Faces

These boys live in a monastary so dress like the monks do. Some children are orphans and live in monastaries and some families who cannot take care of their children or some of them place them in monastaries to be cared for. Usually at every village there are some children dressed like this. I wish I could capture the expression when they see themselves after a picture is taken--Before it's hard to get them to smile.

In the villages we greet so many. I wanted to share some faces of our last trip.

Though I can't speak to them more than greeting them with"Mingalabar", the smiles we share make us feel a kinship. So many in the villages have poor teeth: no dental care for some; chewing beetlenut for many men.

No smile, but such an interesting face.

Sometimes what they carry on their heads is to provide shade and protection from the sun and sometimes it's just the easiest way for them to carry things.

We greeted a line of men who were the village leaders. Hard to get a smile.

Young and old faces.

And one tired face onthe person that I'm always glad to be with.

Rice and Teak -- Main exports

In many places in Myanmar, two or three crops of rice are harvested each year if there's enough rice as it grows in water. As we've traveled along roads we've seen the steps. After a crop is harvested, usually the field is burned, and then plowed. It then lies fallow for some time and then flooded. At this time the oxen or in a few places water buffalo, pull a plow or harrow to prepare the soil under the water.

A couple of times we've seen this process done mechanically with what looks like a big roto-rooter, but it's usually done with oxen here.

Most rice paddies are fairly small with borders of caked mud.

Rice is first planted and the fields are very thick. Then it is picked and bunched to be put into rows by a group of women.

Here they are pulling the rice from the thickly sown field to be separated into rows.

It was amazing to us at how straight the rows are when the planting is done by hand. The women stand in water and mud and plant bent over.

Looks like back-breaking work to me.

They start early in the morning and work long hours. We are told that some are professional planters and go from village to village doing the planting.

Here's a group that came to the ceremony.

We haven't observed much rice harvesting yet, but each farmer keeps rice for their main source of food. Before rice is hulled it is called "paddy". This is a larget basket that keeps the unhulled rice for this family. As they need it, they take it to the mill.

This is the top of the basket that stores the family's rice.

We were also shown the process of chopping the straw left after the rice is harvested so that it can be fed to the oxen. The man pumps with his foot that makes the sharp knife cut the straw as he feeds it in.

These are peanuts that have been dug from the ground and are drying. This fellow spoke good English. He had a university degree in English and had worked as a hotel manager in Mandalay for 7 years, but had never been back to his village. So he had quit his job so he could come home for a month.

Teak is another major export from this country and we've seen wonderful wood carvings from teak. It takes nearly 70 years for a tree to mature and some think too many have been harvested. As we crossed the Irawaddy in a small boat we saw this barge pushed down river towards Yangon.

And we meet some trucks hauling the logs as well. The roads are narrow and these take up a lot of the road.

So these are some scenes as we've travelled along the roads of Myanmar.

Catching up!

These pictures are from a several day trip in March. We usually reach a spot where the car or van we are traveling in cannot get to the village and we transfer to another form of transportation. This time it was a jeep.
We didn't travel far in the oxcarts, but got in because they had decorated them and met us. I thought it would be interesting. It was but also dusty, rough, and I ended up with a hand-sized bruise on my back where I was jolted continually on the half-mile trip.

And this was the spot where we the jeep had become high-centered and unable to move, so I was going to get on the motor bike. That was a day I wished I had on slacks. There were deep ruts and we tipped over once, but finally got to the village.

When we finally got to the village we were given tinsel garlands and greeted warmly.

Don't know if you can really see, but it was hot and we were rose-cheeked.

This was on another day, but usually each time we get to a village there is usually a musical greeting. This girl--25 years old and referred to by a young man as a spinster--danced as we entered the village.

And in another village, we were greeted by this dancer. We were told that each village has a clown or comedian who dances at festivals. He had quite the dance.

We were fed a meal and then moved to another table for fruit. This looks like a make-up table. The bark on the short log right in front of the material mixed with water makes up what the women and children have on their faces. To the right the flat slab is where the log is rolled with some water. In one village we were given nearly a dozen logs. I have one to show but we gave the rest away.

In most villages we are given some kind of thank you--usually prepared and used over at each village. But it's the routine.

And this is the reason for most of the trips: bringing water to the remote villages who before have had to depend on ponds or wells that are several miles away. Though they have to pack it away, they do it with smiles on their faces.

And we leave each village glad for the experience--and wishing we didn't have to have the return trip.

We stopped one day for some sight-seeing where a very huge standing Buddha is being built, as well as a huge reclining one. Here there are over 9000 Buddha images, each under a small banyan tree--where he received his "enlightenment". Many Buddhists pay to have one of these small figures set out as a symbol of their good deeds.

We climbed over a hundred steps to get to the viewing tower. We were hot and tired and could easily have missed this part of the trip, but Dr. Win arranges for us to see things that are close to where we are.

The Longest Day? April 6 20 hours

We left Yangon at 3:30 in the morning in this van--quite comfortable. It--the van--had just been returned at 1am from another trip and there had been no time to fix a window that wouldn't roll up, so until 9 am we rode with the windows down quite comfortably. We reached a city and stopped to see if the window mechanism could be fixed. While we waited we had a breakfast of an omelet, fried potatoes and fried rice. I had a coke and Dad had a sunkist soda

About 10 am we had gone as far as we could in the van and transferred to this truck. Dad and I sat in the front--a dubious honor--as the seat slid forward with every bump and we could see the ground through the floor, but we were protected from some of the dust.

West of the Irawaddy River there is very little development and very little water. This was the dryest part of Myanmar that we had seen. No rain since last October.

The soil is baked hard and cracked.

I'm losing pictures that I planned to include--don't know why. Dad is making a presentation speech for the well and water facility. The man in front is the one who makes all the arrangements. We couldn't operate at all here without him.

After a ribbon-cutting ceremony the women filled their bowls with water and took them to their homes.

I'm amazed that they can balance it without using hands and walk in the process.

So I though I'd try. No luck without the cloth wound around between the head and the bowl.

I still needed hands. I'm glad I don't have to get water this way!

Since the village is so isolated, they weave their own cloth and were eager to show us the process. We were presented several hand-woven bags and straw baskets at the ceremony. Afterwards, I was invited upstairs to see the process.

This woman is proudly showing off the thread she has carded from cotton they grow and the products she makes from then.

This is the wheel that they use to spin the cotton into thread.

A grandma holding a baby and presenting me with a hand-woven cloth.

We didn't see much that was green--only these banana trees. Their diet is probably very poor but they were gracious and welcoming. We left the village early afternoon, but didn't get back to Yangon until 11:30 that night after a number of stops. It was cooler to leave early, but drivers here don't use dimmers very often and when they did, the brights were usually put on before the approaching car passed, so the driver often had to slow down with each passing car--so the entire night driving was quite slow. Here in Yangon we're not often out at night, but at times see cars with no lights, people in the middle of the street and bicycles with no reflectors. I wouldn't want to drive here, especially at night. Needless to say we were glad to be back. A quick shower to rid us of the dust and to bed. We were going to leave on another trip in two days.