Today we leave our mountain retreat for the five hour drive to Mandalay. Not exactly going back to Mandalay, and not exactly on a romantic road...more like an oddly empty toll freeway with signs like "Think Safety Today, Be Alive Tomorrow." Makes one wonder exactly what happens on this road with no cars on it.
George Orwell called Rudyard Kipling a "good bad poet." He is a bit....let's say, colonial for my taste.
"For the wind is in the palm trees, an' the temple-bells they say:
'Come you back, you British soliders, come you back to
Mandalay!"
But apparently some tastes differ from Orwell's. From Emma Lakin's book, "Finding George Orwell in Burma":
Aung San Suu Kyi, an avid reader, is said to be an admirer of Kipling's writing. She and her British husband, Michael Aris, named their son after the plucky hero of Kipling's novel 'Kim.' And Aung San Suu Kyi used a Burmese translation of Kipling's poem 'If' at one of her rallies during 1988. The poem begins:
"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing their and blaming it on you..."
That seem appropriate for any number of occasions.
Mandalay is one of the few place names that were not changed by the military junta in 1989. They were attempting to decolonialize Myanmar, and they did so, in part, with names. This is good if you have the power and want to reclaim the country from the familiar, the comforting. Take every street, every town name, and wipe it off the map. In fact, just get a fresh map. To be fair, the name Myanmar does refer to the entire country, whereas technically Bamar (where the British got 'Burma') refers just to those of Burman ethnicity.
We stop to try to see a local market in a small village, but we are too late and it is closed. However, there is a wonderful little shop, schoolchildren coming home for lunch, and a packed truck/taxi, all of which I love. The men on the very back of the truck have fashioned rope handholds, keeping themselves from being flung off the end of the truck. They are amused by my interest and my request for a photo.
Cell phones are not nearly as prevalent in Myanmar as they are in other parts of Asia. Only about ten percent of the general population has them, compared to around the sixty percent range in other countries. There is a big push to get more cell coverage and to reduce the price of plans. Apparently, the military wasn't that interested in letting people connect simply and cheaply - it could lead to too much communication and the ability to organize say.....a protest.
And yet...we still nearly plow into a man in a tiny red compact car as he pauses in the middle of an intersection to chat on his mobile. The problem is, and will be, forever universal.
We continue along our deserted freeway, all gleaming and white and straight, desperately searching for a lunch spot. Finally, we see some tiny shacks that look vaguely like restaurants. Or shacks.
We park between two combative restaurants, with women screaming at each other, then at us for the business. The first one is out of soup, so a winner is declared. The neighbors come over anyway, after some pouting, to see the foreigners. Soup is ordered, and then the women begin their examinations. Your eyes are beautiful, no yours are. Your eye lashes, real? Yes, they are. Can I wear your sunglasses and have my picture taken? Why yes, you can. Will you pretend to kiss my cheek, and then have someone take our photo? Sure! Whose baby is this and how are you all related? Sister, sister, mother, baby. Those two, sister, mother. They watch everyone eat, then start passing the babies around, along with the boiled quail eggs and dried fish. They have fresh beer, but dust encrusted soda cans. It is magnificent.
I get a blood oath from my fellow travelers that they will send me the pictures of me and the girl in the star spangled shirt. The ring leader of the group, the one with the spunk and the questions about my eye lashes and my sun glasses.
We arrive in congested Mandalay, amongst the motorbikes that beep, beep, beep their way through traffic. I hadn't noticed, but other travelers tell me that Yangon lacks motorbikes. They are outlawed because an important military figure got hit by one once, so he outlawed all of them. Mandalay is less fortunate.
But watching the advertisements go by (Ponds Soap has ads everywhere that read "White Beauty"), I realize why everyone here thinks the white skin is so pretty. Every single ad, even if it has an Asian model, is white. The skin is either lightened, or the models are selected for their fairness, I'm not sure which. But they do not reflect what so many of the women here look like. Just as in America, where we are told to be white (or pleasingly tanned), tall, rail thin, with impossibly (read: fake) long eye lashes and hair and big boobs...here their standard of beauty is fair skin, light eyes, and dark hair. Just like Ethiopia and India with the "skin lightening soap" - the same is true here. As an outsider, I can see how beautiful these women are - but I'll admit, I don't always see it in myself. But they see it. It just reinforces my belief that we need to step outside ourselves to see how we look to the rest of the world. To see the beauty we can't see in ourselves. To appreciate the beauty of others.
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