I'm getting better at flying. The landing gear bouncing off the Indianapolis tarmac jolt me out of a stupor. I don't sleep on flights, but I had managed a drooling trance for the past half hour. I'm home now but my mind is still two weeks ago.
Early morning came just after the night bus from Yangon, with its overzealous AC and blaring TV into the smallest hours. The only thing that had let me sleep at all was my friend lending me her blanket, without which I probably would have frozen to death. My friend's relatives picked us up from a restaurant by the stop where I'd perked myself up with a bowl of mohinga and an instant coffee while the sun rose.
Our motorcycle fishtailed its way along through tracks and furrows, trying to stay in the tire-wide path cut by others that zig-zagged back and forth across the road. It had been raining for days before, and the dirt road had become a mud, Motocross deathtrap. I held on to the seat at the rear while my friend's brother-in-law braved the trenches, steering with his feet as much as the wheels to keep us from tipping over. We dipped through pits of rock and puddle. We crossed bridges and took trails through the grass when the road became impassable.
My hair had grown long in the past year. The sweat and the heat put the frizz in it, so it shot out in all directions in the wind, sloped up and out like a ski jump in the back. As we putted and struggled along, flatbeds passed full of tanned laborers and their flat stares; making me more conscious than usual of the flabby and maggot-pale Westernness of my skin. I was still exhausted from the bus ride, but it was impossible to feel tired on such a bright, dynamic road as this.
As we ramped over a puddle, he spat out a wad of betel nut, then spoke. "Ryan: uhhh.. you know if you stay at my house, we have three rooms to choose."
"Okay." I clenched my teeth as we sailed over a wooden bridge, balanced on a few planks placed longways to one side, to give bikes a smooth enough path to keep them from flipping over.
"Barn is $20. Bottom floor, $30. Top floor, $50!"
"Excuse me?" I said.
"Hahahahahaaa!" He laughed while narrowly avoiding a bus fender with his left hand and packing another wad of betel with his right.
"Oh…ha ha." It would take me most of that first day to catch up with his sense of humor.
"You can pay in whiskey!"
"Oh, all right then." Was he joking, still?
The landscape in this area of the country is described as tropical savannah. An ironed-out jungle exploding with pale green and a sense of scorch and dust in the air, even after the rains. Tall grass, lone palm trees, lively foliage that seems to be fighting for its life against the heat of the sun. We pulled off the road to a walled building from which a woman with a plastic bottle of gasoline emerged. I stood idle as she filled the tank. Another flatbed passed, this one escorted by motorcycles, the entire cavalcade sporting the flags and red headbands of the National League for Democracy, the country's main opposition party. It was about a month until the election. The government could admittedly only guarantee a 30% accuracy in the results. Census data is no doubt abysmal nationwide. Records haven't been updated in my friend's village when people die. I wonder how many of the deceased will be voting.
On an easier stretch of the path, a fellow with a pot-belly and violent wave of black hair at the front pulls alongside us, looking jovial. The two drivers shout back and forth a bit, then he speeds off ahead of us. My driver turns his head to me. "He is police officer," he says.
"Oh."
It turns out I had the upper floor all to myself. No wonder it's so expensive. My own little mosquito net tent, a reed mat on the floor, and a sunlit view of the village out the many unshuttered windows. Massive, noisy flies and bees (horse bees?) commuted through the room, but I didn't see a single mosquito during my whole stay. Which made it heaven compared to Yangon, as far as I was concerned. It's incredible what a lack of stagnant water can accomplish. One fly crawled into the dark of a grate in the ceiling, but immediately reappeared through the same hole, only this time covered in a cocoon of spider silk. It hung there for a moment before being tugged back up into the darkness.
My time in the tropics has been a crucible for my spider tolerance (which is normally very low). The bathroom is a hotbox across the yard from the house, wood with a tin roof, raised off the ground and only tall enough to squat in. As in most bathrooms, each corner is home to a spider and the various cadavers he keeps on file. I crouched low, kept my elbows in, and tried to reassure myself that the spiders would mind their own business while I did mine.
Most of our time the first day, and the second for that matter, is taken up visiting family members, which seems to be everyone in the village. They all feed us. Curried meats, lahpet (a snack of dried tea leaves, often with nuts), bamboo shoots, chick peas, sticky rice candy, Shark energy drinks, and enough tea to drown in. My friend introduces me to everyone. "This is my niece. This is my uncle's brother. This is my cousin-sister. This is my father-brother." My head is spinning. I listen to them converse and chime in with my embarrassingly small vocabulary. They're all very nice, many ask questions, but very few seem to look me in the eyes, and greet me in the way that I'm used to on meeting new people. They stay in their chairs, they say what they wish, their mannerisms express a sense that my presence is business as usual. They ask what I think about their village.
My friend's cousin comes with us from Yangon, to visit the village again before heading off to college in the nearby city. She speaks very little English, but manages to explain to me that she is eager to learn more. She's my second translator on the trip, telling me which way to go with a couple words, or trying out a new sentence on me to see if I can tell what she's talking about. I do the same to her with my few words of Burmese, and we laugh about the horrible results. She's so dainty that I find it funny to see her eating in the typical Burmese fashion, scooping up rice and curry with the fingers of one hand. Her father is one of the motorcyclists that drives us around. He isn't much taller than she is, but looks solid. He has the dark skin of village life, spiky hair, and a facial structure which reminds me of some Western actor that I can't place.
In the afternoon, we have to go visit the police, to show them my passport. The one spotted me on the way in (as anyone around here could), and now they want to figure out what to do about me. We go to the village chairman's house, where he and an officer - in uniform this time - lounge around drinking whiskey [Along with Myanmar beer, whiskey seems to be the national drink. And those who do drink it don't mess around.] and smoking the cigars that are stacked on the table. I hand over my passport and sit uncomfortably while he flips through it. As everywhere, there are snacks on the table, packaged candy bars and rice cakes. I nibble on one a bit. My friend speaks with them in friendly, familiar tones. In a place like this, everything must be familiar.
Except me. Everywhere we went, there was the distinct sense of being a stranger. Adults watched me, children grew silent and stared as I passed, dogs growled at me, even babies cried when I got close. On the porch of my friend's house, her little niece teared up every time she looked at me. By the second day, she had perhaps realized that I wasn't actually a monster; and even called me 'coco', which means big brother. In any case, the frequent passport examinations certainly reinforce the feeling that you are not where you belong in the world. So people want to know why you're there. Why you didn't just stay put. It wasn't an infrequent question from any stranger I met in my travels. Why did you come to Myanmar? Why did you visit our village? What is your business here? Questions I was never good at answering. If I ever let myself, I'd be as likely to preface a response with, "Well now, that's a very philosophical question isn't it? Why _am_ I here?" Furthermore, did these cops so carefully flipping through my documents – making lengthy phone calls on my behalf in the one spot of the village that got cell service – really think I was a spy, or an agitator, or anything but a drifter? Probably not, actually. All they were really looking for was an excuse…
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