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. Read more…
Posted by Jimmy under Burma, Thoughts, Uncategorized, Updates | Comments (0)
I wasn’t sure what to expect when coming to Burma. I didn’t really know much about the country other then what I have seen on CNN and the BBC. Last September the shit it the fan, a political protest turned into a bloody riot leaving countless people dead. It was started over the cost of fuel (which is still the main complaint from the local people I talked to). The US and other western countries placed a boycott on Myanmar (Burma). Burma was now cut off from the world, but this plan quickly backfired on the west. The red devil from the north (China) came to the rescue. China doesn’t necessarily seem to be just helping; they actually are taking over like they did in Tibet some 40 years ago. China is buying up countries all over the world and pumping money into them to help fuel China’s communist rule on the world. Thousands of Chinese immigrants are being relocated in Burma to start up business and run Burma. The word on the street is the Burmese people will slowly be weeded out like they are trying to do in Tibet. There have been reports that in Tibet women will go to the dentist for normal dental work and end up waking up with their tubes tide (so they cant have babies). More people need to speak out about what China is doing with Tibet and now Burma! The violation of human rights in this day and age is fucking outrageous! Here are a few photos from Burma. I didn’t spend much time there due to the fact that most tourist sights have been built and maintained by slave/forced labor. It was hard for me to walk around carelessly taking pictures while people were being forced to clean the path that I walked on. Here are a few different 
Finally after 1 week, 2 passports and one blacklist I have finally been granted access into Myanmar (Burma). I am looking forward to getting out of Bangkok. Bangkok is a lot like Las Vegas, it’s a cool place for 1 or 2 days, but after a week here I am ready to jump out my 7th floor window.
