Local Fauna

2 June 2019

[Above photo: A photo of a photo at an exhibit at the Goethe Center. Chin tatoos were outlawed by the government so only old people now have them.]

It is difficult for me to imagine that my time here is ½ done. Weeks seem to pass in a trice. The abrupt change of weather helps as a reminder of time passing. Frequent squalls, lightening storms that scared my language teacher, Pwint Phue Wai, yesterday, and a cooling 5 minute drench this morning all are in sharp contrast to the seemingly endless scorching sun and clear skies of March through mid-May.

The rain encouraged reclusive denizens of the deep roadside gutters to sing out.  As I walked from the 37 bus on Pyay Road to Yangon Children’s Hospital this past week a booming, throbbing choir accompanied me. Bull frogs, well, perhaps cow frogs, I have no idea. Some were about 3” long and medium-pitched but there were some granddaddies, basso profundos, as well. I paused to watch the smaller one’s puff out their cheeks before each croak.

I keep the glass door to the kitchen closed and the kitchen windows open when I am at home. Two days ago a house sparrow, true to her name, came in. After a bit of confused fluttering about she found the open window and exited. Last night as I walked up the street to dine with Ruth at Sule Shangri La, an elegant hotel, I noted that the latest crop of fried grasshoppers for sale along the sidewalk were immense—3” long or more. Not just a single crunch and swallow. Several bites. More than I can do. Chicken feet was my risk cuisine for this quarter. One of the students pointed out, as I was gingerly nibbling on the feet, that I looked afraid of it; of course I was! Why isn’t entirely clear to me. Something about my brother’s chickens when I was 5yo. Put me off boiled eggs for about 70 years, as well. I feel the same wariness toward the grasshoppers. Walking the mile home from supper at 10PM last night I saw many families and other groupings at impromptu restaurants set up in the street under tarps with tiny tables and tiny stools. It looked so lovely, people laughing and enjoying each other’s company. Then I noticed the many broad-shouldered dark shapes scurrying to and fro—ratus norweigicus, perhaps. Everyone looking to enjoy a meal.

One of my favorite memories is when Nate and I were biking in Provence. He was 15yo, I was 55. We were staying at a 16^th century farmhouse on an island in the middle of the Rhone, across from the Palais du Papes in Avignon. We biked in the dark down empty roads through fields until we came on a restaurant. It was another beautiful ancient stone farmhouse with a pea-gravel front yard set with tables and twinkling lights strung between the trees. Large groups of families and friends were eating and drinking. We parked our bikes and had a splendid meal.  The chef asked us into her house to tour it, including the kitchen, which was a certain thrill. And across the river the lights shone on the Pont d’Avignon and Palais du Papes while we ate. Magic, created by the people and their relationships and augmented by the setting.

I would ordinarily never intentionally go to a meal at a fancy hotel. At least here where the little hole-in-the-wall places on second floors have so much atmosphere, good prices, and great food. At the International School Yangon gala two months ago I won a free buffet for two at the Sule in the raffle, so I asked Ruth to go. She teaches at the school and had invited me to the gala. It was pretty spectacular with every kind of meat, fish, shrimp, salad, soup, pastry, dessert, etc., all prepared and seasoned wonderfully. Neither of us ate lunch, in preparation. And we spent 3 hours cruising through, like one of those 7 course French meals with 7 paired wines. We chatted away. Her daughter, an art teacher in Kansas City, Missouri, is a real adventurer, working for several years all over the world as a teacher, following in her mother’s footsteps. She will visit her mom here in 3 days and they’ll travel around, so Ruth is pretty excited.

It is interesting how differently waitstaff behave. At Sule, they are incredibly trained, always there but unobtrusive. It seems like such a strain to serve [relatively] rich people and have to submerge your personality. Come to think of it, when she cleared the table she dropped the fork from my dessert onto my trousers, which chocolate mess I had to scrub out. I cannot believe that it was other than chance, although clearly I wonder if her unconscious was at work, expressing some dissatisfaction. No, it was pure physics and, subsequently, chemistry. Contrast the waitstaff in Try, a place near my apartment on Lamnidaw Lan where I go for sushi and miso soup. The guys in the kitchen get riffing and laughing and shouting so loudly that normal conversational tones in the restaurant won’t work. It sounds like a locker room—not DT’s type—where kids are being raucous, snapping towels and commenting about one another’s sexual prowess or lack thereof to great hilarity. I don’t know why the creationists have such trouble with Darwin; we are so incredibly close to the apes, although we are more warlike.

I listened to a wonderful commencement speech by David Foster Wallace. I’m late to the party and many of you have likely heard it. It is at Kenyon College in 2005. He talks about finding meaning in our lives and our natural narcissism, egocentricity, and how it isolates and blinds us. And how the struggle to overcome it brings us satisfaction and much closer to each other. And how we can, in fact, choose what to think about. I highly recommend it in these days of gazillionaires who need to accumulate more and more, never satisfied.

Also, Nicholas Kristof’s reprint in the Saturday NY Times of his article from 2017 encouraging us to treat guns as we do automobiles is a wonderful and sensible nostrum. His graphs of gun prevalence and gun deaths—and who dies—are staggering. Graphs really can pack a punch. It prompted me to write another Letter to the Editor about how we’ll never truly realize our democratic values until we get Big Bucks out of the election-equation. The rich will always be able to connive, to tip the balance in their favor, and to secure it, tipped.

There now is a dark cloud, like a carpet, covering my part of Yangon. The rain has picked up again and the humidity is fierce. The Bay of Bengal is washing Yangon clean. I have a leak in the roof but, since it isn’t my place and I can conveniently put a bucket under it, I am not in the least worried as I would be if I owned it. Although the temperature is only 77F, with a predicted high of 84F today, I may have to use the air-con as I washed my sheets and they won’t dry with a humidity of 95%. Why did I wash my sheets? I have to keep up the pretense of civilization here. Pretense it is, as I haven’t washed them in a long time. They aren’t, however, aromatic as I shower before bed each night. Still.

Many of the kids we see—-whoa, the rain is really pouring down now—are so responsive to attention and to when their parents stop beating them. It is very different with the traumatized kids I saw at Seneca Center, whose family life was often entirely chaotic and destructive. The children here have intact families who just believe that beating is the way to discipline. It causes an Adjustment Disorder, so when the beating stops, their behavior/depression often resolves promptly. It gives my students a very optimistic view of the efficacy of therapy, which isn’t bad when you are starting out.

I must have some breakfast. I just got off a video call—imagine that, a video call!—with Linda and her grandkids, James and Amelia. They are so cute and sweet and developmentally spot-on.  Linda’s off to Malawi for a month in 2 days, moving the midwifery ward project along nicely.

There’s hope for the world if we can just get this crook out of the White House. Hooray for William Weld, who has signed up for a potentially very stressful year fighting off DT’s scabrous attacks as they both seek the Republican nomination. Weld’s entry is clearly a fundamentally altruistic gesture, a falling on the sword for all of us. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if he actually won it? As is, he may be able to gore the bull enough to further cripple him. Arouses my hostility, that pres does.