In light of the current situation in Myanmar, I wanted to republish this account—included in my book Never a Stranger—of just one of several moving, unforgettable experiences I had there a few years ago. Thinking of my friends in Myanmar, and offering strength, courage, and love during these very challenging times.
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I was sharing the wooden floor of a primitive home with a group of chattering women when one of them jumped up, called out something incomprehensible, and scrambled down the rough stairs, pointing at me. I started to follow but was gently held back by hands tapping my knees. Just a moment earlier I had felt so close to that woman that her departure felt like abandonment.
Why was she leaving me? Was I the only one who had felt the connection?
On reaching the muddy ground below us, the tiny, gray-haired lady—head wrapped in a handwoven scarf, her proud figure as straight as a young woman’s—slipped her feet into old flip-flops and danced through rain puddles out of the enclosure. She ran along the bank of the river in a direction I had not explored. Words of explanation swirled around me, but I understood none of them. All I could do was sip my tea, nod my head, and force a smile.
It was late 2016, and I was traveling in a remote part of Myanmar, along the upper reaches of the Chindwin River. I had visited the country several times, but we were now traveling further north than had been possible previously, in distant areas that were opening up as the country’s political situation improved.
Just five years earlier, the military junta had been in firm control and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi had been under house arrest. Minorities were at war throughout the northern part of the country. Yangon was a poor but bustling city with many old colonial buildings and rare signs of the twenty-first century. There were less than 250,000 private cars in a country with a population far greater than California's. As recently as the last day of 2012, I had used the very first ATM in Myanmar.
Now Aung San Suu Kyi was the elected head of government and had just visited the United Nations; President Obama had eliminated trade sanctions against Myanmar; most tribal wars in the north had at least temporarily ceased. Yangon was a city suffering total traffic gridlock, and construction of massive towers had eliminated much of the colonial feel. Street vendors who once sold nail clippers and hairpins now competed for business with cheap smart phones and gaudy covers. SIM cards for $1.50 had replaced ones that had cost $1,500.
After only a brief time in the crowded city, we had ventured into areas little touched by commercial development. Here villagers were still hoping for electricity and running water, although young people were climbing to the high points—where golden pagodas stood—not only to pray, but to find cell reception. A relative freedom had permeated even to them, and pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi proudly hung on the walls of their simple homes, constructed as they had been for centuries.
I wanted to experience this countryside before commercialism expanded further. We traveled where no tourists had gone, driving for five hours through pounding rain along steep mudslides and increasingly narrow, unpaved roads to a remote village. There we would help the villagers learn how to greet and house visitors, generating funds that could help bring them solar-powered energy.
A longhouse had been constructed just for us. A pig was eviscerated and roasted in our honor; the women sang and danced for hours; the men played on a giant drum fashioned from a hollowed tree surely a hundred years old.
The next day we visited the local children in their one-room schoolhouse. We watched rice being pounded and large pails of water being carried by women and girls who seemed much too small to support the weight. It felt as though we had slipped into a previous century.
Leaving the village behind a few days later, we continued our exploration by boat.
One morning we stopped at a riverside settlement of about a hundred houses. The community stretched along the shore near the town of Khamti, some five hundred miles north of Mandalay. I left our boat and wandered off alone.
I walked past an open-fronted general store. A pharmacist sorted pills while, on the floor, a dog slept and a child yawned. A young girl snipped heads off tiny fish in her front yard. A woman effortlessly balanced two buckets of water and her child, while pausing to smile at me. A water buffalo stared suspiciously from the side of the road, one that showed no tire tracks.
In a field I passed shortly after, a mechanical contraption had replaced the usual wooden plow pulled by water buffalo or oxen. A device that would have been at home in America back when Ford was first experimenting with cars, it looked like it had given up the ghost halfway through the field, even though the plot was small enough to be plowed by hand. A large yellow gas container, old and dirty, sat nearby. It all had the sad air of a failed experiment.
As I passed a large Buddhist pagoda and temple near the center of the village, a small crowd formed as women departed the temple grounds. I paused to watch.
One of the last to exit was a delicate lady wrapped in harvest-colored scarves, whose smile formed deeply creased wrinkles testifying to over eighty years of life. She held a bunch of flowers and graciously posed for a photo, removing her woven, wide-brimmed hat before continuing on. Another woman, sharing the predominant erect and slender figure of the locals, stood next to me. We observed the scene and, eventually, each other.
That was how it started—our friendship.
When I reached to clasp her hand in greeting, she held mine in silent welcome. She didn't let go. Soon we were walking. I'm not sure what prompted her to lead me down that riverfront dirt road, but we strolled together, smiling at the questioning glances of her neighbors. Near the end of the village, she turned and led me into a neatly tended yard with a few women and children.
It was the simplest of settings, but there was a subtle sophistication here. Geometrically defined homesteads were delineated with unobtrusive stick fencing. Gardens were tended and graced with decorative flowers. Houses were raised on poles to protect from high rainy-season river levels and were built of teak or other local wood. Each lot had a designated entry and adequate room for animal enclosures away from the house. The homes had palm-frond roofs, and many had a large open wall to the south. They were single-room dwellings with no electricity or running water, with wood fires for cooking, but large enough so that dark corners afforded some privacy.
The houses ran along the river. Those in the center were fronted with shops, with fields behind them. This village had avoided the chaos of others we had seen, where the discovery of gold had led to large-scale mining and devastated landscapes, which were left deserted after the veins were depleted. But the fact that there was no wealth here to exploit also meant there was nothing to help economic development. There were no fancy luxuries or tourist goods in the small shops. There were few alternatives to leaving the village for schooling and work.
As my walking partner and I approached her home, raised off the ground and open to the elements, surprise on faces gave way to welcome. I removed my soggy trail runners and climbed to join a casual group having tea. Soon I was drinking the delicious home-dried green tea I have loved since discovering it on my first trip to this country years ago. It has a delicate flavor and lacks the after-bite I usually associate with green tea. I have tasted the best teas in the gardens of Assam and the teashops of San Francisco, but nothing has compared to sharing this home brew in the villages of Myanmar. I savored that first sip and was rewarded with many refills.
Although conversations swirled around me, my friend and I had yet to exchange a single word. Here on the Chindwin we were far beyond the reach of Burmese, and even our translator—had he been anywhere near—would have struggled to help me. Over a hundred different languages are spoken in Myanmar, belonging to five major language families. That tiny woman and I, for sure, had no shared language. We connected without one.
I eventually got a young girl to take pictures of us. I tried to pose sitting on my knees as they all did, but the hard, uneven wood surface undermined my attempts. My knees could almost bear it, but the tops of my feet screamed in agony. Watching the women sit there, unperturbed by any discomfort, helped me understand their excellent posture. Their shoulders were relaxed and their backs easily straight, their feet tucked unobtrusively, as if they were geishas in a Kyoto teahouse rather than peasant farmwives. Their innate elegance of bearing was remarkable.
When she finished her tea, my friend reached for a tray of green betel leaves. I caught her eye for approval before I started recording a video. I'm still waiting for a translation of the amused chatter that accompanied the wrapping of her chaw and its quick insertion into her mouth, but I know they all enjoyed my fascination. Normally, betel chewing is something done a bit surreptitiously, when strangers aren't observing. There are ongoing government attempts to educate people against chewing betel—as addictive as cigarettes—but her generation was beyond that, their teeth already destroyed with the characteristic red rot that keeps their smiles hidden. By agreeing to let me film her, my friend showed me I was no longer a stranger.
Instead, she and I bonded as we watched the video again and again, giggling like schoolgirls while everyone else angled in for a look.
And then my friend suddenly jumped up and ran away.
Now that she was gone, I started wondering how to extricate myself from this household that, just minutes ago, had seemed like a haven.
My friend ran back into the yard, climbed up to our perch, and settled next to me. In her hand was a small bracelet of golden-brown beads of amber. She reached for my arm and solemnly put the warm-toned bracelet on my wrist, securing the adjustable silk band and grinning at its fit. My tiny wrist was the perfect size for her offering. I stared at it and at her, then hugged her in gratitude, tearing up in my surprise at this unexpected gift.
It was the most unlikely of events. A passing stranger who lived in the wealthiest country in the world randomly encountered a woman living in the simplest of circumstances in one of the poorest countries of the world. The latter woman’s material possessions probably amounted to almost nothing; the stranger might have carried assets equal to the village woman’s total net worth in her carry-on luggage. The two women were not likely to ever see each other again.
I was the woman who had everything. She was the one who, by any economic measure, had nothing. Yet it was she who brought me a gift.
And not just any gift: a bracelet of amber. A product almost one hundred million years old, far older than the better-known Baltic amber. Beads her son-in-law must have dug out of a deep hole in the ground; ones her daughter polished while sitting in that same lovely kneeling position as the women did now, in much cruder circumstances and with an old metal wheel grinding noisily.
Some years ago, when I started on my path of travel and exploration, writing, and photography, my most important discovery was that I should simply say “Yes!” to opportunity. Accepting something without the possibility of giving anything in return, however, isn’t always comfortable. It's much easier to give than to receive. But, again, that's not always possible.
I had nothing but my affection to give in return.
Somehow I knew that was enough, all my friend wanted or would accept. To offer anything more would have been an insult.
I joyously accepted her gift, thanked her in all the wrong languages, and gave her another big hug.
We walked hand in hand back through the town, met some family members, and sat with her grandson at the village gate. When the time eventually came to say goodbye, I went to find our guide.
Our acquaintance lasted only a short time, but I was able to learn that my new friend's name was Daw Htay Han. My guide explained that she shared my age of sixty-seven years, her daughter and son-in-law lived and worked in an amber mine, and her grandson was one of four novices living in the Buddhist temple.
Today I also know that her village is called Malin, a place I can pinpoint to within thirty feet on a map by using the geotagging information on my photographs. I also know that there are no entries about the village on the Internet, no photos, no awareness. It is several days journey by river south from the most likely location of the even more remote amber mines where her daughter works, and two days journey upriver from Homalin, the last town with any identifiable Internet presence—full of news of another overcrowded ferryboat disaster just days before our arrival. It seemed little else there was newsworthy.
My photos show that, in addition to our age, physically Daw Htay and I had more in common than not. We were of similar height and weight. Our eyes were equally dark, and our hair was turning gray—hers faster than mine. Her skin was darker and her nose flatter, and she kept her lips close to hide her ruined teeth, while my smile boasted the aligned white caps that cover my original crooked teeth. Our eyes were both similarly wrinkled, however, and twinkled with our mutual affection.
I don't know many other specifics of Daw Htay's life. I do know she is a woman as comfortable in her own skin as I have learned to be in mine; one who called me sister and beamed when introducing me to her grandson. We didn't need words; we had a common language. Words might have gotten in the way of a mutual understanding that went deeper, friendship and a memory that would carry across thousands of miles.
At home in San Francisco, I finger the stones of my bracelet as if they were worry beads and think about Daw Htay's daughter polishing each one by hand. They turn warm and their pleasing pearly finish takes me back...
