ်ကိုယ်တည်းငေးမိရဲ့ အတွေးဟိုသည်ခုန်လို့ ရူးတော့မယ်။ Not my own lines, but hugely inspired by the work of ဆရာမ ကြည်အေး။ ဘာလိုလိုနဲ့ ဒီကို ရောက်နေတာ (၄) လရှိတော့မယ်။ ရာသီဥတု၊ အစားအစာ၊ စကားတွေကအစ တော်တော်လေးကွဲတယ်။ အထိကပြဿနာက ဘာသာစကားနဲ့ အစားအစာ ပဲ။ ရောက်စက အတော်တိုင်ပတ်တာ။ အခုလည်း တိုင်ပတ်စဲပဲ။ လက်ဖက်ရည်ဆိုင်တစ်ယောက်ထဲထိုင်နေရင် အရမ်းအထီးကျန်သ

When in Mandalay Itinerary 2 As a means of transportation here: a motorcycle is your best travel mate. It’s the only way to get away with the traffic & get the destinations quicker.  1. Climb up Mandalay Hill (use stairs way, don’t cheat), spend a good one hour up there and enjoy the fresh air and splendid view. 2. Grab a motorcycle and go to U Bein Bridge. On the way back, visit the traditional weaving workshop and the souvenir shop on the opposite side. 

When you have got “a day and a half stopover” in Mandalay and you have no clue how you should kill the time. Worry no more, you are saved. Here is my generous contribution of “when in Mandalay itinerary 1” for you.  When in Mandalay 1. Wear thanaka. 2. Visit Kuthadaw Pagoda, Sanda Muni Pagoda, and Atumashi monastery in the afternoon.  3. Have dinner at Daw Lay May Myanmar Restaurant (order one dish and will have loads of complimentary side dishes: cheap and yummy) 4. Pop into the Grab & Go (mini store) and buy Pringles and soft drink.

The train journey from Pyin Oo Lwin to Hsipaw was challenging, but the trip would not have been that smooth and become memorable without the kindhearted fellows I met. It’s by God’s grace that I had this privilege to have met friendly and loving people everywhere I go, and I am always grateful for it.  Today the train was packed, and I got no seat. I just got the pass to get on the train, and that was it. It was blooming hard to stand with the 10 kg weighted backpack on your shoulder for hours on the slow & bumpy & super jam-packed train. All I had was

I'm not going to lie, and I'm sorry, I've got no particular reason, but this American word always makes me blush and think of something dirty every time I hear it, which is a fanny bag. I've tried so many times not to react to it or think of "the fanny" without success.  I was in Cambodia, in Sihanoukville, and when we were about to leave for dinner in town, this local girl I met in Kampot said, "You know you should wear your fanny bag across your