04.02.2007
Irregularities in Burma's Education System part 4
_ By Dr. Hla Khine
Filial Piety –
Not long after my arrival back from London, my dear father had a stroke the reason of which I’ve already explained. Mandalay, my place of work in the plains is 42 miles down-hill along hairpin bends. Maymyo being around 3750 feet above sea-level is cold during winter- November – February. I went back up to Maymyo every evening after office hours just to sleep besides my half-paralysed father and help him with the urinals etc. in the night and covering him with warm blankets each time he got up. Early every morning, after morning prayers, I would go down to work to Mandalay. At weekends, my wife and I would give both the parents hot bath and washed their hair. Using large towels we would dry up their hair and changed their clothes. This routine was maintained for four and a half years until my father died.
Not long afterwards the health of my dear mother deteriorated. I continued to go up as usual and this time I slept beside my mother. Sometimes in the night the bedstead would shake. I got awakened . I usually see her sitting up. She complained that she had backache, retroverted uterus ?. I would gently massage her with MonHyinSi, the mustard seed oil until she felt better and went back to sleep. Sometimes she wanted to pass urine so I helped her down to the bed pan and helped her up again after that. Sometimes as I was slowly lifting her to bring her down to the bed-pan, slight incontinence would take place which would soil her sarong. I would change her sarong for a clean dry one but I used to sling it from over her head which was not conventional. Saying ‘Gador, gador. Mei Mei’ (My apologies Mum) I would change the sarong for her. She told me frequently that being a son it was not my job to be doing that. I just smiled at her and pointing at the hired night-nurse who was snoring soundly on the deck chair beside the bed told her “I’m your son, and if I don’t do this, who’ll do it?” Many times also she repeated “Son, all this faithful service to us would act as a ‘Shield’ one day and reflect back whatever misfortune that may befall you”. At that time, I did not realize what she was saying and I did not know of its significance and i did not mind or cared. All that I knew was that with my brother Maurice in Base Military Hospital in Mingaladon and my eldest sister in Mandalay, it was my bounden duty to help them in everyway I can. It was only when I was in the river and the jungle and felt the sliding snake and later meeting with my childhood friend in, of all unexpected and unlikely and impossible places, Thailand, that the significance of her frequent mention about the ‘Shield’ sank into my mind.
Hamza,
Tin Myint
He is a Burmese Muslim and his real name was Amir Hamza but the friends know him by his Burmese name, Tin Myint. There was something unique about his features and I came to realize its true nature only when I became a medical student. He had exophthalmos, an overactive thyroid gland which made his eyes to appear rounder and larger compared to other people. I was overjoyed and a bit surprised as he put his arm around my shoulder and took me to his house in the village which was not so far from the river. Overjoyed because he showed genuine friendship and surprised because he acted like we were still young friends by putting his arm around my shoulder.
His wife looked half his age and did the usual Thai ‘Wai’ (LetOkeChee) as she uttered SawadiKa or something like that. She did not speak Burmese at all but used body language and hands to indicate what she meant. Most of our conversation was translated by Tin Myint. I was lavished with good Thai cuisine for a week and he would sit by my low bed and talked late into the night about all that I missed during my absence from Maymyo. He could still remember each of our friends, the mannerisms, the gait, the facial tick or the favourite swear word of each of them. We reminisced about many Dazaungdaing (light festival) nights when the moon was full and exceptionally bright and when we used to steal chicken from neighbour’s chicken coups just for the fun of it. Although the chicken were sacrificed in ‘halal’ fashion and cooked underneath the old shady Tamar (Neem) tree, I’ve never enjoyed the stolen food as it was not cooked properly. Such a waste of life and property. But come time for DazaungDaing this stealing for fun was performed faithfully and repeated like a Cult rite. We just sat back and talked and giggled at the silly unreasonable things that we did together with friends. But even after a week of such ‘pow wow’, we still had things to talk about and discuss on many things. Still my mind was elsewhere, The National University of Malaysia.
As it turned out later, he wanted me to stay with him there in his house and promised to take me up North to Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, maybe to work in the Universities there. However, after much persuasion and half-given promises, he took me down south to Songkhla. The funny thing about taking the bus-liners in Thailand is that although the highways are far better than in Malaysia and the buses luxurious, before the journey a couple of transport officials would come up onto the bus and record the faces of each of the passenger with a video camera. Any armed robbery taking place along the journey would entail scrutiny of the video to ascertain which of the passengers were accomplices in the heist. From Songkhla I was to proceed to Sungai Golok (Su Ngai ) where just across the ‘stream’ is Malaysian territory. But unfortunately, there was an incident of kidnap-murder in the region and the police had set up Check Points. So soon after Tin Myint had put me onto a taxi and had paid the taxi driver the fare he demanded, we were cruising along at a comfortable 60 mph along the route strewn with leaning coconut trees and cottages with thatched roofs and also those with rusting corrugated zinc sheets, when we had to slow down at a checkpoint. With Tin Myint no longer with me and with no valid travel documents and being unable to communicate in Thai language, the police officer with a crimson lanyard slung through his shoulder epaulet did not understand the kindergarten English I was using in trying to communicate with him. He asked me to get out of the taxi and waved me towards an army truck parked under the shade of a tree.
Detention
Camp for Illegal Immigrants – Stalag 17
As I climbed onto the truck, there were 5 other people on it. Two of them were foreigners, a German and a Frenchman. The latter was whippet-lean while the German was well-built and stocky. When he introduced himself to me his name sounded something like ‘GoonTha’ but the spelling should be Gunter. The French guy looked weak and was dozing. As we got to the Detention Camp, I was flabberghasted. As I alighted from the truck, seeing my taikpone jacket (Tin Myint had given me three of his trousers and ‘warned’ me not wear the longgyi again in Thai territory) a couple of detainees asked ‘ AkoYey, Bamar laa?’ (Brother, Are you Burmar) There were hundreds of them, girls, ladies, boys and men. The supply truck comes in at 9 a.m every morning and the Ambulance at 11 am.
From the few papers found on my person, knowing that I am a medical personnel , the Camp Commandant, 40 something at the time (I was told that he was a Military Intelligence Officer, but in Police uniform) who spoke some pidgin English would assign me to accompany a patient with the ambulance to the hospital when required. The ambulance driver who looked like a Pa-O Shan, whom I’ve nick-named “Smilin’ Sammy”, would sometimes take me to his house and let me examine his little daughter who was a sickly child. Both the husband and the wife communicated with me in body and sign language just like Tin Myintt’s wife. Again I had good Thai food each time I was taken to visit Sammy’s house. On our way back she would hand me a plastic bag full of hard-boiled chicken eggs, 40-50 a time much to the delight of my barrack mates who sleep around me. They would just shove their hands into the bag fishing out 2 or 3 eggs each time. It was in Sammy’s house that I came to know that the egg of ? Muscovy duck – the one larger than the ordinary duck with red tissue around it’s eyes and which waddles much slower than the ordinary duck, the one the Burmese call ‘Mandali Bere’ – is much larger than the duck egg and its albumin, the white component much tender. Thus on subsequent visits, his wife would remove the yolk (I had a phobia for cholesterol), and stir-fried Mandali duck eggs on low fire. It was during such visits when I realized that our entry and exit from the camp for the ambulance was not that strictly scrutinized and monitored, that the idea to escape came into mind.
Thai Boxing
–
After becoming an inmate for just three days, my name came up on the bulletin board that I was to be ‘honoured’ with a boxing match. In Detention-Camp jargon, being ‘honoured’ does not mean being given a comfortable sofa or padded arm-chair at the ring side to watch the Thai boxing match in which professional boxers were brought in from Bangkok for the entertainment of the inmates. It meant, putting on your singlet vest and coming to the ringside in short pants. In short, the Commandant, was an enthusiastic pugilist wanted to have 6 rounds (3 minutes each round) of boxing with you, it meant me. With all the dieting and cholesterol-free foods and also reducing much carbohydrates to avoid diabetes, I looked emaciated like a wrinkled prune, while the commandant now in shorts and singlet and elastic anklets looked inflated with his bulging muscles and prominent veins. Short American GI style crewcut gave him a look of a ‘crouching tiger’.
I had done some sparring when I was in the 4th and 5th standard in St Albert’s with Alex Trutwein a Bo Kabya a year senior to me as a result of which I had a broken nose. I was pushed up the ring after my hands were shoved into enormous looking boxing gloves. By second-nature I went into a sparring stance and for 10-20 seconds I was able to fend off his thrusts. Then, I became a little bolder and actually started to get into the melee by doing my own thrusts at him, getting contacts, 3 out of 7 thrusts. This new-found confidence in the old pastime I used to indulge in was my undoing. With lightning speed and like ‘out of the blue’ his right knee came crashing into my crotch. The impact was 5/5 on my balls and I went into a crouch and winced. I had searing pain in my testicles that radiated to my umbilicus. So that was what was meant ‘solar plexus’. Thus in the first encounter with the Commandant although I was able to give him a bloody nose and a laceration on the outer margin of his left eyebrow, his well-muscled thighs with well-proportioned knees has taken toll of my manhood. They came crashing in when least expected with ‘bull-eye’ accuracy every time. As I ‘slid’ down the ring after the fourth round, as I couldn’t bear the pain anymore of the already ‘ballooned’ left side of the scrotum, I felt extremely humiliated. But, I became aware that almost all of the inmates ‘shared’ the pain and the defeat with me and the hostile looks of loathing and animosity was evident in their facial expression as they looked at the Commandant who was now standing on the lower-rung ropes of the corner of the ring with his gloved-hands raised high and a wide smile displaying the full 32 sparkling teeth. That night Tun Sein, who took the task to cook for the Burmese inmates came to my barrack with ice cubes in two large plastic bags.
‘Ah Ba, next time don’t hit back at him, just protect yourself. This guy is very vindictive. See, he had cut your ration’. Yes, I was denied eggs and fish that night, but replenished by Tun Sein who kindly brought other things as well for me. ‘Next time’ did he say ?? Sure enough, 3 weeks hence, I was ‘honoured’ again. But, as the saying goes, ‘Once bitten, twice shy’, I did just what Tun Sein told me, I meticulously guarded my epididymes and fended off his thrusts at my face. Body punches I could absorb but this unmanly strategy, made me more tired as I had to scurry and weave around the ring more than usual. But, much to my satisfaction, that tactic made him more angry and I could sense more adrenalin being poured into his blood circulation and his blood pressure going up and he was seen to be ‘panting’ more than I did sitting there with heaving chest at his corner. This time around, I was able to ‘walk the green mile’ – full 6 rounds. Being a doctor is an advantage, one is able to control the physiological processes going on in one’s body at the same time inflicting more damage psychologically and physiologically on the opponent.
Nowadays, each time I contemplate on my shrunken left epididymis I get the same type of psychological regret that a Thai male feels as he reminisce on his folly of the sex-change operation. But after the 4th such ‘defensive’ matches, the Knee-digging Thai ‘Mike Tyson’ began to get wind of the futility of getting matched with a crafty doctor which resulted in more ‘mocking’ booing yells from the inmate population who brazenly cheered for me.
The
Escape ala Burmese (Mandalay) style
One evening after being in ‘Moscow’ for three months I had a casual chat with GoonTha while the inmates were engaged in noisy game of volley-ball, about bidding ‘goodbye’ to ‘Moscow’. ‘How ?’ he asked and did not look confident with my casual assurance. The trouble with Germans is that they are sticklers for protocol and with minutae of the ‘plan’. But with the Burmese, it is a matter of ‘Catch-as-catch-can’ type of risky gamble. I just told him and the Frenchman to keep their rucksacks in readiness for a quick exit. One day Tun Sein’s cousin had a relapse of Malaria and Sammy was being informed of a possible transfer of a patient to the hospital.
About twelve minutes before the expected time of arrival of the ambulance I asked Tun Sein to give me 3 onions sliced thickly. Despite his puzzled and enquiring looks I grabbed the sliced onions from his hands and shoved them roughly into the armpits of the ‘Bonnie’ (my nickname for the Frenchman with due respect to Bonaparte- Napoleon). He looked confused and offended as he was not at all informed of all that was taking place and with foul-smelling, eye-smarting onion slices. GoonTha also looked lost with regard to my unexpected burst of activity. I just whispered to him that we were getting out today and pleaded with Bonnie to run around our hut out of sight of the Commandant. It was more of my keeping his arms by his sides to prevent the onions sliding down at the same time pulling and dragging him along. But, thanks to him because after a few steps of such pulling he started to run in earnest on his own and at the same time keeping his armpits closed. After the third round of such frenzied galloping I pulled him straight into the Commandant’s office and grabbed at the Commandant’s hand at the wrist wet with Bonnie’s sweat and shouted ‘ This guy’s got HIV, AIDS, AIDS’. Bonnie, being a lean and pale-looking guy in the first place looked horribly gaunt now with his body and face and neck wet with sweat and his heaving chest from all this running giving him a moribund and haggard look. Immediately, in a lightening flash Commandant let off a high-pitched piercing yell trying to free his hand from my ‘tug-of-war grip’ which was wet with Bonnie’s sweat. He screeched at us to ‘get out’, ‘get out’ from his office and to take him to the hospital as he wiped feverishly the sweat from his hand and washing it repeatedly with soap and water. I grabbed Bonnie by his shirt and told him and GoonTha to get onto the ambulance. The other guards were crowding around us now as they heard Commandant giving blood-curdling yells. But instead of running straight onto the ambulance which had its tail-doors already open, both the Goon and Bonnie started to run towards the barracks. The situation was extremely tense and critical now as a couple of guards had already taken off the pistols from the holsters. It was their rucksacks and passports that they were after. I helped and quickly shove in their things and the three of us made a dash for the ambulance. You won’t believe it, Bonnie was on it with a flash in front of us and GoonTha next. The one who was in ‘such’ a hurry (me) had to be pulled up by GoonTha as the ambulance clicked on the light-flashing siren and ‘away we went’. Bye bye Moscow. We love you and will miss you.
Goodbye
Argentina …(pronounced ar-Gan-tina)
With the overdose of the adrenaline flowing in my veins, I was so ‘hyped up’ I didn’t realize we had gone into the hospital. As Sammy got out to pull down the wheel chair I suddenly realized the error and instructed him to send us to the Railway station instead. For a full two minutes, the message did not sink into his brain which is so used to the routine loop of trips – Camp to Hospital - Hospital to Camp, Camp to …. He could easily have raised an alarm but glancing at me he realized what ‘I’ was planning to do.
At the station I bought three Thai language newspapers giving one each to GoonTha and Bonnie and told them to take the train going towards Bangkok and instructed them to pretend to sleep with the papers open on their laps should they see the Conductor coming along the aisle. When I gave each a bear-hug confusion spread on their faces.
‘Auf Wiedezehen’ and ‘Au Revoir’ I said.
‘Hey, where you going ?’, GoonTha threw down his sack.
By that time the whistle sounded and I pushed them aboard.
I’m going to Malaysia, bye bye’.
.
Your Comments here_ can use win-Burmese fonts; but not symbols (:/\<>!|{]~#$)
Last week's English article
