Myitkyina, Kachin State, Burma: November 14, 2001: As we arrived back at Daniel’s sister’s house, it was getting dark. The front yard was full of bicycles, and lots of sandals and thong shoes were neatly assembled on the steps and the ground outside the front doorway leading into the home. People had been gathering throughout the day for an evening meeting. Friends and family members also gathered to greet their long-lost Daniel.
The evening meeting was intended as a gathering of the barefoot doctors from villages in the central and southern part of Kachin State. Many of the attendees had ridden their bicycles for two or three days through jungles and across rivers just to be at the meeting. Word had been sent to the remote areas inviting the barefoot doctors to come and meet with Daniel, whom they hadn’t seen since being trained in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and the man from Project C.U.R.E., the organization that had supplied them with desperately needed medical goods.
We greeted a houseful of people as we took off our shoes and entered. Those gathered for the meeting waited patiently and drank green tea from bamboo cups while Daniel and I proceeded to another room and ate our delicious dinner of rice soup, chicken bones, fish, green chard, and freshly peeled grapefruit floating in cliff honey.
Electricity is rarely available, even in such a large city as Myitkyina. Occasionally the city furnishes electricity for a couple of hours at night. The homes have one or two fluorescent tubes strategically placed in the house to take advantage of the limited supply. This evening no electricity was available, so a long wire had been run down the road to the house of a neighbor who owns a small generator. We would have light from one short fluorescent tube for a short time.
After dinner we all squeezed into the front room of the house. Some had to sit or stand inside adjoining rooms and press in to hear and see what was going on. Daniel greeted the people and told them why we came. He also shared about the miracles that took place to allow us to be in Myitkyina tonight. He then called on me to tell them a little about the miracle of Project C.U.R.E. and what God accomplished over the past fifteen years.
About eighteen to twenty barefoot doctors had gathered for the meeting, and as the fluorescent light began to flicker, Daniel asked them to tell a little about their work. Then I asked them about their specific needs for medical goods and the most common health problems people experience in their villages, as well as the most frequent trauma or emergency cases.
While I sat there listening and talking with them as Daniel interpreted, I jotted down some notes. It was an emotional time for me as I heard of the villagers’ needs and the incredible expectations placed on the barefoot doctors, who, in spite of their training, have very limited medical knowledge.
Almost all told me of the tragedy of malaria. They just don’t have any preventive means like mosquito netting or spray, and they have very limited supplies to give out to people with malaria. They nearly begged me for medicine to treat tuberculosis, and they also need medication for asthma and other respiratory problems.
Nearly all the village women suffer from anemia, and since so much of their work is done in flooded rice fields and other wet jungle conditions, problems with fungus and infection are rampant, and all the children need treatment for worms, parasites, and fever.
The barefoot doctors do the best they can for emergency and trauma cases, but they have no casting material left, and they are completely out of much-needed needles, syringes, IV fluids and equipment, tape, bandages, topical ointments, baby-birthing kits and delivery equipment, sterilizers, braces and crutches. They lack sufficient training for setting broken bones, as well as ways to treat high blood pressure, chest pain, diarrhea, bladder and kidney infections, and skin problems like boils and severe rashes. They all pleaded for some simple laboratory equipment and blood and urine tests.
They told me, “We have no way to test the blood, and nowhere in the range of our travel is there a hospital where we can obtain blood tests!”
When the last barefoot doctor had finished his report, they passed out songbooks and Bibles. At that moment, the one single fluorescent tube went black. But the people gathered in the house never missed a beat. They quickly passed out candles to everyone, and after a minute of chatting among themselves, a group of eight or ten stood to their feet, took their songbooks, formed a tight group, and began to sing. After the first song, they invited everyone to join in with them and sing the next several songs.
As they sang with such gusto, I had an instant flashback of riding down the streets of New York City in a car with the ambassador to the United Nations from North Korea and a couple of his deputies. They had just formally invited me to Pyongyang for the music festival at the eighty-first birthday celebration of Great Leader Kim Il-Sung. The ambassador had emphatically told me, “There are no finer musicians in the world than the Asians. They play their instruments with such precision and emotion, and they sing like no other individuals born.”
Over the years I’ve experienced the validity of the ambassador’s claims. And tonight in the northern state of old Burma, I experienced that treat once again. There were no lights, just flickering candles. There were no giant pipe organs, just the pure, simple voices of hard-working peasants who love God passionately and were gathered there with an intense desire to help their village neighbors and honor and worship God with their lives. Tears began to flow down my face.
If you’ve read my other journal entries, you know that occasionally I need a “cathedral fix.” I’m a simple evangelical Christian worshiper, but I do so enjoy occasions when I can experience the spiritual grandeur of a magnificent cathedral and the moving performance of a cathedral choir. I have sought out and worshiped in cathedrals all over Europe: Greek Orthodox cathedrals, Russian Orthodox cathedrals, and American Orthodox cathedrals; Catholic cathedrals in South America, Germany, France, and Central America; and cathedrals throughout Great Britain.
I love to attend the services at Westminster Abbey in London. And many times Anna Marie and I have joined in worship at Saint Paul’s Cathedral. One of my life’s delights was when I was invited to join the choir for a service at Saint Paul’s in London and was actually allowed to sit in the historic loft up front behind the chancel.
Tonight, however, in the old, underdeveloped city of Myitkyina in old Burma, in a dark house lit only by flickering candles, surrounded by the love of my new Asian friends with whom I will spend eternity, I listened to the voices of angels and felt God’s power and majesty. I had my cathedral fix.
After the group joined their voices in song, several stood and read portions of Scripture from the Bibles that had been passed out. Then one of the older members of the gathering spoke to them, but no one offered to interpret his remarks to me. For the next fifteen minutes, they joined in prayer. I don’t mean that one person prayed and the others remained silent and listened. Individually, from the youngest to the teens to the oldest person there, they all prayed out loud simultaneously. They were deeply intent and uninhibited; it has been a long time since I heard anything like it. I was certain that their praying could be heard for several blocks in the darkness of Myitkyina.
When they finished, Daniel leaned over to me and told me they were so overwhelmed that we would come to them that they were praying for our safety, and that somehow the hearts of the government officials would be made open to allow us to continue with our desire and plan to help the people of Myanmar. They also pledged to pray every day that a great miracle will take place in their country, and that all the people will experience the love of God through the efforts of the barefoot doctors and Project C.U.R.E.
Next Week: Yes, The uniqueness of Northern Burma