Beyond Exhaustion

IBEC on hill, seen from pagoda across road from guesthouse

Saturday, November 29 

 

To backtrack a little:

 

On my arrival in Sagaing, Lin Kyu, the volunteer coordinator, and Richard, the English volunteer (of an Italian father), met me at a small downtown hotel, and we went to a tea shop. Richard had come to IBEC just a few days before me, having previously been a professional poker player in Cambodia after a stint as an English teacher in Thailand.  Lin Kyu was saying it would be best if I stayed a night or two at the hotel in Sagaing while they prepared me a room, and that the school was closing in a couple weeks, and preparing for exams now. I was getting more than a little discouraged; but then he had a call on his cell phone from the principal, who said that I should come back with them to the school to meet with him—and to bring my bag to stay.

novices, seen from office steps

So I followed them with my bag on the back of a motorcycle taxi the couple miles down monastery-lined roads to the International Buddhist Education Center, or IBEC. There I met with the principal, Venerable Sobhita, who said teaching at the primary levels would not be affected by the upcoming exam preparation and that during the break he would arrange classes for me to teach with the monastery students. Ven Sobhita also invited me to come on December 21^st with them to his village a few hours north during the break, where they’ll be opening an eye clinic that day, with week-long festivities celebrating it.  I was then given into the care of one of the young women teachers, Thuzar Win, with long black hair and a sweet earnestness, who brought me down the hill where she and her students swept out and prepared me my little room in their guesthouse. 

two novices in front of IBEC school building

 Just now I'm sitting in a VIP (which my Camridge-educated seatmate Nang translates as "Very Innocent Person" as opposed to "very ignorant person") seat at the opening talks of a large Youth Forum that IBEC is putting on for about 300-400 students from all around. Later they will break into discussion groups on various topics (the one that caught my eye was listed as Youth and Poisonous Food"); the others were "Youth and World Peace,"  "Youth and Drugs," "Youth and Generation Gap," "Youth and Job Opportunities," and "Youth and Democracy."

novices cleaning office floor in preparation for Forum

There are press taking photos—I hope I look interested and attentively taking notes. Actually I just understood a word!— I just made out the speaker saying "din-ay" three times—"today", one of the few words I learned from my first visit.  Everyone at IBEC has been working very intensely preparing for the forum. I helped the students put together and bundle packets for participants last night, as well as t-shirts (male and female).  The current speaker is now showing Powerpoint slides in English about entrepreneurship, discussing in Burmese the English bullets.  Now there's a new speaker, the woman who was sitting next to me (she teaches English to Myanmar Parliament staff), talking about youth study opportunities with a Powerpoint that has separate bullets for "non-formal education " and "informal education"—I wonder what the difference is.

little nun at IBEC

 

I'm beyond exhausted:  the festival loudspeaker monastic recording was blasting until at least 11, making sleep out of the question, so I stayed up writing the long email which in the end disappeared, and then the girls were playing their music and talking until even later, and when I finally turned out the light there was suddenly for about 20 minutes what sounded like an angry shouting brawl of about a dozen men who'd drunk too much. Finally by around 12:30 that died down.  And then someone's alarm clock on the other side of the thin plastic wall went off at 3:30 am, and at 4:00 in the morning the girls started chanting their prayers and reciting their lessons….