Summer Camp in Burma

April 9 - 20, 2007

The MY STORY photo project has just returned from a 2 week workshop in Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar (Burma). We were asked to give the photo workshops by a young Karen/Burmese guy who has lots of ideas and lots of energy. HIs idea was to train some young Burmese considered ' at risk' and to do it through an Anglican youth group. We decided it was too good an opportunity to pass up so on April 8 we flew into Yangon and on April 9 we met our 14 students.

Yikes! We had said we could handle 6 students ( we'd brought 6 cameras ) but our guy gave us a seventh camera, we divided the gang into 2 person teams, sharing cameras , and off they went. The age range was 16 to 31, including two young women, one of whom reminded us of Peanut's Lucy! There were 2 older Karen guys ( the 31 yr. olds) and we decided that our Karen friends in Mae Sot had planted them there to make sure we didn't do anything foolish.

The workshops were held in a big concrete hall, part of Bishop's Court, the compound where the Anglican archbishop of Myanmar lives. We gave the kids short assignments, downloaded them ( this took quite a while), talked about them as best we could in a mixture of Burmese/English/Karen/sign language and had them edit them. Because we didn't have access to a printer, we'd put the edited images on a CD and rush them downtown to get 3x5 prints made. 'Rush' might be a bit of an exageration! The temperature was 40+ and Yangon is very spread out, which meant a taxi, usually w. no door or window handles, definitely no aircon! We took them on one field trip to a nearby pagoda which was fine until we walked through an army complex on the way home. Nat and I were terrified, but the students were very much at ease and no one said 'boo' to us. Go figure! At the end of the workshop, the students chose 5 pictures each and mounted them on big sheets of kraft paper which were then hung from a wire along one wall.

The workshops felt like summer camp; kids on summer holiday, short attention spans, love to talk, sing, and play ping pong (there were 2 ping pong tables in the hall). So we had our work cut out for us; by the end of the training we felt like vaudevillians: yukking it up, making faces, anything to get the information across. And judging by their photos they did learn something; whether from us or from each other is debatable.

Our time in Yangon coincided with 'Thingyan', their water festival/new year, when everything closes and people stand on the streets with hoses spraying anything that passes by. We lost 2 days teaching then because public transportation stops ( this consists of ancient cartoon like buses, stuffed to the gills with humans) so our students had no way of getting to class. So...

Nat and I decided to take a train ride that circles greater Yangon, 1$ US for foreigners, 20 Kyt for Burmese. 'We won't get wet,' I said, 'It's a train...' The train had open windows and doors, benches that ran the length of the cars , and made 36 stops. At each stop someone would either get on with a hose or heave a bucket of water through one of the windows. Needless to say we were drenched! And it felt sooo good. Then we took a ferry across the Yangon river ( also $1 US, insurance included) to the dusty little town of Dalat. We went at sunset so it was blessedly cool. Lovely!

Initially we stayed downtown in a guest house with aircon. But there is a great lack of electricity in the city ( all the buildings have generators on the street that throb through the night), so we were often in the dark. And it was a cab ride to work and a cab ride back. So when our contact said he could get us a deal at a hotel near Bishop's Court that had a SWIMMING POOL we said yes, please. This meant we could walk to work and there was a Black Canyon (Thai coffee shop franchise) just up the road that was open from 5 pm on during water festival so we could eat.

Made two visits to Shwe Dagon Pagoda, the holiest Buddhist temple in Burma; one at 7 am and one at 9 pm. There are many golden chedis and stupas aside from the great big one that you can see from almost everywhere in the city. The main one has a 78 carat diamond at the top which changes color at night depending on where you stand to see it. We were shown this by a 60 year old retired electrician who appointed himself our guide that night and then said he had no pension, no income, etc etc. We were happy to pay him for his guidance. There is a sense of calm at Shwe Dagon, even though there are many many people walking, praying, kids playing, banging on drums; we both felt it.

The city itself has lots of broad avenues and big ugly concrete buildings but it also has lots of big trees on those avenues and quite a few architectural vestiges of the British time there, including many many Christian churches, all of them in seemingly good repair.

It's dirty, noisy, polluted and fascinating. Great Indian food, weird entrail looking things being cooked in oil on the street that you spear with a bamboo skewer and gnaw on ( not for the faint of stomach) and good beer. The people seem very friendly, always ready with a 'hello' , ready to listen to your butchered Burmese with a smile.

Must stop now and go PACK as we leave Mae Sot on Monday, April 30 for Bangkok and home.