Some comparisons - Myanmar tales part 2

I did not expect Myanmar to be so different to Cambodia. By day two I started to take stock - what was so different, and why? Here are some random generalisations of my observations:

Christian believers - deeper. Two things that spring to mind here - Cambodia's church is very young. Almost all the Christians we are among in Cambodia are first-generation believers. Many of the folk we mixed with in Myanmar are third-generation Christians. Further, there are very few Western-based non-government organisations and funding sources in Myanmar. Under very difficult circumstances, believers radically hold on to God. There is not the same temptation to mixed motivations. Cambodia has a high zeal level - in Yangon I saw a higher joy level.

Pagoda kids - the majority people group of Myanmar are the Barma people. They are seriously Buddhist whereas in Cambodia the emerging generation are much more secular Buddhist and token animist. The big moves of God have taken place among the tribal minority peoples, including the Karen, Chin and Kachin. Today, government stats are that Myanmar is 9.7% Christian - Cambodia's stats are 2%.

City layout - spacious! The Brits make room when they design cities. The roads are so much wider; there are parks and open spaces; many houses have a decent block of land. Yangon is much larger than Phnom Penh (approx 5 million vs 1.2 million).

Traffic - no motorbikes! They are outlawed in the city - some fancy reason but the truth will track back to control issues. The masses move by public bus system in Yangon. Phnom Penh does not have a bus system - buses are only for inter-city. Another major difference - order. Yangon drivers stop at red lights, keep in their lane and even use indicators - all very bewildering! Myanmar is drive on the right - but most vehicles on the road have right-hand drive steering wheels ... Everything we travelled in ran on natural gas tanks - even a dog of an old bus ticked along on a dozen old tanks strapped under our seats!

Also - no Toyota Lexus's. A Mitsi Pajero was about the top of the order in a nation where vehicles are so ridiculously expensive that they are never permitted to die. Vehicle imports are strictly controlled (what is not??) and an imported vehicle that is landed for US$3,500 (say a 1995 Toyota Corona) is sold for 45,000,000 kyat (US$45,000.) For a nation where the ordinary person has zero access to a banking system and where the highest 'trusted' denomination note is 1,000 kyat, that is a lot of loot to stuff in a mattress if you want to save for a vehicle!

Postman or military policeman? This was literally the only motorcycle I recall seeing in nine days in Yangon.

The food is most definitely spicier. I wept my way through a 'hot and sour' soup. I never did get to taste the sour - whoever supplied the chillies for this dish should lodge an application with the Guiness Book of Records!

Food - best meal by far was from a street-seller; curry soup samosa vege concoction that was so healthy and tasty that Susie broke her 'I never eat street food' rule. Myanmar is more akin to India food-wise; Cambodia milder like Vietnam.

Upmarket taxi (honestly!) - in our first visit to Myanmar 30 years ago it seemed that every second antique vehicle was a moonlighting taxi. This has been all straightened out now - I did some counting and my figures are the same but now taxis are all licensed. The majority of them have non-working bits (door handles that will not open; windows stuck open or closed) and best of all - monsoon-cooling systems (as in leak like a sieve).

Housing - Phnom Penh has experienced a building boom over the last decade. Thousands and thousands of 'p'teah l'vengs' - blocks of narrow, two or three storey brick homes such as we live in - have gone up for the emerging middle class. By contrast, it appears that Yangon's building boom was in the 1930's with the last maintainance work carried out some time in the '60's. Not the same evidence of slum communities in Yangon. Outer areas - very similar to Cambodia and right thru' Asia with simple wood and bamboo structures.

Typical Yangon housing - eight story apartment blocks with steep, dark stairwells. Note the security screens on the outside which surprised me as Myanmar has a very 'safe' feel and lawlessness often results in headlessness for the perpetrators!

The poor - less visible in Yangon. There does not appear to be a recycling industry, so gone are the thousands of folk we have in Phnom Penh who pull carts or sacks and scavenge in rubbish bags. Very few and very discrete beggars - I got the impression it must be illegal in Myanmar to beg. I think a greater industriousness in Yangon - I did not observe the groups of men gambling over cards like you can see on almost every street corner here.

Why are we waiting??

August is moto-registering month. You get a little window to accomplish this. The alternative is to spend the next 11 months getting pulled over by every cop in town and paying a $1.25 fine per time. The $1.50 rego fee is a much better alternative.

The trick, tho' is to get your hands on the little sticker. You have to look for a table set up on a footpath with a good crowd of people around it. Once located, it is into battle.

Year 1 was something of a nightmare. Once I located the said table, I was part of a mob that had great skill in elbow manouvres. After 30 minutes I figured that Christmas would arrive before cracking this nut. I returned the next day. This time 30 minutes and some good elbowing got me to the front. 'Sorry, we are registering cars this morning - come back this afternoon for your moto'. I did. Unhappily, they did not. Their lunch break lasted all afternoon. I forget now, but it wasa multi-week affair of four or five attempts and some unexpected paperwork before the mission was accomplished.

Year 2 and I tried a new tactic - send out the staff. Sopheap looked slightly worried and took Bonna for backup. They were successful - but it took four hours for two staff. Hmm.

This is year 3. I spied the table. I stopped and approached. There was a worrying lack of multi-elbowed people. The nice lady smiled. I asked for a rego for both the Healing Home moto and my machine. She said '12,000 riel please'. I'm living the dream. 32.4 seconds - unbelieveable! Today, I love this country!!

Ok, so the rego says '4,500 riel' (a bit over a US$1). The extra bit is a happy service charge. Once apprehended, local advice is to cut the rego up and apply in pieces. It makes it less attractive to steal off the bike.

Myanmar tales - part 1

We are fresh back from nine remarkable days in the remarkable nation of Myanmar. Sue and I originally visited this nation for a week in 1980 - in the days when one-week visas were issued and the nation appeared to be in a 1940's time-warp. Thirty years has changed the country a great deal, and Myanmar has since surged into the 1970's.

Pastor Nong (left) and his dad at the 3-day seminar. Nong has a wonderful spirit and a huge heart of love and mercy. Dad is like joybells on steroids!

Myanmar currency is called Kyat (pronounced 'chat'). Like Cambodian money, it is totally worthless outside the nation of issue. Here is a pretty typical 200 kyat (20c) note.

The thing that has not changed is the beauty and graciousness of a people living in extreme challenge. There is way too much to cover in a two-minute blog-read posting so I plan to dribble on for a few weeks about the time in Myanmar - but just to say, when you walk in Myanmar, you walk among giants of faith.

Phil Howan and his daughter Olivia, together with Anthony and Jenny Eggink, were our trusty Kiwi connection people for this time. Phil and Anthony are deeply commited to Myanmar, working with pastors to establish micro-businesses and bringing great encouragement and wisdom. Jenny, who had never been to Asia, 'had' to come this trip to understand what had so totally undone and revolutionised the life of her man. Now she understands.

We'll get to introduce you to some of the people and their stories in due course. Over the nine days we got to visit with children's homes, speak in churches, lead a three-day pastors and leaders training seminar (that got closed down by the powers-that-be, but without repercussions to the locals), meet the leader of a micro-church planting leader (6,381 micro-churches averaging 4-5 people in 10 years, not counting the 400 micro-churches that got swept away in the Nargis flooding of 2008) visit Bible schools and both see and do far more than what I ever could have expected.

Phil praying for Pastor Sompee, a delightful leader who also runs a children's home. In 2006 he was beaten and left for dead by a gang of 15 muslim men. He has since led three of these men to Jesus!

Going AWOL

If the blog goes quiet for 10 days, that is because we are off-line. In a couple of hours Sue and I head to the airport, enroute to Myanmar.

Once, long ago when we were very young, Sue and I visited Myanmar (then called Burma). We spent time in four other nations of SE Asia at that time, too. Myanmar was the nation that gripped my heart the most. I still remember having a strong impression on our flight out of that country, that we would return in the future. That future is 30 years later!

We will be meeting Phil Howan and his daughter Olivia, together with Antonie and Jennifer Eggink (all Kiwis) upon arrival. Phil and Antonie have been there fairly recently and will be our connectors to church leaders and various ministries. Our time there kicks off with a three-day pastors conference.

Cambodia is so close to Myanmar - two flights of one hour each (Phnom Penh - Bangkok; Bangkok - Yangon). In the next ten days I am eager to test the waters for long-term relationships in the future. Establishing Healing Homes within that nation is one of my dreams.

Check-up

Bunthon with Kov last week.

Together with Bunthon, Susie and I drove the 40 minutes out to see Kov last Thursday. It is over a month since he left us, and we were keen to see how he was doing.

Life is going well for the little guy, tho' very different. He is in school six days a week, eight hours a day. So much study and structure must come as a shock for him as he had zero schooling prior to Healing Home and no more than two hours per day during his time with us.

He lives with a house mother and nine other young guys in a sweet little house. The house mum loves him - she says that no other young guy is as helpful and obliging. That's the Kov we know - eager to help; eager to please.

This coming week we are hopeful of seeing his sister come to us at the Healing Home. We really want to help Kov's family and I felt so moved by the sadness in the eyes of his 15-year-old sister the time I visited the family. Heng's brother is in the village now with an offer to the family to bring the girl to us. Once she comes, we have an offer from another organisation to take her into care and training.

Saving Soy's foot

Sue attending to Soy. The bright light is a flash-light that Sue often has on her head (like a coalminer!) when she cares for his wound.

Soy has been with us for around seven weeks now. He's the guy who has a diabetic sore on his foot. The sore was an absolute shocker when he arrived - black toes, black skin and about half a foot ulcerated away to the tendon. We were his last chance before amputation. The progress from day 1 with us, and the acceleration of this progress in the last 10 days, is just wonderful to behold.

Every patient is a training-ground for our carers, Sreymom and Sopheap. They have learned so much in caring for Soy, as Sue walks them thru' wound care and prayer. Remarkably, we discovered that Soy was a doctor in the Pol Pot regime. With all doctors and other educated people killed by the Khmer Rouge, they basically rounded up some likely lads, had the Chinese give them a few days training in acupuncture and turned them loose to be the doctors to a nation. I can only imagine the impact of this time of grace in Soy's life, where he receives that which is so totally far removed from that which he used to give.

Bunthon's back

Happy kids - the teacher has returned! That's Bunthon in the background and our classroom-by-day, motorbike-shed-by-night behind him. Sreyda is in her wheelchair to the left. Susie has wisely got her doing her own washing and helping in the kitchen each day now - in preparation for her to return to Kratie in the beginning of September.

The Healing Home has been pretty full-on this last month, but it has actually been quieter. Bunthorn, as the big brother, is responsible for funding his Year 11 sister through school and on the mornings he was teaching at the Healing Home, there simply was not enough income for him to make ends meet. So, armed with $50, he bought a supply of plastic-ware from a wholesaler and set up a small business at a market.

His is a very typical situation - both in the pressure to provide for a younger family member, and the attempt to start a small business. We hugged him, blessed him and released him. The poor bloke made zilch in his new undertaking and when I checked in with him about two weeks ago and reaffirmed our standing offer that he could return to the Healing Home anytime, he jumped at it. In the last week he has also picked up three other part-time paid jobs as well.

Apologies, but ....

Yes, I know that I've been away from the blog for too long. I've simply been having too much fun, with Melody and her fine man Dave in town for the last 12 days. We've got three kids, and since coming to Cambodia we have had three marriages. Now, we have also had all three of our children come out to visit. We are purring with parental gladness!

We took four days/three nights away to Sihanoukville, on the southern coast, during their time with us. I got the first semi-proper body-surf I've had in Cambodia on day 1, with a 'cold front' putting a bit of a swell onto the beach. Poor Melody got a little overwhelmed by the kids hawking pretty useless stuff on the beach. She bought something from one youngster, and another kid burst into tears because 'you never bought from me'. Poor old soft-hearted Melody!

Downtown Phnom Penh, on our way to Melody and Dave's very favourite place in all Cambodia - Swensen's the deluxe icecream shop. They have, I believe, three shops in the city. Here, we are completing the circuit with a visit to outlet 3!

Inside Central Market, an amazing art-deco-style building that is home to 5,000 stalls (and that is hardly exaggerating). Melody shopped 'til Dave dropped - she has her father's appreciation of fine bags and went home with genuine designer-ware packed inside genuine designer-ware! Dave meanwhile went home with 40 t-shirts he sourced and had printed here for a young guys group he co-leads at TCC - getting all set for the big canoe trip coming up soon.

Dave and Melody flew in via Kuala Lumpur. They are sitting there now as I write, waiting for their overnight flight back to the Gold Coast. Oh for a real beach and a real bodysurf!! For Kiwis, there is the promise of a new el-cheapo way to visit us soon - Jetstar start flights in March 2011 to Singapore with a connection to Phnom Penh for cheaper than a flatscreen telly.