[Above photo: At Convocation Hall with my splendid former student, Dr. Anawar Yee Nyo, after she received her PhD.]
1 March 2020
This has been a week, teaching from Sunday through Thursday and again this Saturday and Sunday. Tomorrow is a national holiday, Peasants’ Day. Feeling like a serf, I’ll take it.
When I was teaching in Mandalay in January three members of the nursing faculty took me to supper. One, clever and observant, asked, “Do you use a belt to hold up your longyi?” Busted out, I replied, “No. I use a cord. Then I don’t have to worry all day that it will fall down.” “I can tell.” It stung that it was so obvious I was an imposter. I’ve been open about it, however, with my students and anyone who asks. Well, I went on YouTube and watched two videos and now I no longer use a cord. I tie my longyi like a pro in the morning and it often lasts all day. I still don’t know why it works now and when I tried a year ago it wouldn’t work at all. Another of the Great Mysteries of Myanmar. Like, “Where does the $30 billion from the legal government jade mining go?” Best not to ask too much, I think.
The low point this last week of February was meeting with the Medical Superintendent of Yangon Children’s Hospital with Dr. Le Le Khaing, a very smart and competent woman in my Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 2020 course. I was to meet her outside his office at 9:45AM. At 9:58AM she called me at home where I was sitting in my boxers, unshaven, preparing lectures. Yikes! I whizzed into action, shaved, combed, sun-blocked, longyied up, and hailed a cab in one continuous swift motion. Without my saying so, the cabbie got my anxiety and drove swiftly the couple of miles to the hospital. At 10:14AM I met her and at 10:16AM we were sipping tea with the very genial MS. Oh, the poor nurses are sleeping 6 to a room, I have a new 16 story building going up within 3 years, I am so very appreciative of the work you did last year, etc. But there is no room for a training clinic this year. What about the room we were promised in October? Which room? Who promised it? As I described the room, he said, No, no, that is the resting room for patients who aren’t admitted. No? Well, then it’s the room they use for religious ceremonies? Not being used? Oh, I know, it’s a lecture amphitheater. No chairs? No, you’re mistaken, I’m afraid. I know it. Definitely a busy lecture amphitheater. But I have a meeting with the department heads this very afternoon and I hope we can find you a room. I’ll call Dr. Le Le Khaing after the meeting. Le Le and I said “Thank you. Goodbye.” We headed to the promised room; it was in an unused section of the building, down a locked corridor, and there were bricks and rubble in front of the door. [I’d seen it in October. It was a large empty room not used for years; I’ve been shaping and furnishing it in my mind to be a functional training clinic since I first saw it.] We returned and re-entered his office, sharing our discovery. He became a bit irritated, and re-iterated that it was a busy lecture amphitheater. When Le Le and I were driving away, she suggested that some more powerful (What is less powerful than Child Psychiatry, pray tell?] department had possession of it and was loathe to let us use it lest we put down deep roots. I left very disheartened as the students are ready to start seeing patients. That is where and when they will really begin to learn, not in our lecture hall. She never got that call from him.
I wrote the same to my professor at University of Medicine 1. He asked his protégé, Dr Kyi, to answer me. Dr. Kyi was my student last year and is a great guy, a fantastic fixer, and soothes frayed nerves. “Don’t worry about a room. We’ll arrange for you to meet with the Union Minister (Cabinet minister for Health and Sports) in Nay Pyi Taw soon.” So, we’ll go over the Medical Superintendent’s head, which will surely endear me to him during our future contacts.
This is to alert any of you with a bunch of money. I am meeting with a Harvard/Columbia-trained architect and I’ll be assembling a design for a Child and Adolescent Psychiatry training center/clinic. I will seek to get some land donated by the government. The Rector of University of Medicine 1 volunteered he’s planning to develop a professorship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. So I’ll be hitting up friends and family who have some extra for a building fund. Think, you’ll be contributing to the first Child and Adolescent Psychiatry building/clinic/center/training program in Myanmar. If not on a tile or brick, at least your name will be on a brass plaque. Like the carved marble tile on top of the Mt. Popa Monastery which reads: “Burma Superstar San Francisco $20”. That was back when $20 meant something. I’ll be asking for a bit more.
The high point of the week was yesterday. I was up at 6, in the rented van at 7, at the monastery with all the students (8) in my weekend psychotherapy class and other helpers (3) by 9. Three of us spent most of an hour with the head monk, trading pleasantries, eating tasty snacks, and learning a bit about the place. It was founded 20 years ago by two German women and now cares for 120 boys, half of whom are orphans, from all over Myanmar. Many are from conflict zones where there are no functioning schools. The oldest is 17yo, the youngest is 18 months. The food, for they gave us lunch, was delicious. The kids were sweet and fun and looked well-cared for, if anxious about their exams in two weeks, especially the math and the English. Their stories of loss and abuse were stunning.
My students, four of whom have taken an advanced EMDR course in Thailand, led two EMDR groups in the morning. Then all 8 of them saw a total of 20 cases individually in Interpersonal Psychotherapy, which is where I come in. Since I cannot understand Myanmar, I have to work on the 75% or so of communication that is non-verbal. It gave me enough to talk about with them in class today. Finally, the husband of one of our physicians led the older boys in a soccer workshop while the sister of another of our physicians, an architect, led the younger boys in a drawing class. Moreover, my students are using two standard assessment tools and studying the entire intervention, which will last 3 ½ months, for efficacy. These people are amazing! On top of that, two of the students, both physicians and leaders of the group, were in a conflict zone in rural, northern Rakhine state all week, training social workers.
If lonely at times, this is such fun, so thrilling, and so worthwhile.
I just hope the drunken 3yo in the White House gets Covid-19 since he brags with such assurance at the amazing job he has done to contain it: some form of karmic justice, please. How can we complain with Dr. Pence, that renowned public health specialist, at the helm of the containment effort? He, as governor, in an antiscientific evangelical huff, refused to approve needle exchange for the largest outbreak of HIV in the State of Indiana, despite his public health experts urging him to effect it. It required two months,while the epidemic raged on, for him to relent and order it, resulting in an estimated 100 unecessary infections. This doesn’t inspire confidence. [God must have said something I missed about needle exchange and Carnal Sin.] His first act as the Covid-19 czar was to make sure that all news about it is filtered by him before its release, clearly for a mellow political spin. Read the wonderful article in the current New Yorker about the dramatic negative effects of news suppression vs. transparency during pandemics throughout history. He probably thinks Covid-19 is a CNN-DNC-inspired temptress designed to put a wedge between him and “Mother”. If it wasn’t so serious, I’d be crying with laughter.
As unlikely as it is to happen, Tom Friedman’s opinion piece in the NY Times about assembling a winning presidential coalition has great appeal, although the internecine battles have the potential to be legendary.
A Psychiatrist in Myanmar 