Visitors!

13 January 2019

[Above photo: L to R: Cecily, Eric, Sophie, and Clemmie Borgstein visiting from Yangon, Malawi, Malawi, and Borneo, respectively, on my deck.]

A day of dusting, mopping, several runs for supplies, making salads, getting the table and chairs onto the deck, and coordinating take-out from the local Chinese-Burmese restaurant prepared the way for the arrival of Eric and Sophie Borgstein from Blantyre. Cecily has been working here 5 months and Clemmie came a week ago from an orangutan orphan sanctuary in Borneo where she has been working for a year. The other two Borgstein children, Edward and Bella, are climbing in the Rwenzori Mountains in eastern Uganda (which contain 6 of the 10 highest peaks in Africa). They all bring animation, joy, love, and tales of adventures past and future.

I realize how strange it feels to me to live alone in this city. I have learned that Yangon and environs contain about 10 million people.  I don’t yet have a solid connection to my work.  In addition to my friendship with Sophie and Eric, it is wonderful to share my space with others. I can retreat into a productive solitary life but much prefer a social one.

Cecily led us around town yesterday, through the massive Bogyoke Aung San Market, down passageways and alleys lined with street sellers of handicrafts, gems, food, and clothing. Some of the textiles are very lovely, the rubies are beautiful but leave me cold, and the siren songs of huge sacks of fried grasshoppers fall on deaf ears, though I’ll surely try them once. Crispy-crunchy, salty.  I bid on a painting I’d seen before that I really liked; my offer was accepted and I purchased it for later pickup. We returned to the apartment for a 2-hour rest before the evening meal and subsequent drinks. Sophie napped in their room; Eric and I alternately read and napped in the living room. He, being a surgeon, has learned to sleep anywhere, anytime.

After a lively supper with 4 of Cecily’s female friends, all having come from UK to work here for 6+ months on different projects, we 9 went to the Bar of Double Happiness, one street east of my apartment on Sint O Tan Street. Why Double Happiness? Because mojitos cost 1000 kyats, about 66 cents each so you can easily afford two. Or four. Caipirinha’s also.  But they use grain alcohol instead of cachaca., there is no vestige of a lime, and they seem to have forgotten the sugar.  Pretty strong, grim drinks without any refinement or embellishment. I’ll drink beer there the next time I go.

They are off to brunch with the UK ambassador’s mother-in-law who works in Malawi but is visiting. Then massages. And likely supper, at which I’ll join them. Finally, they all catch the 9PM night bus for Bagan, arriving at 5AM. They’ll tour there, riding electric motor scooters to visit the temples (>3000 are left of an original 10,000). Temples were built by wealthy people to improve their karma so that they might return in a higher life form. The process was to atone for their wickedness. It is convenient to get rich however you can and then use a bit of the proceeds to earn honor and cosmic forgiveness for stepping on so many necks while gathering your fortune. The Borgsteins will all return in 10 days after, no doubt, much fun and many surprises. An intrepid family of travelers.

Dr. Tin Oo drove me to the Yangon Mental Hospital last week. It is a 1500 bed facility stretched over many acres.  We drove for an hour and 45 minutes to arrive. It takes the same to return. Dr. Tin Oo does this 5 days per week, as do most of the other psychiatrists there. In Augusta, Maine, they built the state mental hospital, the second in the US, across the Kennebec River from the front steps of the state capitol building. The legislators must see it every time they walk out of the capitol building, a good way to remind them of their duty to the mentally ill. Not so in Myanmar, where the major mental hospital is so far out of town it is difficult to find.

Lack of skill and staffing shortages restrict patients to largely custodial care plus medication. Still, no one seemed overmedicated and the patients were pretty tranquil. There is no occupational therapy and no attempt at rehabilitation, as is the case in most of the developing world.  I met several eager young psychiatrists who had completed advanced training or degrees in London, Boston, and California and would certainly do much more if given the resources. There is a substantial outpatient methadone maintenance program, as heroin is plentiful and addiction is common.  Methamphetamine is cooked in the border areas and is also an increasingly problematic source of addiction.

I’ve decided not to invest my time in travelling to and from there regularly until my teaching begins in early February. I think it is better spent in preparing my course and settling in so the edges of my life work easily when I am finally busy.

I’ll stroll over to the market now, get a bite of lunch, and then retrieve my painting. I have a good spot for it in the living room. If I feel the patience, I’ll try to fiddle with my new printer to connect it to the wi-fi network so I can scan papers to my computer. I suspect my printer difficulties are that I am somehow not reading the finest of fine prints and not following the directions precisely.  Relationships are flexible but not computers.

And there is that business of increaingly accurate facial recognition software and 200 million cameras surveilling the population of China. And about 500,000 in London. Eric Blair (George Orwell) was prescient, down to the details.