Mothers Day without your Child!
I have been waiting to write this, as I wasn’t sure how to put it and also waiting to hear from the place I stayed at in Yangon. Most of you all know what has happened in Burma (Myanmar), and I just wanted to take the time to say that my heart goes out to the Burmese people and to the friends that I have lost.
While I was in Burma 2 months ago I found a place that I called home. It was a lovely little guesthouse filled with beautiful and friendly Burmese staff. It didn’t take long for me to become close with these people. Since then I have remained in contact via email with one of the girls that works at the guesthouse. When I heard of the tragedy I immediately emailed her to see if they were all ok. While watching CNN I saw a shot of a street that looked familiar, it was the street where the guesthouse was located. As the camera panned I could see the sign of the guesthouse in a huge pile of debris, every house on the street was completely destroyed including the guesthouse.
My heart sank as these people that have been beaten down from their screwed up communist government for years and years, are now dealt another major blow. It’s like being in a hole and someone keeps kicking dirt in on you. For the last few days I have tried to put it out of my head, as I didn’t really know how to deal with it other then hopping on a plane bound for Asia. It’s a strange feeling knowing that you have friends in trouble and you can’t really do anything about it. I wasn’t expecting to hear back from her since most of the power is completely cut, but today I woke up to an email from her. She is doing fine, but her older sister will be spending mothers day without her baby.
Her English is not the best but from what I could gather from the email was during the Cyclone when all the tin roofs and piece of wood were being blow around her sisters baby was killed. It is truly amazing how strong these people are, in her email she had such confidence and seems to be handling it well. I guess for the Burmese people dealing with the human atrocities from their government on a daily basis, you might tend to look at a Cyclone in a different light.
As bad as this is, there is something good in this. This is another way for Burma to get international attention and shed light on the major problems with the Burmese government. At this point the Burmese government is not accepting foreign aid, but what you can do is keep this in your mind and don’t forget about the people of Burma. When I was in Burma I had tons of people come up to me and say “Thank you for not forgetting about us” after what happened in September 2007, foreigners stopped coming and for the Burmese people that don’t/can’t get international TV they thought the world forgot about them. Sometimes I question the good in this world and wonder how things could be if we treated people as people with no classes or races or religious beliefs… it would be a wonderful place!
Posted by Jimmy under Burma, Thoughts, Uncategorized, Updates |
