BURMA - UNFORGETTABLE STORIES Travel Journals: Feb. 1998: Nov. 2001: Feb. 2003: Oct. 2003

Nam Kham and Machang Baw, Burma: November 15, 2001: As I observed earlier, northern Burma isn’t a nation of dirty, abject poverty like Africa, India, or parts of South America. The people work hard and aren’t lazy or slothful in the least. They may be residents of an underdeveloped country, but they themselves aren’t poor. If judged by US standards, they would be considered destitute, since they lack water and sewer systems, reliable electricity, cell phones, television, rapid transit, fax machines, high-speed computers, and the Internet. But they have everything they need for a happy and functional community, except perhaps an adequate health-care system. 

We visited Daniel’s old primary school. The Brits had constructed the building, and nothing has changed in nearly fifty years. The metal roof has never been replaced. The kids play the same school-yard games they played when Daniel attended the school. Indeed, I was in a time warp.

By the time we walked back to the stilted, thatched-roof home of Daniel’s brother-in-law, nearly all the village elders had gathered in the yard, and a couple of large bonfires were burning. We sat and chatted until about 5:00 p.m., and then we excused ourselves, climbed the stairs into the house, and were served another wonderful Burmese meal of fish, rice, greens, and chicken soup. A mixture of bananas, oranges, and grapefruit slices swimming in honey served as desert, and of course we finished the meal with two kinds of tea.

Descending from the candle-lit house to the compound yard after dinner, I noticed that the crowd of visitors had greatly increased. They were all ready to celebrate around the open fires. Once again the village leaders welcomed us, and then Daniel and I were both asked to speak to the crowd for about fifteen minutes each.

A small choir from a Christian college in Putao traveled all the way to Nam Kham today to sing for us this evening. They had ridden their bicycles and then were ferried, bicycles and all, across the river in dugout canoes.

No one was in a hurry to leave. I met another group of barefoot doctors who had traveled a couple of days on their bicycles or walked to meet with us. As was the case in Myitkyina, the gathering included group singing, readings from the Bible, and a session of spontaneous, loud prayers for our safety and for God to persuade the military government to allow Project C.U.R.E. and the barefoot doctors to work freely in northern Burma.

About 10:00 p.m. I finally excused myself from the group, washed up, and crawled under my mosquito netting to go to sleep. The visitors just stayed on around the fire talking to Daniel and sharing stories, old and new.

Friday, November 16
Were it not for all the faithful roosters around the world, the sun would never know when to rise. Fortunately I heard the crowing, climbed out from under my lace mosquito netting, and was ready for my bath about 6:15 a.m. I could smell the smoke from the wood fires and knew that even in the remote village of Nam Kham, the kitchen help were up a lot earlier heating the water, which they had hand drawn from an open well. After my bath I sat near the open fires in the high jungle mist and kept warm as I waited for breakfast. 

The village leaders had chosen a middle-aged village woman named Pruperam Nang to travel by foot and canoe from Nam Kham to Chiang Mai, Thailand, to be trained as a barefoot doctor. After Pruperam returned to Nam Kham, the village helped her set up a small clinic. Pruperam lives above the Pung Zi Pung clinic, which is the only medical facility for miles and miles around. 

Following breakfast Pruperam proudly led Daniel, Ma Lay, and me down the grass-covered trails to the clinic and helped us complete our needs assessment. The villagers are extremely proud to have a medical clinic in their very own village.

We left the clinic and walked back to the stilted house where we had stayed. We then packed up our belongings and started our one-mile trek back to the river. Many of the villagers followed us, and before we loaded our things into the dugout canoes, the village leaders presented us with gifts to take home.

Nam Kham means “gold ground” (kham is “gold” and nam is “ground”). However, the villagers are content to let their precious gold and gemstones remain in the ground as they pursue their simple agrarian lifestyle. In such a restricted area, visitors rarely come and disrupt their simple but satisfying customs.

Our canoe “drivers” pushed us once again out into the current of the pristine Malikha River for our nearly four-hour trip from Nam Kham to the city of Machang Baw. During the long trip, I didn’t observe any villages built right along the river’s edge, but I could see smoke rising from village fires in the jungle, and frequently I saw people along the riverbanks fishing, washing clothes, and gathering water. I found it very curious that at three different locations on the river, Chinese dredging barges were set up for the purpose of extracting gold and gemstones from the river.

In the distance were eighteen-thousand-foot Himalayan Mountain peaks. We were very close to the Tibet and China borders as we rounded a large bend in the river and spotted the town of Machang Baw, which is the township headquarters and boasts a population of nearly twenty thousand. The governor was at the river’s edge to greet us when we pulled our dugout canoes up on the sand.

We were escorted immediately to the Machang Baw hospital, which sits on a bluff high above the Malikha River. The hospital had been without a doctor in residence until just the day before our arrival. The medical situation at the hospital is really bleak.

The equipment is very old and rusty, and the beds are just board slats with no mattresses. All the medications and supplies are locked up in a separate little building, but no one knows where the key is kept.

“Oh well,” said one male nurse, “there isn’t anything good in there anyway, so it doesn’t matter if we can’t find the key.”

The new doctor in charge of the hospital, Dr. Nanda Nyi Swe, was very embarrassed. “Our twenty-bed hospital is the only institution serving about eighty thousand people in our township. I have just come here, but as you can see, I will not be effective unless I can get someone to help me. I need everything for this hospital if I am to help these people.”

Lunch was served to us in one of the old buildings left over from British colonial days. We talked at length with the governor, the new hospital director, and the other political leaders about the situation and their need to contact the regional military generals and influence them to do all they can to make it easy for Project C.U.R.E. and the barefoot doctors to work freely in the Machang Baw area. 

Daniel and his brothers and sisters lived in Machang Baw at one time. When their father died, their young mother moved the entire family to Nam Kham to raise the children. Daniel and his brother hadn’t been back to the village for many years, so before we left, they had us all walk down the dirt streets and village trails as they reminisced about their early childhood.

One thing that had been added to the village after the family left was a steel swinging bridge across the Malikha River. As we walked across the bridge, I was pleasantly surprised to spot our old 1945 Jeep and our two drivers waiting to take us back to Putao.

Saturday, November 17

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, Putao was the site of colonial England’s northern-most military outpost. It guarded Burma from attacks from Tibet and China. Much of the old military outpost still stands, and many of the original buildings are still utilized. Putao’s city hospital was once a British military hospital. The structure still stands, but nothing resembling any modern medical equipment or supplies is left inside.

This morning we walked in the rain from the home of Daniel’s brother, where we are staying, to the Putao general hospital. Dr. Theingar Aung, the hospital director, was very pleased to give us a tour and point out the desperate needs. The hospital serves a catchment area of about 150,000 people and needs everything from a microscope to mosquito netting for the beds.

Our group returned to our residence to find the entire yard full of parked bicycles, and many pairs of shoes and flappers lined up outside the doors. The barefoot doctors had been arriving throughout the morning after traveling many hours and many miles to reach Putao by noon. Many came wearing the lovely ski jackets they had received from Project C.U.R.E. I had to smile when I saw them wearing the coats, which still bear the Vail and Beaver Creek ski logos on the sleeves—a bit of Colorado in the high country of Myanmar.

For the rest of the day, Daniel and I met with the barefoot doctors. We listened to more stories of the lives being saved and health care being advanced in a part of the world where no one else has come to help. Once again I was emotionally moved and convinced of the rightness of what Project C.U.R.E. is doing. I carefully listed all the things those courageous people told us they need in order to save more lives in the many town and villages.

The rain hadn’t let up at all. Chin Lay Doo and her kitchen helpers brought tea and sweets to our meeting, and during one break, the barefoot doctors and Daniel’s brother Phe Ram made an extraordinary presentation. As the leading nonmilitary politician of the Putao region and the previous governor, Phe Ram bestowed on me the title of honorary governor of the province and placed an official robe and crown on me, which I was allowed to keep. The headpiece was a woven hat adorned with six sets of wild-boar tusks attached to it. I was overwhelmed. It truly was a great honor.

About 5:00 p.m., in spite of the heavy rain, many of the barefoot doctors got on their bicycles or started out on foot to return to their homes. Some of those staying over until tomorrow morning joined us as Phe Ram and Chin Lay Doo took us to the cultural center and museum of the Putao region. Phe Ram had gotten the idea for a cultural center and a Burmese museum while traveling to the United States to visit Washington, D.C., when he was governor.

I could see that a lot of time and effort had gone into planning and building the cultural displays. The facility is a great start in preserving the history and culture of the region.

Next Week: A Little “Shout-Out” for Great Britain

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BURMA - UNFORGETTABLE STORIES Travel Journals: Feb. 1998: Nov. 2001: Feb. 2003: Oct. 2003: (Part 8)

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.”

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BURMA - UNFORGETTABLE STORIES Travel Journals: Feb. 1998: Nov. 2001: Feb. 2003: Oct. 2003 (Part 7)

Myitkyina, Kachin State, Burma: November 14, 2001: As previously mentioned, Myitkyina is the capital city of Kachin State. Many of the state officials gather at the state capital even as the country’s leaders gather in Rangoon. News spread rapidly about the government shake-up and the sacking of two of the main cabinet ministers over the past couple of days.

The top military leader of Putao happened to be in Myitkyina with his family today. Our guide, Ma Lay, hurried around and talked the commander into meeting with Daniel and me at 7:00 a.m., a highly unusual time for a government meeting. But it was mandatory for us to meet with him and get his blessing and approval, since a large part of Project C.U.R.E.’s future work will be centered in Putao.

The commander had us come to the home where he was staying. He invited us in and introduced us to his wife. He was very warm and open with us, and when we explained what we wanted to do in Putao and the surrounding area, he smiled and assured us that he will be there to fully support us in every way possible. He was critically aware of how much the people of his area need medical help and was additionally complimentary of all the past work of the barefoot doctors.

On the way back to check out of the small Pant Sun Hotel, I had Ma Lay stop and walk with me through the market of Myitkyina. She was born and raised in the city, and some of her childhood friends now operate a jewelry kiosk at the market. I asked her to help pick out a nice jade-and-gold ring for Anna Marie’s Christmas present. I knew I would later kick myself if I didn’t capture the memory of Myitkyina in a Christmas ring for my best girlfriend. I was in the world’s finest gemstone reserve, I had seen where the local people go to the river to extract the gold nuggets, and I knew that the local goldsmith employed the secrets of his trade, handed down from generations, to hand pound and craft the rings.

I’m not a shopper. I’m a buyer. And so it took almost no time at all for me to decide on a treasure. I was almost embarrassed at the price asked for the pure-gold, hand-crafted ring, but I certainly didn’t let that stand in the way of being pleased with my purchase.

Our flight on the local Myanmar National Airlines was scheduled to depart Myitkyina at 10:30 a.m. A group of our new friends followed Daniel and me to the airport. Unlike places in South America, Central America, or even Europe, the Asian culture doesn’t allow for any physical touching, hugging, or expressions of emotion. They just don’t do it. So there was a lot of bowing and smiling as Daniel, Ma Lay, and I boarded our plane to Putao.

In Putao, a town of more than two hundred thousand people, more members of Daniel’s family warmly greeted us. As soon as we stepped off the plane, I felt the difference of the atmosphere and climate. We were still in the tropical jungle, but we had flown straight toward the Himalayan Mountains that separate Myanmar from Tibet and China. No longer were we along the low river bottoms of Yangon (Rangoon) or Myitkyina.

We landed shortly after noon, and the sun had already burned off the mist of the clouds that settle over Putao each morning, collecting around the base of the high mountain range.

The British had laid out the airport, but it was the energetic people of Putao who built the runways in subsequent years by hand, literally, to entice and encourage the commercial flights of Myanmar National Airlines to land there two or three times a week.

In addition to family and friends waiting for us at the airport, there was a driver and an old l945 Jeep left over from the days of the British occupation. We piled all of our luggage on a rack atop the Jeep, and as many people as possible packed themselves into the vehicle for the ride home.

About a mile and a half from the airport, we pulled off the road and through the gates at the home of Daniel’s brother-in-law, who insisted that we stop and have tea and chicken soup. This brother-in-law is about sixty-five years old, has only one leg, and is a man of many talents. He built his own home inside the gate and is just completing a brand-new, large home constructed of hardwood beams, plank floors and walls, and a roof made of beautifully cut wood taken from the forests. The house is being built on stilts in typical Burmese fashion to last for eternity. The old gentleman also weaves wonderful woolen fabric, is a superb basket weaver, draws and paints pictures, and designs and constructs buildings.

When we finished with our chicken soup and tea, we loaded back into the Jeep and headed for the home of Daniel’s brother. It had taken special written permission for me to stay at an individual’s home in the restricted area. All visitors are typically assigned to stay in the old British army barracks, but Daniel’s brother, Phe Ram, and his wife, Chin Lay Doo, have special clout and influence in Kachin State. Phe Ram used to be a very popular governor of the Putao region, and though he is now retired, he is still highly respected.

Phe Ram and Chin Lay Doo’s house is situated on a large town parcel, fenced and gated, and the property is covered with banana trees; kumquat fruit trees; grapefruit, orange, coconut, mango trees; green garden and herb plants; and apple and tangerine trees. They ride bicycles or walk because hardly any motorized vehicles exist in the town of nearly a quarter of a million people. Ox carts with two large wheels transport most loads, and the government owns a few old buses and large, rickety, old open-bed trucks that serve as taxis for the people.

Phe Ram’s house, kitchen buildings, outbuildings, and entire compound grounds were flawlessly clean and well maintained. Eventually I was taken to the room where I would sleep. There was a sufficient supply of candles, a porcelain pot at the foot of the bed, and a promise that a mosquito net would be placed over my bed before nightfall. The house was well constructed with jungle hardwood and had a metal roof instead of banana leaves or thatch.

It was pointed out to me that I would be supplied with plenty of bottled water. Northern Myanmar has no water system or sewer system, and electricity is available only if you own your own generator. Therefore, I was welcome to use the small toilet house on the northwest corner of the property. (There was no bench or “one-holer” but rather a set of porcelain footpads where you can place your feet and squat over a hole in the outhouse floor. Plenty of water was supplied in a bucket in the outhouse for washing your hands and washing off the floor. It takes special talent to use such a facility and keep your clothes clean!)

I was given a towel and shown to the outside bathhouse measuring about seven feet by seven feet. I could bathe either at night or in the morning. The family’s hired help would supply hot water to fill the cauldrons inside the bathhouse so that the bath would be warm and pleasant. Should I need to go to the toilet during the night, I was instructed to simply light a candle and then use the porcelain pot at the foot of the bed. The doors would be locked, so it wouldn’t be necessary—or possible—to go to the outside toilet house. A chambermaid would attend to everything in the morning.

After a wonderful meal of rice, chicken meat, fried fish, green chard, bamboo shoots, and rattan shoots, we were served our two kinds of tea. First was the Assam tea with milk and honey and then the strong green tea served in bamboo cups.

It was very dark by 5:30 p.m., and following dinner we all went outside and sat around the fire and talked. No television is available, so people just gather in the evenings to visit. Lots of people came by to say “Par ma rar” to Daniel and hear news from Chiang Mai and America.

Even though it is considered tropical, being at the base of the Himalayan Mountain range and the nineteen-thousand-foot-high Mount Hkakabo Razi made it cool enough at night that I wanted to wear a sweater or jacket. While we sat and talked, the ladies served us more green tea with sliced and baked casaba roots, slices of glutinous rice cakes (chewy like the inside of a large unsweetened gum drop), and flat tortillas made from special tree bark pounded thin, soaked in water, rolled out, and made into flour. Everything was sweetened by or dipped into honey to go along with the strong green tea. We stayed and visited around the fire until about 9:00 p.m.

As I was dropping off to sleep under my mosquito-net tent, I reflected on what I saw today. Northern Burma is perhaps the last great pristine time warp in the twenty-first century. It isn’t dirty and desperate like the places I visited in Africa or India. It’s safe, unlike Mizoram, Manipur, or Nagaland in India. It isn’t a land of poverty, even though the people have no electricity, sewer systems, or running water. The country is undeveloped almost in a classic sense, but it isn’t poor. The people are extremely clean, well fed, and very happy, though they possess very little of the things we use to judge wealth or affluence. Their government isn’t progressive at all, but neither is it repressive like the governments of so many other countries where I’ve traveled, such as Iraq, Cuba, North Korea, Congo, or Sudan. Being here is like going back in time one hundred years or more and being able to just drop in on their preserved culture.

Next Week: I Will Share a Few Acquired Tidbits of Personal Experience

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BURMA - UNFORGETTABLE STORIES Travel Journals: Feb. 1998: Nov. 2001: Feb. 2003: Oct. 2003: (Part 6)

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

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BURMA - UNFORGETTABLE STORIES Travel Journals: Feb. 1998: Nov. 2001: Feb. 2005: Oct. 2003 (Part 5)

Rangoon, Burma: November 11, 2001: During our wait, I’ve been trying to learn some Burmese phrases that will help me out socially. Ma Lay and Daniel told me that phonetically Ming gala ba means “hello” in a formal setting, and Par ma rar is “hi” for informal greetings.

Je’zu din bade is the formal “thank you,” while O ah a is “thanks.” (I have an easy mental crutch that helps me for the formal thank you. When I want to say thank you, I think of the crucifix and say, “Jesus’ dying body” for Je’zu din bade. But no one knows how I remember it so quickly.) May pal hoe me means “enough,” Saw means “Let’s go,” and an kam me ma means “good taste or good eats.” I practice my little phrases as often as possible, and it’s fun to see how it delights the locals when a Scotch-Irish fellow tries to speak their language.

Following breakfast Daniel and I got together for a time of devotion. We both realize how important it is for us to get approved and set a precedent for outsiders being allowed to move about in the restricted part of Burma. Except for 1996 and this current trip, Daniel himself failed to get permission to enter the country.

At exactly 10:25 a.m., the phone in the hotel room rang. It was Ma Lay. She had been at the defense minister’s office since early morning. Somehow during all the political craziness and upheaval of the government replacing cabinet members, the defense minister had signed my papers. He accepted the responsibility for an American going into the restricted area to do needs assessments. It was nothing less than a miracle!

The rest of the day, I kept thinking how strategic our trip has already been. To me it seems extremely symbolic that Project C.U.R.E. would be the group allowed to enter the restricted area. Once again, we’re privileged to be at the right place at the right time walking through doors previously shut and locked. With the precedent set, it won’t be as risky or difficult for officials to give us approval for future trips.

Being part of the Myanmar miracle has brought back the same feelings I experienced when Project C.U.R.E. entered venues where everyone else was previously turned away. I thought of Pyongyang, North Korea, and how our entry there resulted in enormous success. I thought of my most recent trip to Beijing, China, where the head man of the federation became my friend, and how he extended to Project C.U.R.E. access to China like no other organization I know. Similar miracles took place in Baghdad, Iraq; Belgrade, Yugoslavia; Havana, Cuba; Khartoum, Sudan; Nouakchott, Mauritania; Congo, Africa; Cambodia; North Vietnam; and so many other difficult places.

I’m so thankful to God today in Rangoon, Myanmar, for permitting me to be just a small part of God’s benevolent enterprises.

Monday, November 12

It was fun just to watch Daniel and his excitement this morning as we checked out of the Central Hotel and prepared to go to the airport. He was like a little, eager kid. He knew that for only the third time since he was eighteen years old, he was going home to the villages of his childhood. It all was becoming another big step toward the fulfillment of his dream to return to his home country and bring help and hope to his people.

Ma Lay secured all our travel permits and our tickets on Myanmar National Airlines from Rangoon to Myitkyina. We arrived at the Yangon International Airport in time to catch our flight, which landed at the funny little airport in central Kachin State at 12:30 p.m. Although Myitkyina has a population of nearly two million, the city is undeveloped, with mostly dirt streets and open markets, and people rely on their own water wells and outhouse sewer systems. As one of the main British colonial towns, it still bears the English stamp of town planning and government buildings.

One of Daniel’s sisters, who lives in Myitkyina, warmly greeted us at the airport. Many friends assisted us with our luggage and helped get us settled in the small Pant Sun Hotel on a narrow side street.

Our important assignment for this afternoon was an arranged meeting with the head military government official in Myitkyina, Colonel Myint Thein. We were now his responsibility, and he wanted to know as much about us as possible. The ranking officer obviously had experience outside northern Burma and knew English quite well. He wanted to use his English to impress us and also to show respect to me as his English-speaking guest. But Daniel was also eager to let the officer know that he was Burmese through and through and was one of Kachin State’s own. Daniel insisted on talking to the colonel in Burmese, while the officer tried to keep the conversation open by speaking in English.

Daniel wasn’t sizing up the situation well at all, and Colonel Thein began getting irritated. Ma Lay was looking at Daniel, obviously surprised at what was happening. I knew we were walking on thin ice when I realized that Colonel Thein had decided to stop competing with Daniel and just talk in Burmese. He was insulted. But the problem came when I realized that the colonel was asking direct questions about Project C.U.R.E., and Daniel was trying to field the questions without any information base. I suspected he was giving incorrect answers regarding the kinds of medical goods we could supply, and about our standard methods and procedures for working with a recipient country. It was sadly important for him to give a solo performance and try to supply all the answers, even though he didn’t have the information.

I perceived what was going on and just relaxed in my chair and smiled. But inside I was thinking, Oh my goodness, this is the first time I’ve worked with Daniel in tight quarters, and he doesn’t have the foggiest idea about teamwork or strategic selling. I’m dealing with a runaway locomotive, and the Lord is going to have to make something good happen out of what is shaping up to be quite bad.

The meeting ended with the head man still a bit on edge. Everyone is so skittish and suspicious in Burma, and my fear was that we had done very little to put those anxieties to rest and just build a simple basis of friendship and confidence. As we walked out of the building, Daniel was still telling me how his uncles had occupied certain offices at the headquarters building, and how their influence had been so important.

I crawled back into our car and thought, Cut Daniel all the slack he needs. Be patient with a man who is so eager to see something good happen for a people he loves and for a country to which he is just reestablishing after nearly thirty-seven years of absence. It’s natural that he would be overly aggressive and eager for success. It will be my responsibility to ease the situation wherever possible and do even more to make good friends of these leaders.

Myitkyina is located along a low river bottom, and the climate is hot and humid, with tropical plants, eucalyptus trees, banana trees, acacia trees, and gorgeous jungle flowers everywhere. It reminded me of so many places I had visited in Cambodia, Vietnam, and northeast India. Many of the people reminded me of the colorful people I had met in Nepal.

Tuesday, November 13

Daniel and I are eating all our meals at the home of his sister. The food is wonderful. About five ladies busily work over open wood-burning fires or prepare vegetables or homemade noodles. Almost all the meals, including breakfast, consist of large individual bowls of noodles with meats, local vegetables, and spices cooked in.

Our hostesses were nervous until they saw that I could handle chopsticks with proficiency, and that the American guest was going to fit in just fine. One just doesn’t see many Americans, ever, in that restricted part of northern Burma.

This morning the ladies fixed something extra special for us. They had deep-fried bread sticks, which we dipped in honey and ate with our tea. In northern Burma two kinds of tea are always served at the end of the meal. First, we had Burmese tea, greatly influenced by the British. It’s a black tea served with lots of milk and sweetened with honey. Then we finished with very strong green tea served in cups fashioned out of bamboo stalks.

I was informed that the honey was “cliff honey.” On the rock face of a high cliff in the jungle, there is a certain very large bee that builds its hive and deposits its honey there. Over the years the natives have figured out a way to harvest those hives. They build a smoky fire below the nests for a couple of days to drive the bees away. The bees are very dangerous, and a sting from just one or two can cause death.

Once most of the bees have abandoned the hives, a local honey hunter climbs down the cliff as far as he can from above and attaches a rope equipped with knife blades to a tree or rock outcropping just above the hive. Then from down below, another honey hunter moves the ropes along the face of the cliff, forcing the sharp knives to cut the nests from the rocks, sending the honey-laden hives down to the ground near the fires. Those hives are quickly gathered and transported to the nearby towns or villages to be sold in the open markets. The natives claim there is no finer honey in the world than cliff honey.

Daniel, Ma Lay, and I had to return to Colonel Thein’s office this morning. Thankfully the second meeting went a lot better than the first. I complimented the officer on his good use of English and chatted awhile about his personal background and duties. It seemed like he was dropping his guard a little and wasn’t quite so edgy and suspicious.

This afternoon, the three of us drove out of Myitkyina toward the China border. We followed the river, where individuals and families were out panning for large nuggets of gold. From high up in the Himalayan Mountains, the river washes the gold down, especially in the spring, and many people make their living from simple operations of removing the gold from the gravel. Likewise, the highest quality jade is found in the northern part of Burma. Rubies and sapphires are also mined in large quantities in Kachin State. I already knew about Burmese rubies, the finest in the world, from my days with Jackson Brothers Investments. It’s a special delight to be in the remote and restricted part of the world that yields so many high-quality treasures.

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.

Next Week: Barefoot Doctors travel from afar to meet us

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BURMA - UNFORGETTABLE STORIES Travel Journals: Feb. 1998: Nov. 2001: Feb. 2003: Oct. 2003 (Part 4)

Rangoon, Burma (Yangon, Myanmar): November 9, 2001: “Quite frankly, Mr. Htay Aung,” I said, “I am in no way a risk to your country or to those in charge of keeping order. I am here to work with you and bring good to you and your country, both now and in the future. I want your permission to continue to travel as planned.”

About that time Daniel jumped in and told of the medical needs and Project C.U.R.E.’s ability to help the rural people of the north. He then described the Needs Assessment Study, which we wanted to undertake to make sure we would be able to appropriately help in the future. After about thirty-five minutes, the deputy minister had tea brought in for us, and he excused himself from the room. Daniel and I continued our discussions with the other officials who had been brought in for the meeting, and I showed pictures of Project C.U.R.E.’s work in other areas around the world.

After another thirty minutes, the deputy minister returned to our meeting.

“I have successfully intervened on your behalf with the minister of tourism,” he informed us, “and he has signed your papers. But you will not be able to travel today because the minister of defense must also sign off on all your papers. He cannot possibly even hear your situation in time for you to fly today. Monday will be the earliest opportunity, if he decides to sign the papers. There are some radical changes taking place in our government situation today, and the cabinet ministers are extremely preoccupied with those meetings. It is more than likely that your papers won’t even be considered at this time. You will just have to wait and see.”

That wait-and-see verdict was what Daniel had put up with before when he was refused entrance. On other occasions, he simply had to return to Chiang Mai.

The situation is certainly out of our hands. God definitely answered our prayers and gave us favor with the ministry of tourism, and we are making progress. We will continue to pray that God will give us wisdom and favor and make a way where there seems to be no way.

To unwind from the meeting, Daniel and I decided to eat lunch and then visit the busy marketplace. I love going to foreign markets and observing the customs and habits of the locals. I wasn’t disappointed.

Of the popular items being sold today were huge crickets. Large baskets filled with the bugs were carried on top of the heads of vendors who strolled through the marketplace. The insects were three to four inches long and had been fried in garlic and ginger. People buy ten of the crickets for the equivalent of thirty US cents. Most people I observed would pull off the wings, the smaller legs, and the lower half of the back legs and pop them into their mouths. The crickets, flavored with garlic and ginger, are apparently appealing to the taste and are a great source of protein. There is a crunchy sound that accompanies chewing the crickets. Other bugs, worms, snails, and sea creatures were also readily available at the market.

We waited the rest of the day and evening to hear from the office of the defense minister. But we went to bed having heard absolutely nothing.

I was preoccupied thinking about our situation and had difficulty sleeping. The biggest impediment to my sleeping, however, was the horrendous snoring that was taking place in our room. Daniel had wanted to save some money by having us share a hotel room. Bad idea! I lay there and thought, This too shall pass, and I will get to sleep. Wrong. The earth shook; the lights rattled. I feared for Daniel’s life, lest his head should collapse when he inhaled, and his sinuses should explode when he breathed out. I’d never heard snoring like that in my life.

In desperation I turned on the lights. The only difference that made was that I could now see the pictures as the wall shook and the earth moved, but it certainly did nothing to deter the snoring. In a loud voice I started calling out, “Daniel, wake up. You’re going to kill yourself. Daniel!”

I recalled his story about the guys in Colorado taking him on a duck hunt, and Daniel’s snoring had kept all the hunters awake. They had just laughed and watched him snore because no one could awaken him, and no one could sleep either. It amused me, but I wasn’t laughing.

Finally I walked over to his bed and started slapping his hand and hollering, “Daniel, wake up! You’re going to kill yourself. You’re going to inhale your nose and mouth and blow them out your eyes. Wake up!” That did the trick. Daniel woke up and was so innocently pathetic. He apologized profusely and quickly admitted that he had a “slight” snoring problem whenever he was fully relaxed in his sleep.

“Okay,” I said, “here are the new ground rules. When you start snoring, I’ll turn the lights on and the television on with increasing volume. The sound and lights will wake you up, and I might as well be watching the news if I’m going to be awake.”

Saturday, November 10

Morning finally arrived, and following breakfast at the Central Hotel, Daniel and I wandered back over to the Bogyoke Aung San Market. We didn’t want to get too far away from where officials could reach us if the defense minister should happen to take up our case today. Our official liaison, Khin Khin Swe (Ma Lay), has really been working on our behalf. I think she likes us and is sold on what we’re trying to do for her people. She had already been to the government offices trying to push our paperwork under the eyes of her contacts in the ministry of defense. As a personal favor to Ma Lay, her friends had agreed to try to interrupt the defense minister’s other urgent meetings and plead our case to him. All we could do was wait.

At the marketplace I decided to do my Christmas shopping. Each year we invite friends and Project C.U.R.E. people to our Evergreen home for “Christmas on the Creek.” I try to bring home small gifts from a country where I’m traveling to give to each of our guests. Most people have never had a small gift from Rangoon, Myanmar. Fortunately I found exactly what I felt would make perfect Christmas mementos, and I bargained until I felt I was paying an acceptable price.

As Daniel and I spent time together, he confided to me a lot of concerns he has regarding his future plans and how they will fit with the structure and polity of his ministry format.

“Jim, you know well the complexities of the inner workings and peculiarities of Christian ministry boards and organizations. I think a lot about what is possible and what seems impossible, but I have never really had anyone help me from an objective standpoint. I know you to be a deep man of God. He has given you much wisdom, and you have successfully operated important ministries. It is such a relief to have someone like you as my friend, who travels halfway around the world and is someone I can talk to.”

I also thank God for the opportunity to be Daniel’s friend.

This afternoon, Ma Lay took us to the Burma historical museum. When she asked if we would like to go, I jumped at the chance.

“If Project C.U.R.E. is going to invest millions of dollars’ worth of medical goods in Burma,” I said, “we need to avail ourselves of every bit of economic, cultural, and political information provided to us. We’ll always make better decisions here in this country, as well as at home, if we increase our scope of information and facts.”

We gleaned a treasure of information at the museum. I was able to get a clearer idea of how the Asian tribes had migrated down from areas around Mongolia, and how the southward push had settled the different tribes in China, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan—and all the other “stans”—Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Korea, Japan, Burma, eastern India, and the island countries. I was also able to gain some good insights on the British colonization period and the effects of that era.

There was nothing I could have done in Rangoon this afternoon that would have been more useful for our future work in Myanmar than walking the halls and display rooms of the history museum. I hope to pass that important strategy on to future Project C.U.R.E. leaders.

This evening Daniel and I went to a lovely restaurant called the Karaweik, owned by the Myanmar government. The Karaweik is a mythical Burmese bird believed to have an alluring and melodious call. The monarchy originally built a large boat, or barge, on a huge lake in the city of Rangoon replicating two such birds floating together. It is now used as a restaurant and cultural performance center. Ma Lay knows all the good spots to visit. And as elsewhere in the Asian countries where I’ve traveled, the music the Asian artists performed were favorite songs right out of my high school days. The artists clearly loved the old hits by Andy Williams, Elvis Presley, and others, and although I wasn’t convinced that they always knew the words they were singing, they had learned to phonetically make the right vowel and consonant sounds so that I could enjoy from memory all the verses and choruses of the old hits of the l950s and l960s.

Daniel and I returned to our hotel tonight without hearing a word from the defense ministry. I expressed to God that it would really be all right with me if we were required to fly back to Bangkok without going into the restricted area of Myanmar.

I’ve made myself available, I prayed. That is what I felt I should do. I have no other expectations or designs that would go beyond your plan or your timing. If we’ve accomplished all that’s on your agenda for this trip, then I’m satisfied. But if the situation is such that we should ask in faith for you to move the stogie bureaucracy of the Myanmar government, then I would simply ask that you directly intervene and deal with the defense minister and his office to get our papers signed. I’m not special, but I am available.

Next Week: Home again in the High Himalayan Mountains

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BURMA - UNFORGETTABLE STORIES Travel Journals: Feb. 1998: Nov. 2001: Feb. 2003: Oct. 2003 (Part 3)

Bangkok, Thailand: November 7, 2001: Everywhere Daniel went in the high jungles of northern Myanmar, he was welcomed as a hero. Whenever the village people returned from their medical training at Daniel’s facilities in Chiang Mai, Thailand, they brought home the legend of a man who had escaped Burma during the war-torn years and was now aiding and sending back urgently needed medical help to his beloved country. It was the same Daniel Kalnin.

The individuals who became barefoot doctors had been selected by their village councils. They had to walk, in some cases, three to four weeks out of the roadless jungle through Mandalay and Rangoon and on to the Myanmar-Thailand border. There they had to cross over illegally into Thailand and continue their arduous journey to the city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. When the individuals agreed to be trained as barefoot doctors, they also agreed to make that dangerous journey into Thailand three years in a row and stay in Chiang Mai for one month’s training each of those three years. They received nothing more, really, than EMT (emergency medical technician) and paramedic training. But when they returned to their jungle townships, they were the only people who even remotely resembled a doctor.

But as those “doctors” returned to their villages loaded down with medical supplies furnished by Project C.U.R.E., miracles began to happen. The barefoot doctors could now save lives by helping with complicated births.

Now they could successfully treat traumatic accidents out in the jungles. Fevers, gastrointestinal problems, and OB-GYN problems could be treated, malaria and tuberculosis medicine could be administered, and the new barefoot doctors could even successfully extract teeth without having to pound out a tooth with a mallet and a bamboo rod.

The village people began to connect all the new benefits with the man who previously lived in one of their own villages and now cared enough to send back help to his homeland. When Daniel appeared in those remote places, he was honored. They even gave him an elephant parade of royal proportions.

Unfortunately Daniel has been denied reentry into Myanmar since his 1996 visit. The leaders of old Burma have become so suspicious of everyone that in many ways their country is as restricted and closed as North Korea or Cuba. Daniel was determined, however, and once again he traveled to Denver to meet with me at our Project C.U.R.E. office.

When he arrived, we talked about a gutsy plan of arranging for me to go with him into the restricted areas of Myanmar to perform needs assessments and meet with and encourage the nearly one hundred barefoot doctors who had been laboring so faithfully over the years. We presumed we could quite easily get into the country as far as Rangoon, and perhaps Mandalay, but it would take a definite miracle of God to get Daniel, plus an American, approved to visit such places as Myitkyina (pronounced “Machena”), Putao, Machang Baw, or Daniel’s home village of Nam Kham. One other time, Daniel made it as far as Rangoon and then was turned back to Chiang Mai after waiting in his hotel room for permits that simply never materialized.

It was agreed that Daniel would try to work through the ministry of tourism to get a trip approved for himself in February of 2001. His objective would be to draw up some plans for me to travel to Myanmar with him in November and check out the feasibility of such a trip. The plan is a little risky, and its execution is quite unlikely. God will have to intervene, but we will make ourselves available and plan as if something extraordinary will happen.

It was agreed that I will travel to Bangkok, Thailand, where I will arrive in the wee small hours of the morning of November 8, 2001. I will check in and stay at the Rama Garden Hotel near the Bangkok airport until Daniel can secure the airplane tickets from Bangkok to Rangoon (Yangon), Burma. My plans for traveling to Myanmar with Daniel Kalnin are tentative, to say the least. I won’t even know if I will get permission to travel into the restricted area in northern Burma until I’m actually there.

After a very long trip from the US, through Tokyo, Japan and on to Thailand, I finally arrived in Bangkok at nearly midnight on Tuesday night, November 6. The Rama Gardens Hotel near Bangkok’s airport was a welcome sight. I’ve stayed there enough times that, as strange as it may seem, as I walked into my assigned room, I caught myself sighing and thinking, Ah yes! I’m home!

Wednesday, November 7

The plan is for me to stay put at the Rama Gardens Hotel until Daniel Kalnin is able to secure the airplane tickets from Bangkok to Rangoon, Myanmar, and fly from Chiang Mai, Thailand, to meet me in Bangkok. The plan changed a number of times in the weeks preceding the trip, but that’s how it finally jelled.

I welcome the few hours’ respite at the Rama Gardens Hotel. It will give me a chance to finish writing my journal entries on my trip to Kinshasa, Congo. For some reason I’ve had a mental block on the Congo journal. It has never happened to me before, but I think I experienced more emotional, mental, and physical shock to my system while in the Congo than during any other trip I’ve ever taken. The death and dying; the hopelessness of their political, cultural, and economic situation; the attitude of the people; the lack of integrity and discipline in the entire health-care system; the greed and lifestyles of dishonesty and hatred—all of it deeply affected me. There were just so many disagreeable, disgusting, and pitiful situations in war-torn, AIDS-ravaged Congo that it’s taken longer than usual to synthesize and process the experience and find sufficient closure to write about it. Finally, these uncluttered, few hours alone in Bangkok have given me the opportunity to reduce the Congo episode to writing. I’m grateful for the time.

Thursday, November 8

Daniel arrived in Bangkok today and met me at my hotel. It was good to see my friend again. We both know that the trip back to Burma is going to be highly significant and historical, and we both feel a sense of gratitude to God for getting to be part of a history-in-the-making occasion in that part of the world.

We made our way to the Bangkok airport and flew on Thai Airways flight 308 to Rangoon, arriving about 10:00 p.m. At the airport we met two government officials from the ministry of tourism. Khin Khin Swe will be with us every mile and every minute of our stay in Myanmar.

“My nickname is Ma Lay,” she told us, “and you are welcome to call me that instead of trying to remember Khin Khin Swe.” The ministry of tourism also assigned her to be Daniel’s guide when he traveled into the restricted area this past February.

Daniel explained to me that having Ma Lay assigned to us is a real answer to prayer by itself. She was extremely instrumental in opening political and cultural doors for Project C.U.R.E. in February. She has considerable influence and is very intelligent and streetwise. Additionally, she is from Myitkyina, the capital of the Kachin Province in the north, where we intend to travel. She knows Daniel’s sister and brother-in-law, who live in Myitkyina, a city of 1.5 million people. Ma Lay graduated from the university in Rangoon, became a science and mathematics teacher, and moved to the northern town of Putao. As God’s providence would have it, she taught at the high school in Putao before the ministry of tourism invited her to join up. For two years while she taught at the high school, she stayed in the home of Daniel’s brother, Phe Ram, and his wife, Chin Lay Doo. Phe Ram previously served as governor of the area.

Ma Lay not only knows Daniel’s family, but she had also heard of Daniel and was well aware of the fine work of the barefoot doctors in both the Myitkyina and the Putao regions. She has not only become sympathetic but is also supportive of Daniel’ and Project C.U.R.E.’s efforts to become better established in the restricted areas of Myanmar. So far Daniel and I have made it successfully out of Thailand and into Rangoon (Yangon), the capital of Burma. Ma Lay took us downtown to the Central Hotel, where we checked in and settled for the night.

Friday, November 9

Our plan was to present a computer and printer as a gift to the minister of tourism this morning and then travel to Myitkyina later in the day. But at breakfast Daniel and I were hit with a shocking surprise. The Myanmar officials had met and reviewed my passport and visa. In view of the worldwide instability following the terrorist attacks on September 11 in America, as well as the subsequent military reprisals taking place in Afghanistan, the officials don’t want an American traveling in any part of Myanmar other than Rangoon and perhaps Mandalay. I’m not welcome in the restricted areas of the north.

There was to be another meeting on the subject at the office of the deputy minister of tourism later this morning. I asked quite pointedly for Ma Lay to get permission for Daniel and me to attend that meeting in person. We had submitted all of our requested documents and photos early on, and we were in Myanmar with the understanding that permission to travel would be granted to us. She promised to try to get us invited to the meeting.

By 10:00 a.m., I knew that Ma Lay is going to be very important for our work in Myanmar. She was able to get us included in the meeting. Everything starts with the ministry of tourism, and in that respect, they are like the immigration department, with the controlling power to recommend or not recommend that our paperwork be submitted for the signatures of the minister of defense and other officials. Without all those signatures in proper order, we will be welcome to stay in Rangoon as tourists, but we won’t be allowed to travel elsewhere.

Adding to the complication of our situation is the fact that airplanes fly from Rangoon to Myitkyina and Putao on Fridays and Mondays only. Our itinerary is set; we need to fly to Myitkyina today. Every minute is full, and any later departure won’t allow us the necessary time in the northern provinces.

Back in our hotel room, Daniel and I prayed, and then he asked me a strange question: “What makes you travel a million miles all around the world, visit such places as Thailand and Burma, and put up with all the inconvenience and dangerous and stressful situations? Is it the excitement of travel? Do you do it to build Project C.U.R.E. into something great? Is it a good job? Do you just like to meet people? Why? And why would the main man who started Project C.U.R.E. travel with someone as insignificant as me in Burma?”

“Oh, Daniel,” I replied, “you ask a complicated but important question. Let me see if I can give you an answer while we’re waiting. First, it’s not at all the glamour of travel. You know that travel loses its glamour or mystique after the first six months. The travel, inconvenience, and hustle of it all aren’t worth it. It’s awful, and I’ve been doing it for over fifteen years.

“Second, it isn’t a good job. As you know, I don’t take any money for what I do. I’m just a volunteer, so it costs Anna Marie and me a lot for me to travel and not have a paying job.

“Third, it isn’t that I’m enamored with Project C.U.R.E. or that I have any designs of making it into some powerful entity. For years we worked very hard, and no one even knew we existed.

“Fourth, I have no big personal thing about being the leader of the organization. I have gone through the mental, emotional, and spiritual process of relinquishing my leadership role in the future of Project C.U.R.E. I know full well that for Project C.U.R.E. to become what it needs to be in the future, I won’t be the one leading it. For Project C.U.R.E. to increase, I must decrease. New people with high energy and great skills, clear vision, and incredible commitment will lead Project C.U.R.E. in the future.

“Fifth, I can honestly say that I have no personal agenda to accomplish or wild dream I’m driven to fulfill. I have one stabilizing motivation that supports me as I’m involved in Project C.U.R.E.: I want to be everything God created me to be, and with instant and complete obedience to the direction of God’s leading, I want to be at the right place at the right time saying the right things to the right people for God’s sake and his kingdom. As to why I’m here with you today in Rangoon, I must admit that I also want to see your dream for your beloved country of Burma come true, and I feel honored to be a simple part of the process.”

Daniel and I left the hotel for our appointment at the offices of the ministry of tourism. We moved through traffic quickly, and on the way, I asked Daniel about the weird driving practice in Myanmar.

“In the United States, the car’s steering wheel is on the left, and the traffic flows on the right-hand side of the road,” I said. “In England, Japan, parts of Africa, and other places, the steering wheel is on the right, and traffic moves on the left side of the road. But in Myanmar, traffic flows on the right, and the car’s steering wheel is also on the right. Why?”

Daniel informed me that indeed it’s a very odd situation. “All the cars in Myanmar came from Japan. They dump all their used cars into the country, and they are cheaper than any other cars available. All the cars here are right-hand drive even though the traffic also flows on the right. The people just somehow get used to it all.”

At the ministry of tourism, we met Htay Aung, the deputy minister. During the meeting he explained that they are afraid that some Muslim radicals carrying a grudge because of the bombings in Afghanistan just might want to take their anger out on an American traveling in Myanmar.

“We just don’t want to accept the responsibility for an American in our restricted areas. Further,” he explained, “a zoological group from Switzerland and the Netherlands were recently allowed to travel to the northern areas to study the habits of some rare butterflies and lizards. But there was one American that came with the group. He was supposed to be an expert on snakes.

“Well,” the deputy minister continued, “he caught some small but very poisonous snakes and subsequently was bitten by one of them. He refused our traditional medicine, which could have neutralized the venom’s effect, and he created a very big international incident, demanding that the United States fly in a helicopter to take him out. The man died, and the situation was not good.

“As you know,” he said, “the United States pulled their ambassador out of Myanmar in l988, and they still have sanctions imposed against us. We really didn’t need that incident, because now our relations are worse. Again, we just don’t want to accept the responsibility of having an American outside Yangon [Rangoon] or Mandalay.”

The deputy minister gave me a straight shot, so I felt free to be just as straight with him. I told him to once again review my passport and see that I was not a novice traveler who would bring on a snake-bite incident. I was experienced in working with Muslims in many countries around the world and was certain that there would be no political or religious incidents.

“I’m not asking to stay an extended period of time,” I continued. “My travels, as you can see, will take me in and out of the areas so quickly that I will be gone before anyone can ever possibly get disturbed and plan an incident.

Next Week: Approval to go to the Restricted Area? – Maybe --

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BURMA - UNFORGETTABLE STORIES Travel Journals: Feb. 1998: Nov. 2001: Feb. 2003: Oct. 2003 (Part 2)

Chiang Mai, Thailand: November, 2001: Daniel had gained a lot of education and experience during the brief years in America. After graduation he continued working for the radio missionary, who sent Daniel out to speak in churches in the eastern and central United States. Daniel was to raise money for the radio missions work by telling of his escape from Burma and his wonderful, new opportunity in America, thanks to the radio ministry’s kindness. Daniel was effective, and the missionary encouraged him to continue his show-and-tell presentation in Cincinnati.

But the Kalnins’ hearts were really in Thailand, and they wanted to get started with their own venture in Chiang Mai. In 1979, with the financial help of Beverley’s home church in Toronto, they organized Outreach Thailand. A year later, the organization’s name was changed to Frontier Labourers for Christ to include work in more than just Thailand.

By 1980 Daniel and Beverley were in Chiang Mai. What a difference ten years had made in Daniel’s life. But the change in status in no way meant that the struggles were over.

“Those early days back in Thailand were really tough,” Daniel told me. “We opened up our house and had twelve young people staying with us. We were trying to help them the way I would have liked to have been helped.

“During those years Beverley and I had nothing. We were receiving less than three hundred fifty dollars per month in support from America. We tried to run our entire missionary efforts on that amount. We had only one set of clothes each, and Beverley and I would go down and pick water lilies to cook and eat.”

Daniel’s missionary plan was pretty creative and unique. He developed a concept he called “model Christian villages.” He got the government to give him some land in the Golden Triangle, world famous for poppy farming and heroin production. It was up in the hill-tribe regions not far from the borders of Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos. Daniel’s goal was to try to present to the people an alternative lifestyle and occupation in lieu of the drug culture and poppy growing they were locked into.

His plan included laying out a village in which each building plot would include enough land to raise a crop. He then asked volunteers from America and other countries to come to his village and install a water system with clean water piped down the roads and to every building plot. Once the village was laid out, he began taking applications for new residents to join him there. The restrictions were simple but stern. The villagers had to stop growing heroin and start growing coffee. They had to become Christians and attend church regularly in the village. Once they agreed, they could build their houses, hook on to the clean water system, and start growing coffee.

The plan was slow in developing at the beginning, but by the time the coffee was harvested and the crop was sold, the villagers discovered that they had made more money than they had made growing heroin. Suddenly Daniel’s idea became popular. Eventually many villages were built, and even the king of Thailand came to the hill-tribe area to observe the model Christian villages firsthand and commend Daniel on his work. 

Daniel and Beverley and their little family were still struggling financially, however. Just the trips back and forth from Chiang Mai to the hill-tribe village were more than they could afford. One day while Daniel was in a border town, he was praying that God would see his need and help him. That day he met a man from Evergreen, Colorado, who was out in the jungle buying gemstones from small mines. He told Daniel that he wanted to visit his house in Chiang Mai sometime and get acquainted with him. Daniel said okay but never thought he would ever see the man again.

To Daniel’s great surprise, the man showed up on his porch in Chiang Mai three days later and insisted that Daniel take him to see his model Christian village. Daniel spent a whole week with Gary Abbott at the village, showing him the water system, the building plots, the church, the school system, and the coffee plants. Gary in turn went back to America, and three months later returned with another gem dealer from Colorado named John Andrick.

But that time when Gary and John showed up on Daniel’s porch in Chiang Mai, Daniel didn’t have even the sixty-five dollars it cost to make the trip to the hill-tribe villages. So Daniel told them he wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be able to take them to the border. He actually went in and stretched out on his bed, hoping that the two men would just go away. However, to Daniel’s frustration, they just sat down outside and waited for Daniel to feel better.

“At that point,” Daniel said, “God brought a Scripture to mind from Colossians 3:17: ‘In everything give thanks in Jesus’s name.’ He then told me to get up and take the men to the villages.” 

It was well after dark when they arrived, and only the lights from cooking fires penetrated the jungle darkness.

The next morning Daniel began showing Gary and John the three villages. “You know, Daniel, I don’t talk or think like you do,” confessed John, who wasn’t a professing Christian, “but I know someone back in Denver who does, and he needs to meet you. I’ll introduce you to Carl Rehnert. If you are ever in America, call me, and I’ll send you a ticket to fly to Denver.”

Months passed, and Daniel hadn’t heard anything more from the two men. Financially things were getting tighter for the Kalnins in Chiang Mai. Then a letter arrived from a missions group in the northwest United States inviting Daniel to travel to America to speak around the country at different churches. The group had included a ticket for Daniel’s travel, so he packed and headed for the United States.

What Daniel hadn’t understood when he accepted the invitation was that the group would pay for his travel to the different churches, but he was to raise money for the group’s missions work. Before he spoke at the first church, he had to promise he wouldn’t raise any money for himself or his own work in Thailand. He felt that even though he hadn’t understood the invitation that way, he needed to follow through on their request. His itinerary was nearly full for more than ninety days. His travel was paid for, but all the offerings were sent directly to the missions group.

It was December, and Daniel was preaching in Montana. He was down to less than one hundred dollars of his own money. He was discouraged and sent a telegram back to Beverley in Chiang Mai.

“I know you will be disappointed,” he wrote, “and I am very sad, but I don’t have enough money to buy a ticket to fly home. So you and the kids will just have to celebrate Christmas this year without me. I’ll get home as soon as I can.”

Then Daniel remembered the offer from John in Denver. He called him and told him he was in Montana. John was pleased and told Daniel to get to Missoula, Montana, and there would be an airline ticket waiting for him to Denver. After the speaking engagement that night, Daniel got permission to borrow a car to drive on to Missoula. He could leave the car at the airport. That cold December night, Daniel drove through snow and fog from 9:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. to arrive at the airport in Missoula. Daniel hadn’t slept at all that night. Sure enough, a ticket was waiting for him at the counter.

In Denver John picked up Daniel, put him in his car, and headed east on Interstate 70 to Kansas or Nebraska or someplace where John was going to meet up with about seven other guys to hunt ducks. They bought Daniel a hunting license, put a shotgun in his hands, and told him he was a duck hunter. Daniel loved it.

That night Daniel was so exhausted from driving the whole previous night that he fell into a deep sleep and began snoring. The other hunters woke up, but they couldn’t wake Daniel to make him stop snoring. The men never did stop teasing him about his terrible snoring episode.

Back in Denver, John and Daniel got together with Carl Rehnert at Carl’s office in downtown Denver.

“You need to help this man,” John told Carl.

“What is your statement of faith, and what do you need?” inquired Carl.

“I need at least twelve hundred dollars just to continue now,” replied Daniel after sharing his testimony.

Carl got on the telephone, and in a short time, he found twelve men who came up with one hundred dollars each. Daniel arrived back in Chiang Mai, Thailand, to a wonderfully surprised family on Christmas Eve l982.

Carl was instrumental in acquainting Daniel with influential people in some of the main churches in Denver. A number of those people visited Daniel’s missions work in Chiang Mai and the hill-tribe villages in the years that followed. It was that Denver connection that brought Daniel and Project C.U.R.E. together. And in my opinion, the relationship between Project C.U.R.E. and Daniel has been very successful.

As I observed, however, there was an interesting dynamic going on within Daniel. In our meetings he would report to me about all the new happenings in Chiang Mai and the training of the barefoot doctors. Project C.U.R.E. even agreed to completely furnish the proposed training center with medical goods on the newly acquired land in Chiang Mai, Thailand. But somehow our conversations always went beyond Thailand and ended up in talks and dreams and plans about Myanmar, Daniel’s old home of Burma.

It had been more than thirty years since Daniel had walked over that bridge in Maessi and just kept walking. He always dreamed of going back but knew he never could. He had received word that his mother had died because of a botched appendectomy at a village hospital in the far northern state of Kachin. As much as he would have liked to return, he knew he would be considered a fugitive and thrown into prison.

By that time many of Daniel’s relatives had become successful to a degree in state politics. Daniel’s older brother was, for a while, the governor of the area around Putao, a township in the far north of Myanmar. With these weak political contacts, Daniel decided to see if he could reenter Myanmar safely, traveling on a Thai passport. In 1995 he was flatly rejected. But the new generation of officials didn’t seem to connect the fact that Mr. Kalnin with the Thai passport was the same man who had escaped the country illegally thirty years earlier. So he tried again in 1996. That time he was granted permission to return to his home state of Kachin and the town of Putao. It was an absolute miracle that he was ever allowed to leave the capital city of Rangoon. Beverley was allowed to accompany him on his return.

It was an extremely emotional time for Daniel. Many there presumed him to be dead. Tears flowed freely as he revisited family, friends, and places with memories overgrown by many years of absence. But the reality that met Daniel in Myanmar, which immediately reconnected the emotional past with the dynamic present, was the unpredictable phenomenon of the Barefoot Doctors program.

Next Week: A gutsy plan to enter restricted Burma

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BURMA - UNFORGETTABLE STORIES -Travel Journals: Feb. 1998: Nov. 2001: Feb. 2003: Oct. 2003 (Part 1)

Note to Readers: So many of my poignant memories about the intriguing country of Old Burma (Myanmar) and so many of the miracles that took place in that country include the life of my very dear friend, Daniel Kalnin. Daniel has now gone on to heaven, but I want to share some of our stories with you as a tribute to him directly from my on-the-spot travel journals: “Roads I’ve Traveled Delivering Health and Hope.” JWJ

Chiang Mai, Thailand: February 22, 1998: I believe Daniel Kalnin and I first met in 1995. Someone brought him to meet me in Denver at our Project C.U.R.E. office. I was immediately intrigued by both the man and his story. He was a quiet, dignified Asian in his fifties, and his placid demeanor prompted me to look for signs of deeper flowing character traits beneath the surface.

Daniel came to Denver to ask me to help him with his Barefoot Doctors program, headquartered in the northern city of Chiang Mai in Thailand.

“We are training village people from the closed country of old Burma in basic health-care and medical procedures,” he told me, “and we’re sending them back to areas where they are the only thing that resembles a doctor. But I don’t have any medical supplies to send back with them, and I also need help training them. Mr. Jackson, could you and Project C.U.R.E. help me in Thailand and Burma?”

His request was straightforward, and his urgency and sincerity compelled me to agree that I would help him in the future. Our agreement wasn’t just an idle promise. Almost immediately Project C.U.R.E. started furnishing Daniel with medical goods worth tens of thousands of dollars from our Denver and Phoenix warehouses. Eventually I traveled to Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Thailand, to evaluate Daniel’s complete operation.

During that needs-assessment trip, I rode motorbikes through all the hill-tribe villages of northern Thailand. What I saw impressed me even more and resulted in Project C.U.R.E.’s further involvement donating additional medical goods and sending teams of volunteers to Thailand.

Over the ensuing years, I came to understand Daniel’s dream and his underlying motivation. For nearly forty years, he had been a refugee from his beloved country, separated from his mother, sisters, and brothers. But the older he got, the brighter and more intense the flame in his heart burned to do something significant and lasting for the people of Burma.

Let me see if I can weave together the bits and pieces of the story that took me about six years to unearth.

The rush during the 1800s to colonization drove European governments to frantically conquer and occupy every tribe and valuable piece of real estate around the world. Burma was one of the last targets. England sent in its royal troops, and soon valuable tribute was being transferred from Burma to the queen’s royal throne in fair London town. But many advantages were also being transferred from Great Britain to Burma, from Rangoon (Yangon) to Mandalay. Roads were built, railways were extended, and bridges were constructed over dangerous rivers that had previously separated the people and commerce of Burma. In addition, schools were erected, doors were opened to missionaries to tend to the needs of the indigenous people, and hospitals and clinics were established throughout the land. Along the borders, the English built military forts to prevent countries like China, which had previously marauded and pillaged Burma, from disrupting the peace and security of the people.

Then one day in 1948, the Brits decided to go home and give Burma its independence. Unlike many of England’s colonies that had pushed for independence, the Burmese weren’t all that keen on being abandoned. They had become accustomed to the rule of law and the new developments of civilization. They had enjoyed the benefits of an organized economy and an introduction to such things as health care.

Of course, there were those who could hardly wait for the fair-skinned British islanders to leave so that they could inherit the powerful positions, the sturdy homes, and the well-built office and commercial buildings with corrugated metal roofs. Those would-be rulers were convinced that status and position were the only differences between them and those who occupied their land. When the Brits departed, those waiting in the wings assumed that all the good things would be left behind, and whatever set all the benefits in motion would continue. Those folks looked eagerly to the day when the last British ships would sail away. They could then be the powerful substitute rulers.

When the English decided to pull out of Burma, they did so in a hurry. But who’s to know whether the outcome would have been significantly different had they stayed around for a more protracted transfer of power?

The years that followed independence were chaotic years. Power struggles, tribal jockeying for position, and bloodshed became the order of the day. Burma turned inward, living off residual benefits from the British but not knowing how to multiply or even utilize those benefits to advance their country.

Daniel Kalnin was born into that Burma. His only hope was to escape to a new opportunity and a better life somewhere else. But that was hardly thinkable. No one slipped past the military. But Daniel was brave enough to at least dream. He read books about people who had gone through suffering to succeed politically. He determined that he would escape, go to law school somewhere, and return to help his country. He was only eighteen years old.

Daniel’s mother was a devout Christian and, in his words, a prayer warrior. He knew that she would always pray for him and his success as long as she lived. But he couldn’t bring himself to tell her what he was planning because he knew that his leaving was going to break her heart.

One day while working with a labor team in the border town of Maessi, Daniel was allowed to cross the bridge. When he was on the other side of the bridge, he realized that he was in Thailand. The other workers returned across the bridge that evening, but Daniel kept on walking. Surely he could find someone who would help him keep going and escape repressive Burma.

By quietly keeping to himself, Daniel was able to join up with a Thai work team for the next three months in a mountainous village named Lahu. He had left Burma on the first day of November 1965. Now it was January 1966. He lived every day knowing that if he were discovered as a Burmese in Thailand, without any identification or papers, he would be shot as a spy.

After January he moved on and worked for another three months in a hill-tribe village. His goal was to eventually make it to Chiang Mai, Thailand. The fact that part of the country was embroiled in the Vietnam War made things all the more precarious.

One day Daniel crossed paths with a Baptist missionary and asked if the missionary would help him get to Chiang Mai. The man didn’t want to get involved, so he refused to help Daniel. (In later years, the missionary had to live with embarrassment and regret when Daniel and his successful ministry became so well received in Thailand.)

As a worker Daniel was then sent to a rebel military camp and was forced to help them work. He was unable to escape for an additional three months, but a sergeant of another rebel group eventually offered to take Daniel to Chiang Mai. He hid Daniel in a large truck loaded with sacks of rice. Daniel was wedged between the top of the truck’s metal covering and the rice. The sergeant stopped at a town called Faang, and Daniel walked to the bus station. He sensed that if he could find some Christians, they would help him. At the bus station, Daniel took the only money he had and paid a rickshaw driver to take him to the Baptist center. But the rickshaw driver was confused. He took Daniel’s money and delivered him to the compound of the Seventh-Day Adventists.

Daniel had no more money, but he found the correct directions to the Baptist center and told the driver to peddle him there. When he arrived at the Baptist center, a man came out, and Daniel introduced himself and told the man he needed help to pay the rickshaw driver. That night Daniel met Mr. Ted Hope, the head of Overseas Missions Fellowship (OMF), and stayed with his family for a week.

Everyone was suspicious of Burmese people traveling without proper papers, so Ted Hope sent Daniel to another area in the mountains to work in the fields north of Chiang Mai. Daniel had to keep moving from one village to another, and at the third village, he stayed with a family in exchange for work. But the man’s neighbor had a long-time grudge with the farmer, and to spite him, he went to the authorities and told them the farmer was harboring a military spy from Burma. The police moved quickly and surrounded the farmer’s home that evening. Daniel had just finished bathing after a long day’s work.

“I was standing next to the outside cooking fire, trying to stay warm after my bath. The police grabbed me without allowing me to retrieve anything and threw me into jail as a foreign spy. I had no papers and no defense, and they had a signed complaint that I was a foreign spy,” recalled Daniel.

Eventually Ted Hope heard that Daniel was in jail and sent a fellow with an old Volkswagen Beetle to bail him out of jail in April. Daniel’s court date for the spy charges wasn’t until August.

At the trial the judge made a strange ruling. He fined Daniel five hundred baht but gave him permission to stay in Thailand. For the first time since he had crossed the bridge from Burma into Thailand, a person in authority had told him it was all right for him to be in the country. But he still didn’t have any official identification papers. He wasn’t able to move about freely, so he returned to the farmer’s family and worked there for another six months near the house of the man who had turned him in as a spy.

While in jail, Daniel remembered the name of a missionary man who had come to his home in Burma several years before. He recalled that the man’s home was in Cincinnati, Ohio. After asking a lot of questions, Daniel was able to secure the man’s address and wrote a letter to him. About six months later, the man returned to Thailand for a missionary visit, and Daniel met up with him. The missionary told Daniel there was no way he could help him because Daniel didn’t have proper paperwork for identification or travel. Once again it seemed that Daniel’s efforts were being blocked.

It wasn’t until late 1968 that a pastor in Thailand came to Daniel’s aid and helped him secure the legal paperwork. With those official papers, it was legal for Daniel to live in Thailand, and he was also allowed to apply for a passport. Once again Daniel wrote to the American missionary in Cincinnati and informed him that he now had legal paperwork. But again Daniel heard nothing. In the meantime he was working for and living with another missionary family. When they noticed how sharp Daniel was mentally and observed his social skills, they told him they wanted to send him to school. However, before that could take place, the missionary from Cincinnati showed up and said he was taking Daniel to America. He had decided that Daniel could be an asset to him in his radio-broadcasting enterprise. Daniel could speak Burmese on the radio and also help him raise money for his missions work.

Before Daniel could bat an eye, he was in America. He landed in Cincinnati on August 22, 1969. On September 9, he started classes at a local Bible college. Everything had happened so fast, and he was struggling to cope with all his classes in the English language.

Enrolled at the same Bible college was a young, blonde-haired girl from Canada. Beverley’s family was involved in politics and government in the Toronto area, but she felt that God was calling her into missionary work somewhere around the world. She was hoping that the school in Cincinnati would prepare her for missionary work. Little did she know that by the time she graduated from Bible college in 1974, she would be married to Daniel Kalnin from Burma. That decision to marry on New Year’s Day l974 set in motion lots of consequences. Daniel and Beverley both graduated in June of 1974 with a dream of going as quickly as possible to Chiang Mai, Thailand, to begin missions work that would somehow aid the people of Burma, which had changed its name to Myanmar.

Next Week: Daniel’s Homecoming – Thirty years later

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CUBA - EARLY JOURNALS Sept. 1993; June 1994; March 1999 (Part 2)

Note to my Friends: I want to take a little space here to share with you my personal observations and general economic, political, and cultural views of what was going on in Cuba during my early trips to the country. I think the background info will aid our understanding: JWJ

Havana, Cuba: June 1994: Cuba is located only ninety miles south of the USA and has about twenty-five hundred miles of coastline and 280 beaches. The beauty of Cuba is startling, and it’s no wonder at all that it was the undisputed playground of the eastern United States before 1959. Visitors who walk the streets of downtown Havana today can still view the old, abandoned restaurants and nightclubs, with their rusted neon and metal signs that used to light up the Cuban nights.

But Communism stripped the playground of its grandeur. Cuba is now a dismal, old woman, worn, wrinkled, abandoned, and sad. But I believe the day the embargo is lifted and US money can once again freely flow into Cuba, we’ll witness a spectacular cultural and economic resurrection, and the grand lady will once again come to life in far greater splendor.

My previous visits took place at perhaps the period of greatest need in the history of Cuba. General Fidel Castro and his people had enjoyed the favor of the Soviet Union and other nonaligned Communist countries that were willing to trade with them and supply their needs. Even though the USA placed an “embargo” on Cuba, yet Cuba essentially viewed it more as just an inconvenience for them and the countries wanting to side with the US. For example, Canada and Mexico never stopped diplomatic relations or trade activities for even one day with Cuba. Many parts of the world still needed the sugar, fruit, tobacco, coffee, and cement Cuba produced.

But in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban people experienced a new level of hardship. No longer could they count on receiving subsidies from former Communist strongholds. The areas of education, wages, and health care, in particular, began to suffer. The standard of living began dropping to a level not previously experienced. Up to that point, Castro had totally controlled the economy by making it a crime for the people to hold any US currency. After the USSR collapsed, he had to change that policy and begin encouraging people in America to send US dollars to help their families in Cuba. That currency, once in Cuba, was spent on government-regulated services and goods and eventually made its way into the government coffers. With that newly injected money, Castro was able to go on the world market with US dollars and purchase what he needed. But by doing so, he also lost total control of the economy. Now the people could conduct business dealings and hold US currency, which encouraged a reintroduction of a type of free-market entrepreneurialism.

Another economic step Castro took was to openly invite and promote foreign investment. On my trip to Cuba in June of 1994, I saw some beautiful beachfront resorts being built in Matanzas with investment money from Holland and Germany.

I remembered thinking at the time, just from an economic and philosophical standpoint, that if the USA would radically review its approach to Cuban policy and encourage rather than discourage investment and cash flow going into Cuba, the structure there would experience such a shot of free enterprise that it would sweep the country, and thousands upon thousands of new entrepreneurs would absolutely inundate the centralized Marxist system. The evidence clearly shows that once the door to free enterprise has opened, even a slight bit, whether in China or the old Soviet Union, the strengths and benefits of a free-market system have driven it to spread and expand.

But in 1993, things were very difficult in Cuba. Hospitals and clinics were trying to survive by utilizing half-used bottles of cough medicine and dull, bent syringe needles. I’ll never forget the tears in the eyes of the doctors in Havana when I showed up and gave them wound dressing kits, suture, fresh needles and syringes, IV-starting kits, heart medication, glucose test strips, and other desperately needed medical supplies.

Politically, things became even more strained between Cuba and the US around 1995 and 1996. Boat people increasingly tried to make the ninety-mile trip from Cuba to Florida, straining immigration policies and infuriating Cuban officials.

Also, in 1996, Cuban military jets shot down two US civilian airplanes. The Cuban government claimed that Cuban Americans from Florida had, in a move of provocation, violated Cuban airspace. The Cuban Americans claimed the planes were flying over international waters. The result of the emotionally volatile episode was that Washington passed a controversial law designed to punish international firms pursuing business with Cuba.

At that time there were over 11 million people in Cuba, with almost 2.5 million living in Havana. Way over half the population were younger than thirty years old. Among other implications, that meant few people knew or remembered what Cuba was like before Castro became dictator.

Columbus sailed to Cuba in 1492. At that time, the island was inhabited by the indigenous Taino people. In 1511, the Spanish took over the island and wiped out the Taino people. In 1762, the British took over Havana and then returned it to Spain in a swap for Florida.

West African tribes began selling their enemies to slave traders, who took many captives to Cuba to work in the sugarcane fields. By the nineteenth century, sugar became the basis for the island’s economy.

During the Ten Years’ War, the Cubans tried to overthrow the Spanish and claim independence. Over two hundred thousand Cubans were killed in those skirmishes between 1868 and 1878. Then José Marti, a man who is still honored today as a great national hero, led a revolt in 1895, which brought international attention to the inhumane treatment the Cuban people were suffering under the Spanish. In 1898, the US became involved in the Spanish-American War, and following the US occupation of Cuba in 1902, Cuba gained independence.

However, the US had injected into Cuba’s constitution an amendment that would allow the US to reenter Cuba for occupation reasons if government instability once again occurred. Instability did recur, prompting US involvement again from 1906 through 1909 and once more in 1912. In 1934, the US repealed the amendment to Cuba’s constitution in exchange for the right to hold the southern part of Guantánamo Bay as a US military base until the year 2033.

Cuba’s popular independence lasted for less than twenty years. In 1952, Fulgencio Batista successfully initiated a military coup and established an extremely corrupt dictatorship. A young guerrilla rebel named Fidel Castro rallied a revolution among the people in 1953, which toppled Batista on December 31, 1958. At the age of thirty-three, Castro took over with strong support from the USA. He even traveled to Washington DC and spoke before the United States Congress and pledged democracy and free elections for the people of Cuba. It was going to be a bright, new era for Cuba starting in 1959.

Before long, however, economic pressures in Cuba and the need to control the wildfires of counterrevolution forced Castro to look beyond his borders for help. He found answers to both problems by accepting economic support from the Soviet Union and adopting the alluring philosophy of Communism and its dictatorial style of governing. Communism always justifies radical measures of mass murder to suppress and control opposition, so it didn’t take a lot of persuasion from Russia to convince Castro of the merits of brutal force to handle an unruly citizenry. Arms and military advisors were soon on Cuban soil making sure Castro and his new dictatorship remained in uncontested control.

In exchange for economic aid and military stabilization, the Soviets only demanded the use of Cuba as a military bastion for Communist aggressors. Nikita Khrushchev could never have imagined a more ideal goad to the security system of the US than setting up a nuclear outpost only ninety miles off Florida’s coastline.

Meanwhile, with readily available Soviet advisors, Castro got busy nationalizing all industry, banking services, and agriculture. Rural cooperatives styled after the Communist models in Europe and Asia took over the sugarcane industry and all other aspects of the economy. Inhumane prisons and firing squads muffled the voices of any protestors.

Such activities brought harsh countermeasures from the US. Among other measures, the trade embargo was put in place October 19, 1960, in an effort to starve out the Castro regime. That action only cultivated a tighter alliance between Cuba and the Soviets, China, Libya, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, North Korea, and even Central American countries like Nicaragua, Honduras, and Panama.

In 1991, the whole worldwide Communist misadventure began to unravel. The utopian, Marxist-Leninist philosophy these governments had embraced finally reached its natural conclusion. An economic system based on redistribution of wealth eventually uses up all the previously accumulated wealth, and there simply is no more wealth to redistribute. The Communists also discovered that the czars they had successfully overthrown had only been replaced by crueler, greedier, and more hideous leaders called the politburo. The Marxist-Leninists had failed miserably to factor the concept of economic growth into their system.

When worldwide Communism and especially the Soviet experiment stubbed its toe, they could no longer manipulate satellite outpost countries through endless subsidies. Cuba felt the effects immediately. By the time I first visited Havana in 1993, the national economic picture was very bleak, indeed. Power outages were frequent because there was no fuel to keep the power generators running. And the need for medical supplies and pharmaceuticals was critical.

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