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PLEASE HELP STOP ECONOMIC SANCTIONS AGAINST MYANMAR
Dedication: To all the people in Myanmar who could have
had a longer and more fruitful life if there were better medical
facilities. All the thoughts described in such perfect detail
by Gyaw Nei Gyaw Ma Ma Lei passed through my mind as I was living in
the hospital taking care of my dieing mother-in-law last month.
Luckily I work overseas and earn enough money to afford a private
hospital and the extensive medical tests and attention that
they can provide. The vast majority of people are not so lucky.
Coffee
By Gyaw Nei Gyaw Ma Ma Lei
Daw Lon Ma Kyi beat her chest.
As she beat her chest she bent over and let out a scream, Ko Po Chet... O
my Ko Po Chet, and all the neighbors knew immediately from
her scream that he had died.
At dusk the sound of wailing that had already penetrated the entire
neighborhood suddenly became heated and more agitated.
Upstairs, in a large brick building at the corner
of the road, the doors and the windows opened and out of a door
three women with heads covered in white bent their heads down
looking at Daw Lon Ma Kyi's little grass hut.
Daw Lon Ma Kyi sat outside her hut with her back to the road and beat her chest
over and over again. She cried out in a shrill voice and bent over to strike
her forehead against one of the floorboards of the house. Clasping her
hands with all her might, she throttled out of herself, as much as she could, a
great broken cry of pain and tears,"O Buddha you’ve abandoned me. Who will I live
with? O... Ko Hpo-chet."
Gathered around the corpse, three women cried away like a pack of
mice as if they were doing it for the very last time
for the sake of those who remained.
They put everything they had into it and the noise went on without
cease. During the time that her husband, U Chet-kyi, had been sick his daughters had
spared no effort in coming to be with him, but they couldn’t
provide any financial help.
What they could make in one day was hardly enough for
their own sons and daughters. So even though father was sick,
even though he was their little old father, they couldn’t help him with
one kyat or even one pyat for his medicine or diet. When he died they were still able
to run to him, circle around him, and throw all their
energy into wailing.
Daw Lon Ma Kyi cooked her breakfast and ate it and that
night she couldn’t sleep well the whole night long. She left U Chet Kyi
sleeping in the house snoring loudly from deep down in his throat and
walked around the neighborhood going from one house to the next.
It was a honey-tongued accomplishment of hers. She would tell people
humbly that life’s burdens had not killed her yet and because she addressed
well-to-do people with such effusive endearments, in such a meek and
humble manner, there was no one among the rich she didn’t know, there was
no house where she could not be seen giving massages, but masseuse as she was,
there was no massage quite like hers.
Are you feeling okay honey? Are you stiff honey? Come, mother will
massage your neck for you, get all that tension out of your body for you. This is the way she
gave a massage, doing everything she could do to please, using everything
every technique she could pull out of her memory.
While she was giving them a massage, relaxing all their stiffness,
reducing the tension in their backs, so that they wouldn’t get bored she
would amuse them by passing on with great relish all the news she had heard
passing from house to house through the neighborhood. Massaging away
with a hand that never stopped, never took a rest, and with her mouth also, she’d
purse together her thin lips, raise her eyebrows, and jut out her chin.
She could never finish. She never tired of massaging with her words.
If it wasn’t a massage they wanted then she’d grind some sandalwood
on a stone (thanakha) for
their faces and force it on them. Aware of the needs of all
the owners of big houses and quick and alert in all and sundry matters, she was
brisk and nimble in a way that did not match her advanced age.
For this she’d walk around all day long going
into one house and coming out of another, from this building or that
house she’d receive a kyat and five mu’s in charity, twist it up and hide it in
her skirt (htamein) and finally go back home late in the
evening. It was always like this.
Daw Lon-ma-kyi, the sweet, o so sweet speech that issued from her lips was
pleasing to listen to, but as sweet as it was, in the breasts of those who had to
listen to it, it was not so sweet. While she was speaking she
had the tendency to add the words "Mother...mother..."
over and over again as a respectful way of addressing people.
Even though these words of respect
certainly
did not have their origin in any deep emotion
(did not eminate from deep down in their guts or their bowels),
the people she spoke with
every day would pay her back with the same respectful words, the words
"Mother...mother..." issuing in turn from their lips.
"Dear mother, I’m so embarrassed to ask this of you.
Would you mind washing the baby’s diapers," they'd ask.
"Don’t worry, dear daughter. If you have something for me to do, just call
me and tell me what to do. You know that I don’t have anything to do. If
you have anything else for me to wash give it to me," she'd reply. Speaking effusively
like this, it was her habit to elicit their needs and
satisfy them.
The daughters, the sons, and even the grandchildren of these
affluent people were hostile to her and belittled her.
People like Daw Lon Ma Kyi were so destitute
that they weren’t troubled at all when people didn’t treat them
in a way commensurate with their age and accepted it all with the upmost
humility so that this frame of mind became habitual for them.
When U Chet Kyi had fallen ill, the sounds of crying that could be heard
seemed to
have no purpose, and when those who lived upstairs in the buildings came to
find out what was happening, there could not
be any reason for not forgiving their intrusions, these people were not of a class that
was unforgivable, and when a rich woman flushed in diamonds and gold
came to her little hut a time of great misfortune seemed as if it was
actually one of great fortune.
How could you possibly find time to come here my dear daughter,
mother knows how many things you have to do.
While U Chet Kyi was still there the small salary he received
from his insignificant little job as a night watchman was not enough when
all his sons and daughters put their hand into the bag and took their share of
it. While Daw Lon Ma Kyi’s eldest son Ko Tha Hsain was working as a
carpenter, her youngest son Ba Zan had been put to work as a trainee in a car
workshop where he received one or two kyats a day and would one
day become a mechanic's assistant. While her two daughters already had
families of their own, Ma Kyain, a widow with five children,
had remarried this time to a widower who was already a father of three
children. Having a job repairing roads for the municipality, the tiny salary
her husband received was not enough to fill the stomachs of all their children.
To earn some extra money Ma Kyain still made her way around the neighborhood
every morning selling boiled beans.
The other daughter Ma Myaing was in even tighter circumstances than Ma
Kyaing. Having two children already, her husband had taken another wife.
Her little children, toddlers still suckled at their mother’s breast,
lived in a wholly dependent fashion, sponging off their parents-in-law in their
home. The parents-in-law saw them as utterly dull-witted and stupid, and
because they felt that these children would one day come to rely on them as
if they were their own children, the parents-in-law were not friendly to them
in the slightest.
Daw Lon Ma being dependent on the neighborhood spoke her mind to those
she relied on, on the side, "As long as there is somebody you can rely on, you
must rely on them," she would say.
"O, lord if you’re here what reason could there be to feel downheartened
about anything."
(To be continued....)
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