A Caveat on Expectations and Predictions

A Caveat on Expectations and Predictions

November, 2014

Getting Readddddy!

Despite the unstable way my bicycle moved (never entirely willing to go in a straight line on the narrow dirt paths between houses) and despite Johanna’s bicycle needing constant roadside repair and even though we got lost more than once (or possibly only knew where we were once), my second trip to Dala was breathtaking. The feeling of the wind in my hair, laced with red and brown dust from the path we flew on (which later proved to pose a challenge to rinse out), the freedom to abruptly stop and arbitrarily watch some boys play fútbal on a barren patch of land and the short rest we took sitting on a small poured cement bridge with our feet dangling over the ledge sipping on a cold drink is difficult to compare to anything.


Not a single person frowned at what others might perceive as an intrusion as we sped by giggling on our rickety bikes, waving at kids and smiling at adults. We weren’t there as slum tourists – gawking at them like zoo animals. We were just there as people and were met with curiosity and warmth. Each times that Johanna’s chain broke on her bike, local boys ran to our assistance and with sticks and mechanical skills that we both lacked, fixed it. Each time they adamantly refused tips and just smiled and laughed and told us to ride slower so that it wouldn’t happen again (we tried to listen the 2^nd time).

I was warned when I arrived in Myanmar on August 15^th that people would be courteous and there was no reason to fear hostility from people in Yangon but to be aware that they would likely be very guarded and careful around expats. I was told there was a sense of mistrust towards the trickle of expat businessmen and the sudden flocks of tourists coming into Myanmar so suddenly since the opening of Myanmar around 2010. After decades of being notoriously shut off from the rest of the world, Myanmar was suddenly a hotspot of foreign activity and the drastic change, which was coupled with numerous other changes, must have been startling.

Nope.
(credit: http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/opinion/7250-the-new-expat-s-burden-in-myanmar.html)

A growing tourism industry has changed that somewhat, with the number of tourists growing from around 791,000 in 2010 to more than 2.04 in 2013 but there remains a lack of clarity as to what motivations drove some foreigners in and what the impact of us would be (as demonstrated by declarations by a radical group of Buddhist monks about the desecration of Buddhist culture following what they demeaned a blasphemous depiction of Buddha on Facebook as part of a promotion for a local bar which resulted in the arrest of the expat manager). This sense of uncertainty is not helped by the tendency for the expats who reside here to stay in expat enclaves and rarely make attempts to get to know non-expats living in Myanmar, except perhaps their drivers and staff, as is common among expats everywhere.

Foreigners coming into Myanmar are also often poorly informed of what they should expect upon arrival. Little news came in or out of Myanmar for decades. Even expats in country were able to collect but little information even about their own work and projects. 

Definitely worth a read and easily accessible.

Exhibit A: Census and Predictions 
Differ by NINE Million

There is precious little data available, as demonstrated by the importance of the recently conducted census, the first in 30 years which proved that previous population estimates and other demographic information used by the government, local NGOs and INGOs was in many cases erroneous. Prior to the census, the total population of Myanmar was estimated to be 60 million, a number derived from estimating population growth and projecting previous figures based on this. In reality, it turn out that the population of Myanmar is 51.4 million people. That’s almost nine million people that were in fact not there. An error of that magnitude has huge implications on the planning of the provision of services by the government and its development partners, among other things.

Even simple things like accurate maps (especially digital ones that could be used on a computer for GIS work or for GPS navigation) which would correctly identify where roads, rivers and villages are located, are difficult or near impossible to acquire.  Basic and essential data remains unconfirmed or entirely missing.

Exhibit B: Lots of Missing Data and the Population Data, as discussed, is just WRONG.

Travel within Myanmar is still restricted by the government, with certain areas requiring permits and guides in order to be accessed by even NGOs while others remain entirely off limits to foreigners (and to a certain extent, to the people of Myanmar from outside these areas).

Sentiment towards foreigners in these areas is no doubt very different from what I have experienced in Yangon, Bagan (Nyang Yu) and Inle Lake (Heho).



And different from what we experienced that afternoon in Dala.

As we sped along the road, people turned to look and wave. 

Dala, despite being only a short 3 min ferry ride from Yangon, is still a small village and when there are foreigners there, they ride on trichaws to specific sites (pagoda, market, orphanage) with a guide. Rarely do they hire two bikes off a local man 5 minutes walk from the ferry and ride about aimlessly and giddily down little paths too narrow for trichaws for three hours.

Blissfully Break by the Water

With my legs off the pedals and pointed straight out, head tossed back and with an eye barely on the road, someone snapped a picture of us and laughed. I laughed back.

Top: Jo. Bottom: My.

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Homesick Without a Home?

Homesick Without a Home?

December, 2014

Can I be homesick?

The first “home” I remember is the student housing complex where my parents were living at the time of my birth. I remember a sandbox where I’d consume my suggested daily value of sand and I remember climbing a bike rack and possibly my first concussion.

As well as a toddler can, I remember our first move, to our next home: an apartment across Helsinki near the amusement park, from which every morning we could hear the sounds of peacocks waking up. It was small when we lived there - my mother, my father, my two brothers and I. I remember our backyard, with its sheltering of sparse Finnish trees and its seemingly steep cliff on top of which we would eat after sauna-ing, the bustling if still at the time slightly scary street outside and the furry and huge though friendly dog that lived next door that always seemed so excited at our footsteps it threatened to burst through and bury us in kisses, to the horror of my younger brother who was at the time afraid of all canine varieties despite size or ferocity. I'll grant that we may actually have lived in two apartments in that building but there time found us when the next time to move again.

Soumi

But this time we weren't traveling just to the other side of the neighborhood like last time. We weren't settling into the suburbs of Helsinki where my aunt lived in what then seemed like a mysterious haunted castle. We weren't going to live at the farm my mother’s family owned where I remember Santa Claus coming with his portly belly to try to give me my presents only for me to hide behind the Christmas tree. We weren't picking up to go to marvel the colder, more northern Finland I hardly knew, to Joensuu where my grandparents lived in a two (maybe three?) floor house with a great yard and berry bushes where my father and his siblings had once lived. 

We were flying over a vast ocean to a distant foreign land called America, though at the farewell party. my parents assured all our friends and family that it wouldn’t be a long stay; a year for my father to complete some post doctorate work at a place called Yale. I ran around, intermittently wearing nothing but face paint, and danced and shouted with my friends. To me, this was also my 5th birthday and I wasn’t going to be robbed of a chance to have some fun. A year meant nothing to me, unawares as I was of how time twists and turns into over a decade so easily.

America the Cozy in Connecticut

First came the condominium in Connecticut, where we arrived with our belongings in an assortment of suitcases and cardboards in the middle of a blizzard and made quick friends with the only neighbors willing to brave the snow. I learned to ride a bike, listened to Britney Spears and the Spice Girls, ate cookie dough (raw!) and developed my first crush there before we were flooded out of the condo (literally) and after washing ashore on two temporary refuges we washed up (not literally) at a beautiful house on hill. My little brother and I would roam the little forests behind our house while our older brother honed his skateboarding abilities by losing large portions of his knees on gravel and picking up so many deer ticks, I questioned whether there were any left for the rest of us. In school, I was learning about fractions with cookies and Y2K had just been averted when we took a short ride to another very different world.

The rough streets of NYC

Our first NY “home” was a house in the Bronx where we lived at ease for some time before “home” officially meant simultaneously two places – one now beyond the Atlantic Ocean and a few assorted seas and mountains. And even after being reunited after that, “home” permanently became two places and I split my belongings in three: one for the first “home”, one for the second “home” and one for moving. 

On the move (in California visiting my brother)

Another six apartments, a few countries and some years later, I was slated to make a place my own “home” which I can’t sincerely say I tried in the brownstone where I first lived or any of the three proceeding college dorms. But I've also visited countless countries and stayed in numerous "homes" across the world in that time.

Now? I’d say I’m somewhere in the spectrum of homeless so I suppose one would only think it natural to say that I might feel ‘homesick.’

But with so many ‘homes’ that I can’t even be certain I haven’t missed one somewhere or counted one twice, I suspect I’m ‘homesick’ for a place I don’t even think exists anywhere but in my head – but whether in memory or in abstraction or in desperation, I can’t tell. I’ve used the word “home” to describe more places than I honestly can or care to remember. 

So how am I to know where I want to go back to?

But maybe the question of where I want to go back to is a question more of when. It isn’t a physical location so much as a point in time in my past when my general mood was one which many would associate with safety- what is safer than home? - and would attribute most readily to that rush of relief one feels in that moment when, after a long and tiring journey, one falls backwards onto an unmade bed with faith that the familiar slightly stained comforter, starting-to-un-tuck sheets and drool speckled pillow will catch your descent and embrace your return to where you belong. 

Where is “my” bed? Where, if I could choose, would I want to sleep tonight? Or, as speculated previously and as I believe to be more germane to the question I’ve posed, when does this bed exist in the time-space world I’m peering into? 

“I think I want to go ‘home,’” I say when I just mean: “Could we please return to the physical location we were prior to the physical location in which we find ourselves in this exact moment?”

I’ve said “I think I want to go home” to nobody in general and about nowhere in general while hosteling in Europe and I haven’t meant any place more significant than the hostel, where I wouldn’t even be able to necessarily locate my assigned bunk, where my welcome would end the instant my funds did and where I certainly wouldn’t have said I felt particularly safe. Except perhaps in relation to the location where I was when I said it.

I’ve asked, “Can you bring this ‘home’ with you?” to the people with whom I’ve crashed and who have generously opened their home (no quotation marks) to me. I’ve speculated about whether we’re missing groceries at a “home” where I feel an intruder. I’ve called hotels, airplane lounges, bars and couches “home.” 

I’ve texted, “I’m going home” to be met with “where?” as a response.

What is “home” if it isn’t where family is? The dictionary says home is “the place where one lives permanently, esp. as a member of a family or household.” Despite being the most useless definitions ever to help define where I’m meant to be, it gives us some direction in the quest for an answer. 

Does that mean my home is Finland, where my oldest brother, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and other family live? Is it the United States of America with my father, step-mother and brothers (in which case, Connecticut or New York?)? Could it be in Malawi with my mother (and for how much longer? Does this definition allow for me to include friends-as-good-as-family? And if so, that gives more questions than it provides answers.

Homesick is defined as: “experiencing a longing for one's home during a period of absence from it.” And thus we return to the initial quandary, how can I be homesick without a home? Or is this an entirely mistakenly labeled emotion that isn’t really homesickness but something else altogether? 

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