[ Lost in the Landscape ]

from 8.8.88 to 8.8.08

Although this is not a polit­i­cal blog, it’s a space that acknowl­edges that you can’t escape the world, even nested within the walled con­fines of your pri­vate­gar­den spaces. An event that crept into my men­tal gar­den is the 20^th anniver­sary of the 8.8.88 pop­u­lar upris­ing in Burma (a coun­try whose mil­i­tary rulers have decided should be called Myan­mar). I thought I’d mark the occa­sion with pic­tures from a trip I took there with my father in 1998, shortly after the tenth anniver­sary of the attempted revolution.

But first, a quick recap in case you’re not famil­iar with the events: On August 8, 1988 stu­dent pro­test­ers led a pop­u­lar upris­ing against the rul­ing mil­i­tary junta, lead­ing in the course of sev­eral weeks to the down­fall of Gen­eral Ne Win. For the first time since 1962, when the gen­eral seized power, the coun­try sensed that democ­racy might be pos­si­ble once again. But the mil­i­tary pan­icked and installed mar­tial law, lead­ing to a crack­down that very likely resulted in far more casu­al­ties than China’s noto­ri­ous and bet­ter known Tianan­men Square inci­dent which would take place less than a year later.

The inci­dent in China was immor­tal­ized in that famous pho­to­graph of the lone pro­tester fac­ing off with a tank. Frag­ile flesh meets hard­ened steel; youth­ful ide­al­ism con­fronts bureau­cratic power. How can any­one for­get that picture?

But with a gov­ern­ment more secre­tive and repres­sive than even China’s, there were no sim­i­larly indeli­ble images to make it out of the Burma, and the events of 8.8.88 live pri­mar­ily through sto­ries handed down from those who were there. In retelling the story I hope to keep its mem­ory alive. [Read more on Burmese democ­racy efforts.]

Fast-forward ten years to Octo­ber 1998, the end of the mon­soon sea­son, and two months after a small band of stu­dents had staged a protest in front of Sule Pagoda in down­town Ran­goon. The stu­dents were no match and the gov­ern­ment won this time.

Things were “sta­ble” when we arrived, though an Orwellian smog hung in the air every­where we went. Sol­diers with rifles guarded key loca­tions in Ran­goon. Check­points with armed guards slowed down travel out­side of the cap­i­tal. (The US State Depart­ment still had a travel advi­sory in place.)

Above: One of the many mind-control signs you see around the coun­try. (The Tat­madaw is the rul­ing junta.) This one is on the grounds of the his­toric palace in Mandalay–prime tourist habi­tat. Imag­ine a sign like this at the entrance to Dis­ney­land…

Our plan was to touch base with fam­ily in the Ran­goon area for a week, travel for two weeks around what parts of the coun­try the mil­i­tary allowed any­one to visit, and then return for a final week to Ran­goon. That last week was time I’d set aside to “do pho­tog­ra­phy” beyond my tourist snap­shots. The malaria I con­tracted in up-state Burma gave me a week of fevered delir­ium to end my trip instead, so all these pho­tos were snapped dur­ing the first part of the trip. Out of a few hun­dred slides, I’ve scanned a few of botan­i­cal inter­est, a few of my father’s home vil­lage, some zoo pic­tures, plus a few that show some of the tex­tures of how peo­ple live under one the most repres­sive regimes in the world.

To get to my father’s vil­lage we drove to the city where the good dirt road ended and the bad dirt road began. There we rented a Jeep to take us as far we could get on road sur­faces that were still part-liquid, part-goo from the mon­soons that were just con­clud­ing. In Burma’s poor econ­omy, even the rel­a­tively pros­per­ous who could afford a vehi­cle couldn’t nec­es­sar­ily afford tires or the bribes nec­es­sary to get you in the good graces of the offi­cials who would have access to foreign-made tires in the first place. After we couldn’t go any far­ther in the Jeep, we hired a bul­lock cart to take us the last cou­ple of miles to the village.

One of my father’s friends who also emi­grated to the United States from this vil­lage sent money back to his rel­a­tives. Some of the funds helped the fam­ily get by. Some went to build a small pagoda out­side the vil­lage. And some went to build­ing this catch basin that helps pro­vide the vil­lagers with water through the eight months of the year that see almost no rain­fall. This is gen­er­ally how projects get financed. The gov­ern­ment does vir­tu­ally noth­ing unless the rulers can derive some kind of ben­e­fit from the transaction.

A flow­er­ing cot­ton plant in the vil­lage. Although I wear a lot of cot­ton, I’d never thought much about where it came from until I saw this plant. Look­ing at the flow­ers you can tell right away that it’s a mal­low, first cousin to hol­ly­hocks, okra and hibiscus.

Farm­ers in the vil­lage cot­ton fields, like farm­ers and gar­den­ers every­where else, have prob­lems with weeds. Here’s one of their unde­sir­ables, an Asi­atic lily. (If all my weeds could be so attrac­tive I wouldn’t have any need for “good” plants!)

The vil­lage bicy­cle mechanic’s “garage.” The mechanic, like many adults that you encoun­tered, auto­mat­i­cally went into this stiff, at-attention pose when­ever you’d point a cam­era at him, maybe some­thing to do with cam­eras loaded with slow film… My father has the same pos­ing issues, even with a cam­corder. (You can imag­ine how com­pelling videos of him just stand­ing there are.)

The last night we were in the vil­lage we hired a band and threw a party. Most of the vil­lage showed up. Two of the musi­cians are shown with split-bamboo per­cus­sion clap­pers called wal­le­cotes (how­ever you spell it…).

Above: After we left the vil­lage we passed through another, more pros­per­ous set­tle­ment. Here’s a class at their school.

An agi­tated ele­phant at the Ran­goon zoo. I am not a fan of zoos, and a visit to an old-school zoo like this one shows some of the rea­sons. The legs of the ele­phants stay chained to the posts all day long. Even at the thor­oughly mod­ern San Diego Zoo and Wild Ani­mal Park, the ele­phants were kept chained to their stalls at night until the prac­tice was dis­con­tin­ued in the 1990s in response to a well-publicized and par­tic­u­larly egre­gious case of neglect.

Caged mon­key at the Ran­goon zoo.

This leop­ard and a neigh­bor­ing lion got to spend their days pac­ing twelve-foot-square cages of steel and concrete.

A cou­ple of road­side epi­phytic plants: a staghorn fern on the left and on the right an orchid in the vanda/phalaensopsis (Sar­can­thi­nae) sub­tribe. Between cities, you can park your car and often see exotic plantlife like this.

Here are a cou­ple good sites if you’d like to do a lit­tle more read­ing on the coun­try. The sec­ond in par­tic­u­lar has some actions that you can do to help bring democ­racy back to Burma, every­thing from switch­ing off the Olympics to donat­ing your many billions.

Irrawady.com
US Cam­paign for Burma

August 08 2008 11:40 am | Categories: landscape • places • rambles | Tags: 8888 • agriculture • Burma • China • dictatorships • vacations • weeds

Trackback URI | Comments RSS

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (hidden) (required)

Website

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail