“…For the wind is in the palm-trees, an’ the temple-bells they say: ‘Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!…” Rudyard Kipling
President Bush recently placed Burma on his list of terrorist nations. We all know of Kipling’s Burma—let me tell you a little about my Burma.
In 1956, a rather hurried arrangement was made for my family to leave Burma. Many Anglo-Burmese had already left the country, and I thought we were just following, to go “home” as we affectionately referred to England, though most of us had never been there.
The truth, I found out later, was that my dad had to get out of Burma. Times were changing and he found himself in a rather precarious position. He was a colonel in the Burmese Army, and it was no secret that he was opposed to the plans that lay ahead for Burma.
I was in boarding school in the Shan States in a town called Kalaw.
Kalaw was a serene hillside station, which the British during the Raj used for their R. & R. Little cottages dotted the hillsides of this sweet little pine-forested town. Because of its rich soil, lush gardens and orchards abounded. Even today, Kalaw is known as the “garden of Burma.” There was just one cinema house…market day came every five days….there was one hospital…..and most of the houses did not have electricity or running water. But to me it was heaven. I spent the happiest days of my childhood in Kalaw.
As our ship, the HMS Staffordshire, sailed down the Irrawaddy River for England, I listened and watched as the familiar sounds and sight of my beloved country faded into the distance. The last image I recall was the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, as tiny as my little finger, still glittering in the fading sunlight, far, far away on the horizon. Then it was gone.
Though I was sad, I was a child and the thought of perhaps never seeing Burma again did not even cross my mind. My American husband to be promised me when we first decided to marry in 1964 that he would one day take me back to Burma. He fulfilled that promise in 2000.
We flew into Rangoon from Singapore. I could not keep my eyes off the coast! At a certain moment, I asked the dainty little Singapore airline stewardess to let me know as soon as we entered Burmese space. She returned a few minutes later and said “the Captain said, right now.” An emotion began to stir within me as I watched the waters of the Adaman Sea brushing the Burmese coastline. I had all the anticipation of a child, for that is what I became again, a little girl, as we flew towards Rangoon.
When the plane touched down, I shocked myself as I burst into an uncontrollable fit of crying.
At the airport, my lifelong friend greeted me. When I spotted her, I ran with arms flaying, all carry-on baggage dropping off my shoulders and a lump welling up in my throat. She looked much the same, though I had not seen her for 44 years. We embraced and hugged and kissed each other, our tears mingling in a renewed sisterhood of love that had never left us.
My Burmese friend, whom I shall call Daisy, (for fear of a reprisal against her), accompanied us during our entire 18-day stay in Burma.
We spent the first couple of days in Rangoon, at the Sedona Hotel. The hotel was fitted with all the grandeur one would expect from a five-star establishment. It seemed curious to me that Burma had developed the reputation that it had. I could see none of the agony I had heard and read about for decades.
But in actuality, life for the 53 million people in Burma was more than difficult to say the least. My friend was timid to speak too loudly. She refused to accompany us to the American Embassy, saying she might be questioned by the Tatmadaw (Military Police). She also refused to take us down University Avenue, where Aung San Suu Kyi has been on and off house arrest since 1989. This year, 2006, the government of Burma has just extended her house arrest for another 12 months.
She referred to Suu Kyi as ''The Lady,'' never once calling her by name. Though “The Lady” was under house arrest, due to her Nobel Prize status, she did not suffer the indignations of the populace. Suu Kyi had asked companies such as Fed-Ex and Coke-Cola to leave Burma. Many of my Burmese friends said it was better for the West to have a foothold in Burma so they could report what was going on and perhaps slowly bring democracy back to her.
We had taken American dollars with us to exchange for Burmese Kyats. The official government rate was $1.00 for 6 Kyats. The black market rate was $1.00 for 345 Kyats. And that was not the best rate, as there were commissions involved. Daisy told me that the government had turned the Burmese people into a “Nation of Thieves.”
She begged me to speak to members of Congress once I got home, to lift the sanctions that had been imposed on Burma. She asked why the Burmese people were being punished for the actions of the dictatorship. “The strategies of sanctions in order to bring change make the West feel good” she said, “but they hurt those they are supposed to help.”
Daisy said something else that astounded me: “Why do America and Britain hate us so much? I wish they would just declare war on us, bomb us, and then rebuild us as they have done other countries…I wish the British Raj was back in power. . . as a Burmese woman, I never thought I would ever say that.”
Wherever we went--Mandalay, Bagan, Kalaw, Maymyo--we saw huge posters saying things like “The Tatmadaw and the people of Myanmar cooperate to crush all those who would harm the Union.”
“Do not speak to strangers, Myanmar people stay strong and fight to keep our Union safe.”
Outside Mandalay Palace, we were stopped by teenage soldiers, rifles slung across their shoulders, aggressively questioning us and asking to see our passports.
While driving, we were stopped by the Tatmadaw Road Police. “Who is that white man sitting in the back of your car? You are not a taxi driver.” Our driver’s license was examined. Daisy, pleading with the officer, her hands in Shinto position, slipped him some dollars to let us go. This happened a few times.
Once, while I was alone in the car with Daisy and the driver, the Tatmadaw threatened to take the car away. Again Daisy, pleading almost on bended knee, quietly passed him $25.00 and a false story about my being a relative from America who needed the car to visit dying old relatives in a neighboring town.
The wage that the government paid its workers was $65.00 a year. My friends whose adult children worked for the government had to supplement their wages, for bus fare, clothing, food, and shelter and the only way for them to earn this extra money was by dishonest means. So, I did not look unkindly on the policeman who had just robbed me of yet another $25.00.
In my final days, we traveled the winding road up into the Shan States, and into Kalaw. Though more than 40 years had passed since I had been on those roads in a convoy with my father’s troupes, it was all so familiar to me. I knew when a stream was coming up, and pointed in the direction of a banana grove. They were all still there, but the stream had become a trickle and there were just a few banana trees. The land had been ravaged! The roads had been built by the British and were in sore need of repair. There were workers in longees (sarongs), with little barrels of tar over tiny wood fires, patching the roads here and there.
Oh yes, one more thing: rarely did we ever see Burmese men in slacks. Only the Tatmadaw wore slacks. Our driver said that was a way of suppressing the civilian men.
Easy to recognize! Of course, in the grand hotels in Rangoon and Mandalay, upper class Burmese men were always dressed in elegant western garb.
Human rights violations, the smuggling and trading of opium, heroine, jade, rubies, silver and timber… This is my Burma today--but I still have Kipling’s yearnings:
“If you’ve ‘eard the East a-callin’, why you won’t ‘eed nothin’ else…An’ the sunshine and the palm-trees an’ the tinkly temple-bells!”
Sandra Carney, born in India, is Anglo-Burmese, of British birth. She became an American Citizen in 1972 and has enjoyed living in the U.S.A. since 1967. She inherited her interest in politics from a family heavily inculcated in the politics of their times. Because of her mixed heritage, she is keenly interested in all that goes on around the world and is fiercely protective of her adopted country, the U.S.A.