Kissing for Service

I was in Bangkok to renew my business visa. My fellow teachers and I had initially received six-month work visas for Myanmar, and shortly after New Year’s of 2010 it was time to get a new one. In need of some Thai baht, I went to the ATM near Suk 11 Hostel. I put my card in the ATM, punched in my PIN, took out my money, grabbed my receipt, and hopped on the MRT to the embassy. While waiting for the embassy to process my visa, I went to the Kinokuniya bookstore in the Siam Paragon shopping center. Siam Paragon, tangentially, is the most checked-in place in the world according to Facebook statistics. A Thai girl in a green apron gave the total for my five books (Wild Thing by T.C. Boyle, A Moveable Feast by Hemingway, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenter and Seymour an Introduction by Salinger, News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel Garcia Marques, and Freedom by Jonathon Franzen). I opened my wallet to take out my bankcard. It wasn’t there. I’d left it back in the ATM, three hours earlier. As the sky train rocked back and forth, I seesawed between cursing my own negligence and blaming the faceless engineers who had created an ATM that dispensed cash before spitting out my card. At my hostel, I used the WiFi in the common area to find the contact information for my bank in Singapore. After fifteen minutes of excruciatingly slow internet access, I wrote down the phone number for reporting lost ATM cards. The front desk didn’t have a phone for making an international call, but they pointed me in the direction of an internet cafe.

Back in 2008, it is winter in Minnesota and I am gassing up my car somewhere on Highway 42 near Apple Valley. It is that interval in Minnesota when winter should give way to spring. Instead, winter has refused to let go, like a child that finds a collection of presents in their parents’ closet with tags marked From: Santa. The plowed snow has a porous look from sun and salt, but it manages to linger thanks to frigid nighttime temperatures. I am watching the price of my fill-up reach astronomical proportions when I look down to see a credit card abandoned on the asphalt. Angels and devils debate on my shoulders like members of the British Parliament. After paying for my gas, I hand the cashier the card, informing him that I had found it outside.

Back in Bangkok, I was sweating bullets and cursing the slow walkers, the fruit hawkers, and the line of taxis on the Suk 11 streets that were keeping me from canceling my missing bank card. I was hoping against hope that whomever found my card hadn’t used it to buy a ten-course meal at Sirocco, a plane ticket to the Maldives, or a BMW fresh off the lot. After dialing the number to my bank, I did not hear the expected elevator music intertwined with Your call is importance to us, please stay on the line for the next available representative. No. I was connected with an actual English speaking human being, albeit with a very thick Singaporean accent. To make matters even more entertaining to everyone else at the internet cafe, there was about a five second delay during the call, so we had to start-stop-stutter-repeat our questions and answers. I managed to tell her what happened and that I would like my card cancelled. She said that wouldn’t be a problem. How would I like to receive a new card?

Are you in Singapore? she asked.

No. I’m in Thailand right now, I said.

"Should we mail it to your permanent address?’

Is that in Minnesota?

Yes, sir.

I’m actually living in Myanmar right, so that won’t do much good.

Hmm, so what do you want to do?

I’ll figure it out later, I said slowly.

Haha. I feel sorry for you, sir. Is there anything else I can help you with?

It was time for the question.

Has there been any activity on the account after I used the ATM this morning?

What time did you last use your card, sir?

7:40 AM, Bangkok time.

There has been no activity after that, sir.

For those of you that have had your identity stolen, or been mugged, or simply left your brand new camera unattended for ten minutes only to find it had mysteriously been purloined, I apologize for the following statement. There is something singularly euphoric when you realize that the world is not as horrible as you fear it could be. I immediately thought back to that cold, sunny day when I gave that retrieved credit card to a flabbergasted Super America clerk. I don’t put much faith in karma, fate, or horoscopes, but I am a Libra. While I’m not thrilled to have the only Zodiac sign that is an inanimate object, I do have a soft spot for balance and coincidence. I think it’s one of the defining characteristics about being human. We want to get to the root of things, to figure out why this happened and that didn’t. It’s knee-jerk when bad things happen to tell ourselves that everything happens for a reason, but it’s just as important to tell ourselves that good things happen for a reason too. Good people and good actions get rewarded. Evil people and bad actions get punished.

I don’t believe that for a second, but I have to hope in it.

Chapter 1: Myanmar or Burma?

The word nostalgia comes from the Greek nostos (return home) and algos (pain). This story is just as much about words as it is what happened to me.

Come join me on my first three months.

Myanmar has been good for me because everything in this country is in constant need of repair. My bike has two flat tires. My guitar is buzzing from its neck warping. I have a folder of started and stopped stories. If I were anywhere else, these things would be able to be drowned out by phones, internet, television, or any number of other distractions. But here in Myanmar, in the absence of those distractions, I’m forced to deal with the problems in front of me. I would venture to guess that they are not normal problems for most people reading this.

Take blackouts, for instance. No, I’m not referring to the Jack Daniels induced variety. What would you do if the power went out right now? My response is automatic at this point. If I’m at home, I get up, grab an umbrella or a flashlight if needed, walk out my front door to the gate, and turn on our generator switch, which resembles the one used by Victor Frankenstein (pronounced Frankensteen). I hope that someone, somewhere, has turned on the generator. If not, well, then it’s time to start eating the ice cream and the other perishables in the fridge.

When I’m teaching in my classroom and the power goes out, the kids don’t even blink an eye. If the lights ever went off in America while I was teaching, everyone would go mental. Not my Burmese students. They just sit there as if nothing out of the ordinary has occurred. Indeed, nothing has.

Lest you think these stories will be about the third world problems of a first world person, allow me be more relatable.

In Yangon, a city of about six million, there are virtually no women to date. Local women can’t stay out after dark, and the pool of single expatriates has shown very little promise whatsoever. Granted, I’m about as picky as a vegan with Krone’s disease and a nut allergy, but I would’ve thought there would be some sort of romantic female companionship here. How do I deal with it?

I look at the monks and follow their lead.

Love would eventually, figuratively, walk through my front door, but that’s a story for later.

How do I deal with not having any family within 8,000 miles? There’s no good solution to that. Skype calls range from difficult to impossible due to the glacial internet speeds here, so we’re mostly constrained to emails and a yearly visit. It gets harder every year to be away from my family. During the all-too-few chances I do have to go back to the U.S., I find myself wanting to spend more time with them and less time with my old friends.

This is already getting a little too down in the doldrums. It’s far from all bad over here. I lucked out and have two great guys for roommates, Jeremy and Jacob. Jeremy is tall, even by western standards, which means he is a giant in Burma. He was born in Monduli, Tanzania, to American parents. They are also international teachers, and they, too, work at our school, Yangon International School. Jeremy spent his childhood in Africa, the United States, Dubai, and I don’t even know how many other places. His usually close-cropped hair and solid build make him look like he could be in the military, but it would only take about thirty seconds for anyone to realize that he has entirely too much energy and playfulness to be in a group that would require him to stand at attention for any length of time. He teaches science and math, and we are pretty evenly matched on the chessboard. Jacob had the unfortunate luck to be the shortest of the roommates and has been given the nickname Tiny. His voice, laugh, and smile do not sync with his moniker. He teaches a variety of classes, but he’s mostly been teaching physical education at Yangon International School (YIS). He’s one of the most athletic, dedicated, and pious people I know. His eyes are bluer than raspberry FlaVorIces. Don’t let his faux hawk or white belt fool you, he defies easy characterization. He almost never misses a Sunday at church, but he can be diabolical when it comes to pranks. He’s just as comfortable teaching first-graders how to hula hoop as he is teaching middle schoolers about African history. In fact, most of the teachers at my school are amazing and quirky individuals. One of the veteran teachers, Devron, told me that no sane person comes to live in Yangon. Everyone brings their own kind of crazy to this already off-kilter city. Even the names of the country its cities are confusing. Myanmar or Burma? Yangon or Rangoon? I’ve learned since coming here that Myanmar is a better label for the diversity of the country. The Bamar are an ethnic group, albeit the largest one. The first record of calling the country Myanmar is from the 1200s. The English word Bermah didn’t show up until it appeared on 18th century maps. The most viable reason to keep calling the country Burma is that the military junta were the ones to change it to Myanmar. There is no best answer, so the two are basically interchangeable (depending on whom you are talking to, of course). Is the capital called Yangon or Rangoon?

Neither, it’s an enormous, pre-ghost city called Naypyidaw.

Chapter 2: Naypyidaw

In 2006, all of the government workers in Burma got word that they would have to move to the newly formed city of Naypyidaw. I’ve been there. The place is as empty as an O. They have more space than they know what to do with. Most of the government offices are located there, but Yangon is still the de facto capital for trade and business.

The drive to Naypyidaw is an adventure within itself. It takes anywhere between 4-6 hours to get there by hired van. The smoothest highway in the country runs from Naypyidaw to Yangon. Every couple of minutes there are bumps that shoot passengers off their seats, causing everyone’s heads to resemble pineapples by the end of the ride.

On the return journey, I learned to press my hand to the roof every time I saw a bump coming up. I was in a van with other teachers from my school, including our history teacher (Jason), another English teacher (Sarah), and our IT teacher from Jamaica (Andre). At the halfway point of the journey back, we stopped to allow people to ease their bladders. The Irrawaddy River Valley is a vast flatland, with little in the way of vegetation. We crossed over the sunbaked ground to the relative privacy of some gnarled trees. While Andre, Jason, and I were adding water and nitrogen to the soil, Andre turned our attention to some tiny tracks in the dirt.

Look. Dem’s crab tracks, he said.

He was referring to the little marks made by crabs on beaches. Jason and I broke into hysterics. There was no ocean for hundreds of miles. When we got back into the van, we told everyone else what Andre had said. Sarah and Jason informed me that, on ride up to Naypyidaw, he had said something even more priceless.

Dre thought, in all seriousness, Jason told me, that every flight had a smaller plane that carried all the luggage with it.

Whenever I hear something like that, I think about my favorite web comic, XKCD. One of the comics (#1053) analyzes those moments when people admit that they don’t know things. The comic’s creator, Randall Munroe, estimates that every day there are 10,000 people learning something that most people think is common knowledge. It is my hope that as an adequate teacher and an unsuccessful writer that I can teach you a few things in these pages (or screens, if you’re reading by pixel-light).

Chapter 3: Transportation

If there is one thing that encapsulates Myanmar, it’s the taxis. The majority of them are Toyotas or Nissans from the eighties. Any trip through Yangon lasting over five minutes includes seeing somebody fiddling under an open hood, replacing a tire, or blazing a soldering iron on a vehicle. During my final month in the country, our taxi blew out a tire almost immediately after the daily monsoon rains came. Jeremy, the taxi driver, and I were sopping by the time the driver got the three remaining lug nuts back onto the car. It was Jeremy’s 31st birthday.

Like almost everything in the country, the Myanmar people find a way to keep the cars going. A mutilated shop teacher could count on one hand the number of taxis with working air conditioners I rode in during my first year. Wires and innards are exposed. If you’re lucky, the cabby will pass you the missing window handle so you can roll down your glass when it’s over 100 degrees outside. If you’re unlucky, you will be sitting next to a window that can’t roll up during monsoon season and be drenched by the time you make it to Trader’s Hotel for Sunday brunch for Kali’s birthday. Most of the drivers know a bit of English, and even more of them constantly chew betel nut, with which they bless the streets at every red light. Every fare is negotiable, and you always agree on a price before getting in. One time, on the way back from the airport, a taxi driver tried to break this sacred agreement by suggesting that each passenger had to pay the four-thousand kyat fare (about $4) we had agreed on. Jeremy opened the door and was ready to tuck and roll out of the moving car, if the driver didn’t honor the original agreement. The airport is always the worst. A few words in Burmese usually help them realize we are not the fresh-off-the-boat tourists that they are used to encountering. If that doesn’t work, sometimes starting to walk away will bring the price down another 1,000 kyat. For best results, you can always walk half a block to the main road to find somebody who will give you a fair fare to your home.

In general, public transportation is cheap. You can take a taxi to just about anywhere in town for between 1-3 dollars. Buses are even cheaper. Most of the cars are imported from Japan, so Myanmar has the strange combination of driving on the right side of the road while having the driver on the right side of the car. This is an annoyance for small vehicles, but it’s downright dangerous for buses. Due to the enormous blind spots this creates for the bus drivers, there is usually a man on the other side of the bus whose job it is to warn the driver of any potential dangers. He also works as a sort of traffic director to the other cars on especially busy roads. It’s not uncommon to get into a taxi to discover that the cabby has taken out the front seat and replaced it with a lawn chair. During the monsoon season, rain can come at you from every angle: the roof, a broken window, and more than once even holes in the floor of the car. And seat belts? What’s a seat belt? Due to the disrepair of the roads and traffic, people rarely have the chance to drive over 25 mph, which is like everything else in Myanmar: a mixed blessing.

During one memorable nighttime ride home, Jeremy had cut his hand on the