Beth the Educator invited me to join on a weekly trip to an orphanage on the far edge of town. Past the huge mosque, past the Indian tea shop, past a part of town I hadn't seen before. "Every Sunday night," she said, "We take them to a playground and run around for an hour or two." As we were getting close to the playground, now surrounded by forty screaming, jumping, running kids -- one of them dragging me along behind him as fast as I'd let him run -- she admitted another piece of detail. "When we say 'playground,' I should warn you, it's more of a field filled with shit and trash."
Which it was. And with building site rubble. And shacks and the people who lived in them. And motorbikes and cars rushing through them. And the kids loved it. A boy handed me a paper airplane. I threw with purpose, then watched as it nosedived straight into a huge soft cow pie. He laughed out, plucked it out, and threw it right back. ("I really have to remember to wash my hands," I thought, before minutes later finding myself picking at my teeth. Oh well, what's another parasite?)
I wasn't sure what I'd expected -- the kids to be malnourished? (most looked healthy, even though so many were living in what looked like one small house.) crying? (some did, but usually when their ball was stolen or they fell.) non-verbal? (some were.) but more, and this is incredibly trite, they reminded me of the children from Annie. Finding happiness where they find themselves. These couple of hours reminded me how adaptable kids are. And also that you really, really don't need a PlayStation to be happy.
Where are the parents?
I'm not sure if these orphans had parents or not, but the next morning, Neil and Hal and I visited the AAPP, commonly referred to as "the Political Prisoner Museum." Than, the guesthouse manager, had warned us, "You'll be watched when you go in. The Burmese military are always watching. They will write how many go, who you are, how long you stay, what is said." As we walked in and out, I did indeed notice men in dark glasses, watching us -- but they surely were with the building crew across the street. Surely, they were.
Inside, we met with a former Burmese student, Aung Kyaw Oo. He'd marched in 1988, and afterwards taken his political views underground. Until he was arrested in 1991, and held in a small cell filled with hardened criminals, for 14 years. He was beaten, he was tortured, he was one of the thousands of Burmese political prisoners, held without trial, without just cause. My reading material now is a torture book he gave me. It's a gruelling read, moreso in that there's no relief. Page after page of torture methods and reports.
Visiting a Christian coffee shop afterwards, flipping through a New Testament comic book, and chatting with the Iowa missionary who ran the place, I could finally breathe again. The shop was called The Oasis. I needed one.
And I've found one in Old Sukhothai, three hours further down the road.
It's really just another town of ruins. Nothing as expansive as Bagan (two thousand temples over a few square miles) or as glorious as Siem Reap (as I plan to discover in May), it's an old capital, full of much reconstructed Buddhas and Wats. But every corner is a picture postcard or a moment of peace. When you can dodge the aircon tourbuses filled with German tourists.
(I've found the best way is to bike down the unmarked paths. The Buddhas you find are oft-decapitated, oft-disarmed, reminding me of that old poem: "two vast, and trunkless legs of stone..." But they're also quiet, and incredible, and far from others.)
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