Subject: Tomorrow Is Arrived

Subject: Tomorrow Is Arrived

Sent from Mandalay

I had the night gift of NO loudspeakers last night!  Peace, quiet, the sound of crickets…

Gave out my little hairpin gifts to the girls in the dorm and the women in the kitchen last night and this morning, and yesterday afternoon on a walk I said goodbye to the kitchen woman who’d helped me the most, who’d fallen and hurt her back, and turned out lived with her daughter and two sisters and their families by the little shop at the edge of the lane near the school.      

a different nunnery, the one on road up to IBEC

Also stopped and said goodbye to the little nunnery that had invited me in the first few days, and on the way there, I was invited into the courtyard of the seven high school girls and the 8^th grade teacher who lived together in a house that I was passing by.  Some of the girls were in my 10^th grade class, all smiling happily, including the girl who always glowers in class (to scare away any attempts to be asked to speak, Aung said).

Went again today with Aung on his motorcycle to the nearby teashop for mohinga (sixty kyat (60 cents) covered both my mohinga and his deep-fried egg-filled platha), afterwards stopping at a little shop to buy another little gift as Thuzar had counted wrong, leaving out a student, when we’d first bought presents at the market.

In typical Myanmar unpredictability, my student ride called at 9:30 during my English class to say he couldn’t go because he’d broken his glasses, and that he would contact a friend.

After the class’s end (everyone wanted a photograph of themselves with me and there were at least a half dozen students in front of me with their cell phone cameras at me, so that I felt like a Myanmar movie star!)  I went to the office, where the Ven Sobhita already knew that I couldn’t come (I don’t know whether he’d called the student or the student had called him) and was in the midst of arranging with another of his students to bring me—who turned out to be the friend my ride had mentioned.  He was actually on two cell phones at once at one point. Turns out I had three students accompanying me, two motorcycles of us (with helmets and facemasks), so it felt like a royal cavalcade.

Mandalay Hill from Palace moat

Coming into Mandalay was something of a shock, sort of like when I passed from Myanmar into Mae Sot, Thailand last year, and what I imagine Bangkok might be like next week: billboards of diamond jeweled beautiful women, BMWs and Mercedes Benzes, new big glitzy hotels, box buildings, car washes, etc etc etc.  I was already thinking, maybe I’ll go back a night early, loudspeakers or no.    

Finally we got out of the downtown area to a quieter area where there’s the blocks-long Palace Walls surrounded by the broad water moat, Mandalay Hill with its golden pagodas in the distance, a much more peaceful feel.   Nineteenth St. was busy, but at least construction and new buildings were interspersed with temple grounds and tea shops. It took us a little back and forth, but finally we found the small unmarked lane that led to the Phaung Daw Ol Monastic School.

view from front of dorm 3rd floor

view from my veranda

Where I have a little room on the third floor with tile floor, own purified water cooler, as well as electric teapot and shelves. Situated on the back of the building, it opens to the clothes-draped veranda in the back overlooking a canal below (the same canal as the one by the Peacock Lodge that I’d stayed at my earlier night in Mandalay) with palm trees and sky.  There’s a bathroom on the same floor, with private shower. 

 
I spent the afternoon with a circle of children in the orphan house who mostly looked like 5 to 12 years, but in reality turned out to be mostly 12 or 14 with a few as young as 8 or 9, all intently listening as I sat on the floor with them reading a book about the colors of the rainbow, and then a penguin book, and finally The Wild Swans fairy tale book I’d brought with me.  Afterwards I asked them about themselves.   Some had been there for a year or two, some for 8 or 12 years.  Some have no parents, or a mother or a father who have died.  The orphanage was started by World Vision, then passed over to the monastery’s care. 

upstairs of orphan hostel, first afternoon

 Next door there’s a house for the ethnic children, from villages in areas of conflict where maybe the

school has been burned, or it’s just not safe living there.  Past that is a long monastery complex where the novices and monks live.  Then there’s the office, and the library.  Past that are several large school buildings, followed finally by the dorms where I have my room.  It’s almost like a little village in itself, and a very long walk from end to end, maybe the distance (for those of you who know Albany) at least as long as from Solano to Marin on Stannage ….  After that there are shops lining the rest of the way, until you get to 19^th St which is full of teashops and little stores and motorcycles with some cars, but not at all like the downtown area, just ordinary urban.  Here and there throughout the school enclave are little snack shops and stands too.

food stall in school area

Just before dusk I went for an hour-long walk out the side entrance—a whole different world from the more busy 19^th St on the other side, and a world away from the urban downtown.  It was definitely not the rural village bordering IBEC, but it still had that village feel, albeit one crowded with children and bamboo and beautiful dark wooded houses packed together.  Even here, many children spoke amazingly good English, and more than one elder adult initiated a conversation in excellent English.  I think this might be

because the elder generation had pre-government education, so along with being urban rather than rural, were truly educated.  What also so moved me were the weather-beaten lined faces of some of the elderly women which had such dignity and beauty, and such warmth in their wrinkled smiles and eyes.  I wish I could invisibly take photos of each of them. Afterwards I came back and had supper with the orphan children in their hostel: a huge container of rice dished out in plates along with heaping serving spoonful of sautéed cauliflower.

supper at the orphan's hostel

There is also good internet connection here, and a great computer which they warmly offered me to use.  I’d gone into the office after supper and happened upon the head abbot who’d founded the school.  He warmly greeted me, and engaged me in conversation about the educational system here and in the U.S.  Anyway, the downside of a good internet connection and accessible computer is that I’ve been sitting here for a couple hours and it’s nearly ten now, so I will end here.

 See you soon,

Zoe