[Above photo: With my long-time friend, Stephen Arkin, in front of his favorite won ton dive in the Sunset District of San Francisco. 55 years after we first met, I finally realize how much taller he is than I.]
10 February 2020
Although I have a “Multiple Entry Visa” for Myanmar which is good for 6 months, my “Stay Permit” must be renewed after every 70 days. Curious. And the cost is considerable, considering that soon I’ll be working full-time for the government (University of Medicine 1) for free. In fact, it is cheaper to fly to Thailand and back than to pay for a Stay Extension; on your return to Myanmar with a valid multiple entry visa, you get a FREE Stay Permit extension. Since this is my last week before classes start full-time, I am taking 5 days to visit Sukhothai, the ancient capitol of Thailand, replete with wonderful monuments. My friend, Kate, suggested it after a moving visit there herself some years ago. Tonight I’m staying at an old house with four rental rooms (each with a balcony and en suite bathroom) in a very quiet spot in the middle of Chiang Mai. It is run by a lovely, attentive couple and the whole place has an appealing aesthetic, replete with greenery and calm. You go through a small locked gate from the street and walk down a long, narrow corridor lined by bamboo and many healthy plants. I’ll taxi to the bus station in the morning to catch the 10:15AM for Sukhothai where I’ll stay for a few days.
This evening I wandered through tiny lanes with frangipani trees and bougainvillea in bloom, stumbled on a sweet vegetarian restaurant and made up for not eating lunch. Then I wandered back and, somehow, found the home where I am staying. I’m going to buy a huge vase and bonzai a frangipani tree on my deck. The fragrance is so incredible and the trees look so wonderfully weird.
Aillen was going to meet me here but she was informed that she’d be on a 14 day quarantine when she returned to Macau. Then, more recently, they closed all the casinos and shut down the airport so no flights are going in or out. It would have been much more fun for me travelling with her.
The last week was eventful. I joined Professor Tin Oo at the University of Medicine 1 Library where he and 2 other senior psychiatrists were conducting oral exams for the applicants for my training program. They have completed a written exam already. Happily, there are 5 who will be in the group, not 4 as was proposed, and they are all women. I knew one and met two others who seem terrific. One has left her husband and two children, 5 and 3yo, all of whom she adores, in Magwe and will return each weekend to visit them and run her private clinic. Another will return to Dawei each weekend, a 13 hour bus ride each way, to run her clinic. They work for, and highly value, their education, these docs. And two more psychiatrists, both men, from the Defense Academy have applied and are awaiting Ministry approval. So I may have 7! Little by little the core of child-trained professionals grows here.
Speaking of which, I began to train the UNICEF-funded group in Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Adolescents on Saturday and Sunday this week. The class ran 9-4:30 each day with a brief break for lunch. There are 7 women and we are looking to add an 8th participant. One is a psychiatrist, one a GP with a Masters in Psychology, two psychology graduate students, and three others with interest and experience in counselling. They are at very different levels of training, experience, and English proficiency so it will take some flexibility to bring them all along. The irony is that in this country of great need, it is not easy to find a clinical site in which to do brief (6-12 weeks) therapy. The government programs, including the juvenile detention facilities—euphemistically known as “Training Schools”—all require Ministry approval, which may take forever. The bureaucratic constipation here greatly retards progress. It’s not as if a better decision is made when a request sits motionless on the corner of your desk for 3 months.
The training group, as with all groups in my experience, was a bit flat the first day, and much better the second. Since I am doing it in my apartment, complete with PowerPoint projector and screen, white board and markers, and a large thermos full of lepay yei jan (green tea), everyone is relaxing a bit faster than normal. Most wore fancy clothing the first day and jeans on Sunday. I shall wear my Shan shorts and a tee shirt, thus avoiding the ironing demanded if wearing a longyi and white shirt. When lunch came, the leader of the program found a little Shan restaurant a quarter of a block up my street where we can eat for a pittance and the food is fine. I’d walked past it many times but had not peered into the darkness of the entrance to see what it looked like inside. It’s good to have another handy, inexpensive, tasty go-to spot when I don’t feel like cooking. Interestingly, the two young Masters in Psychology students are lively and very engaged, asking questions and revealing themselves openly. I say interestingly because the psychology program at University of Yangon has no psychotherapy training or trainers. They’ll lead the way for the group, I think.
After class Saturday I went to a Burns Night party. The birthday of Rabbie Burns, the de facto poet laureate of Scotland (“Red, Red Rose”, “To A Mouse”, “To A Louse”, etc.), is celebrated wherever there are Scots. We went to two fabulous Burns Nights in Malawi, complete with kilts, sporin, dirks, pipers, highland dancing, and a lot of Scotch whiskey. Plus toasting the haggis and some roasts—of men by a woman and of women by a man. Such drunken fun!
This party was at the home of my friends, Jose and Irene. She is a Scot and loves to sing Scot and Celtic songs, as I described in an earlier post. She has a bell-clear voice, perfect for the job. In addition to singing Scot songs, there was a piper whose drones kept sticking (to the hilarity of all), a young Burmese man who could play truly amazing acoustic and electric guitar, and two women who sing from the American jazz songbook (one is British, one is Dutch). Kelly and I roasted dozens of different kinds of sausages and beer and wine flowed freely. One man, Peter, gave a terrific brief history of the honoree, including his lecherous proclivity. The man delighted in sex, having something like 14 children with at least 4 different women. When he couldn’t sleep with the woman he was courting, he’d sleep with her chamber maid. Given that there was no birth control, excepting abstinence, 14 may not actually be as astounding an indicator of his libidinal appetite as it would seem today. Perhaps it says more about his lack of responsibility.
I had to leave at 10:30PM, since I was tired from teaching all day and had to do the same the next morning. I wrote a brief thank you to my hosts when I got home and sent it off on WhatsApp, going to their many invitees. In it I mentioned I was sorry I had to “fuck out early”. Now, if you look at a qwerty keyboard, f and d are immediate neighbors, especially on a bitty iPhone. When I discovered it in the morning the two responses were, “A typo, I think.” And “Homage to Burns, I’m sure.” Good laughs were had.
And good laughs were needed this week, given the disgusting mess the Pres. and his cronies are making of our government and country. If the GOP weren’t so spineless, they could contain him quite easily, even without removing him from office. They certainly managed to thwart the majority of Barack’s good deeds, and he is intelligent (like a human, not like a reptile). We must get out the vote and then he’ll go.
A Psychiatrist in Myanmar 