The Road to Mandalay

The greeting in Burmese is: Min-ga-la-bar. Translated into English: Have you had a meal yet? First things first I guess.

Languishing in a hotel lobby awaiting an international flight home, there is electricity,  I am internet connected for the first time in weeks. Burma, a land of guilted pagodas and 3rd world life. 

You see, for a third world country like Myanmar, Burma really, electricity is a rare commodity. Rangoon apartments cost more for the ground floor as there are no electricity for lifts, elevators. Imagine a six floor walk up in 40 C or 106 F day time temps. 

I seemed to have gotten ahead of myself. In  the middle of the country, the city of Mandalay, on the Irrawaddy River with headwaters in the Himalayan Mountains, our hotel was our boat. Nice accommodations and excellent service. For ten days this boat was our base, our "jumping off point.

The Irrawaddy River is at 

its low point during the dry season. The summer monsoon rains raise the water level another 25 feet from what you see here. Ship beached, tied to shore by lines attached to stakes driven into the River embankment. Our route ashore was a gangplank being assembled here.











On the other hand, as there were no formal docks, we could stop at towns and villages along the way, meet and greet people and see their lives. 

Our guided tour was from one Buddha and Pagoda to another.

Buddha stands, sits, reclines. There are modern and ancient Buddhas. We saw examples of many forms, heights, weights. One Buddha, seated, had 20 centimeter thick worth of gold. As much gold as is in the vaults of London.

The construction of the pagodas are from bricks made from red clay fired by wood from the surrounding forests which are no more.

Gold leaf to be rubbed onto Buddha, pounded into thin thin layers and attached to parchment are then purchased by the faithful and rubbed onto Buddha.
The sounds of pounding are deafening and I am sure these young men are also deaf.











Villages along the Irrawaddy River have five minutes of electricity sometime during the night or day. Solar panel seen atop a bamboo house on stilts with family pig wallowing in the dust below. Mom cooks over an open pit fire in a corner of their plot. The distance is to prevent sparks from burning down their dwelling. The hot dry air has an acrid smell that stings the eyes. Here along the road to Mandalay are close to sixty million people, 80% of whom live on less than a dollar a day, without consistent energy, gather such wood, oxen dung and what biofuel is handy to make a daily meal. 

The Soviets and East Germans with their egalitarian societal influence have long departed after their own financial collapse leaving in their stead, a Communist military elite and now the fourth most corrupt nation in the world behind Somalia, Afghanistan , North Korea. What does Karl Marx's final withering away of the state look like? Come to Burma and see guilted pagodas, picturesque women, hired in gangs at $4 a day to off load 49 kg bags of rice hoisted upon their heads across a 2 x8 gangway from the long tail river boats to make a stack for future carrying up the River embankment and disappearing into the country side on a dust road.

 I guess, during the rainy season, when the Irrawaddy River rises 7 meters, the trek up the embankment is less arduous but more slippery. Don’t get me wrong, there are electric poles and wires with electricity pirating lines going to homes, it’s just that there is no electricity to steal. People await the snapshot of energy from the government or, in the Buddhist tradition, when some rich merchant uses his diesel generator, he shares with the other villagers his liter of power. He gets merits towards Nirvana. The decaying Soviet & East German infrastructure remains, but there is no energy. The ruling elite have contracted with the Chinese to dam the head waters to the Irrawaddy and ship the hydroelectricity to……..China.