Putao, Kachin State, Burma: November 15, 2001: About four o’clock in the morning, I awoke to the smell of wood fires burning. Earlier I had awoken to take advantage of the potty at the foot of my bed. While doing so, I recalled places like Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Nepal when, in the dead of winter with snow blowing and wind howling, I had dressed in the darkness and stumbled out to the outdoor toilet in weather below zero degrees. I’m having it pretty good in Myanmar.
By 6:30 a.m., I was down at the bathhouse with toothbrush, towel, and soap in hand. The wood fires are used to heat large pots of water in the corner of the bathhouse. It was chilly there in the heavy morning mist, and steam was rising out of the open gable ends of the bathhouse, even with the door shut. I pulled off my “flappers” and left them on the step outside the door before going in.
At this point I feel compelled to jot down some details about bathing that I’ve had to learn the hard way while traveling around the world in lesser-developed countries. Should future Project C.U.R.E. workers follow me, you can learn from my frustrations and take advantage of my acquired tidbits of experience. I will now explain how to function where there is no shower or bathtub or, as in Africa, no volunteer to climb a tree and slowly pour buckets of water over your soapy body.
The first essential key is to never react to cultural situations presented to you. In the case of the bathhouse or a toilet house, you have to accept your circumstances and smile and work through it without blathering, editorializing, or judging. Just shut your mouth and make it work. You are there as a guest, and you must honor the dignity, feelings, and culture of your hosts. If you can’t handle it, stay at home in suburbia. Sincerely honoring and respecting the dignity of the individuals who are hosting you is the greatest compliment you can give. You will sabotage your effectiveness if you ridicule their customs or even yield to the temptation to tell them how you do it in America.
Before entering the bathhouse, you will likely remove your shoes or sandals. When you step inside in your bare feet and close the door, you’ll notice that the floor slopes toward one wall. That’s so the water can drain outside.
In my case, I still had my pants on when I stepped into the bathhouse. How do you keep from soaking your pant legs? As you enter, roll up your cuffs a couple of turns. Then, balancing yourself, raise one leg at a time and slip off the pant leg, watching that the other pant leg doesn’t sag to the wet floor. (When you’re dressing, hold both pant legs in one hand and release only one at a time as you slide your foot through to the floor. Your pants will stay perfectly dry.)
Especially in Asian bathhouses, you can be assured that if you look around, you’ll find one or two little, short, plastic or wooden stools somewhere. Those aren’t to stand on to reach the rafters, but to sit on. Pull one up close to one of the warm-water cauldrons. Your hostess will have placed a shallow pan or dipper in the cauldron she wants you to use. Don’t put your hands directly into the large cauldron. Only carefully dip water from it.
By sitting on the small stool, you’ll conserve water, because more of the water will flow over your entire body than if you’re standing, in which case, the water will splash onto the floor. Take one dipperful of water and pour it over your head to get your whole body wet. Then you can shampoo your hair. Take another dipperful and rinse out the shampoo.
The next important step is to section off your body as target areas for washing. Lather your face with soap and then concentrate on dipping out just enough water to pour over your face. Follow the same technique for your arms, legs, torso, and so on. If you concentrate on what you’re doing, you can experience a wonderful bath and not have wasted a lot of hot water, which took a lot of effort to heat on an open fire.
On a trip to Korea, Dr. Ted Yamamori, president of Food for the Hungry, was kind enough to share with me how to bathe effectively out of a bucket of water. And now you know!
After my refreshing bath, I stepped out again into the heavy Himalayan mist. I went up to my room, dressed properly, and then returned to the dining area and sat down to a satisfying breakfast of sliced and baked roots, fried fish, boiled egg, bamboo flowers, and rice soup. As with every meal, breakfast was topped off with two kinds of tea.
A hired driver and an old 1945-vintage Jeep were waiting for us on this foggy morning in Myanmar. It was necessary for us to take along one travel bag, because we will be gone for a couple of nights in the high jungle. We had to put our things on top of the Jeep and crowd into the vehicle. In addition to Phe Ram, Chin Lay Doo, Daniel, Ma Lay, and me, a helper by the name of Pewan and the driver’s assistant had to fit in the Jeep.
Our first stop this morning was at the gravesite of Daniel’s mother. Once again it hit me how much the Asians honor and revere their elders and ancestors. Daniel’s mother had been a stalwart prayer warrior and saint before her death. Before she died she requested that her sons bury her within sight of the Putao Airport. She always believed that “one day my son Daniel will return to Burma, and when he does, I want him to be able to see my grave and tombstone as he lands.” She hadn’t seen her dearly loved son for more than twenty years—not since the day he walked across the bridge and escaped into Thailand.
The family granted her request and buried her near the airport. They built a large stone memorial in her honor, which covers more than the grave. Chiseled into the top of the stone is a large cross, which, I don’t doubt, can be seen from the air.
As we encircled the gravestone, we held hands and Daniel’s brother Phe Ram prayed in Burmese. They pointed out to me that after Daniel’s mother was buried, a very rare variety of rice voluntarily sprang up surrounding the stone. It’s a very delicate and delicious type of rice, and each year there is just enough to harvest and divide up among the children. The brothers and sisters even send Daniel his portion each year in Chiang Mai. The family believes that God allowed the special rice to grow as a symbolic answer to the mother’s prayer that God would always take care of the family and fulfill their every need.
We loaded back into the old Jeep and drove to a village located on the banks of the Malikha River. Pulled up to the sandy shore were two long canoes about fifteen feet in length. The canoes had been dug out by hand using fire and crude axes to accomplish the job. There were no roads to take us to Daniel’s home village of Nam Kham. The only access was by means of a forty-five-minute canoe ride down the pristine mountain river. No one even thought about life jackets; we simply sat down on pieces of split bamboo in the bottom of the dugout canoe. At the front and back of the canoes, men stood using wide bamboo trees split in half as guiding poles and paddles.
As we floated out into the current of the river, my mind took a snapshot that shall never be erased as long as I live. The water was so pristine and clear that I could see directly to the bottom, even though the river was quite deep. The lush high-mountain jungle made a covering of greens of a thousand shapes. In the distance, nearly surrounding us, were the majestic Himalayan Mountains. Ma Lay was concerned because I have such white skin, and she thought I needed shade from the hot midday sun. So she sat behind me and held up an umbrella as we made our way down the Malikha River. Heaven must be something like this, I thought.
As we moved down the river, I watched teenage boys and girls with short spears dip their heads under the surface of the water and swim until they spotted a fish. Then with a quick thrust of a spear, one of them would stab the fish, bring it out of the water, and deliver it up on the shore.
Other men and boys panned for gold nuggets along the river’s gravel bed. Young mothers tending their babies and small children gathered water or washed out some clothes in the river.
Forty-five minutes into the journey, the men standing at each end of our two canoes steered the boats to a large, sandy beach area. We had arrived at Nam Kham. Up on the riverbank, I could see the village reception party eagerly waiting for us to beach the boats and come ashore. A half dozen of the village men had built a stone-and-sand walkway for me so I wouldn’t get my shoes wet. Apparently they had already heard that I don’t possess the ability to walk on water, except perhaps in Colorado, on my own creek, when the temperatures dip below freezing.
The chief and a couple of other village leaders walked down to the water’s edge to meet us and escort us up to where the rest of the official welcoming party waited. The village of Nam Kham consists of 280 families and well over three thousand inhabitants. It was worth the whole trip just to observe Daniel’s excitement upon returning to the village of his childhood, where he had gone swimming in the river, drove the carts pulled by water buffalo, gathered the delicious fruit, and helped harvest the rice crop.
Quite a large percentage of the village people had stopped their midday work to come to the riverbank to welcome us. Even the little children had come to sing to us, shake our hands, and present us with freshly picked jungle flowers. In a parade of celebration, we all trekked across the grass-covered roadways back to the home of another one of Daniel’s sisters. We will stay in her home for the next two nights.
Once we settled in our new quarters and had the two different kinds of tea, Daniel suggested taking me on a walk around the village. As proud and bubbling with excitement as a village boy, Daniel eagerly showed me all the places of his youth. I was astonished that nothing had really changed since the British were there in the mid-1800s. Putao was used as the venue for building a British military fort in the northern-most region of Burma, with the intent of blocking any invasion by warriors from Tibet or China. The village of Nam Kham was used as an outpost and support village in the line of British defense.
This truly is a time warp, I thought again as we trudged along. It’s an amazing and extremely rare opportunity to be transported into an active and vibrant culture of perhaps one hundred or two hundred years ago.
Next Week: “We’re Proud of our Medical Clinic in Nam Kham.”