A BBC news report caught my ear on September 22nd: hundreds of Burmese Buddhist monks were on their fourth day of marching against the military dictatorship in Rangoon. I learned that the public unrest had actually been escalating since February, though the original purpose of this particular protest was to seek a government apology following the beating of three monks who had been protesting a 500% overnight increase in gas prices imposed in August.
Since then, I have been checking the news three, four, five times a day; wanting to hear more about what's going on, hoping for a peaceful resolution to the problem. The BBC has been my main source not only because they seem to devote more attention to international goings-on than other networks, but also because they consistently do an amazing job of contextualising their stories; please do visit the Special Report: Burma page they have constructed specifically to help inform interested readers.
You might remember that I have a special personal interest in the suffering of the Burmese people: my friend Judy and I were among 20 volunteers who spent two weeks over Christmas (2001) helping at an orphanage for abandoned Burmese children and refugees in the Thai border town of Sangklaburi. To jog your memory, take a look at my old-skool album on Flickr (available only until Nov 5) --the photos are very low resolution because they were scanned-in, but you'll get the idea.
That trip was a shocking exercise in academic interest vs. practical experience; we had spent four months prior to the visit studying, fundraising and preparing, so I 'knew' what I was in for...until we arrived and came face-to-face with people more desperately poor than I could've ever imagined. Each of the 120 kids at the orphanage had his/her own sad story, and the whole town was barely scraping by at a subsistence level due to its volatile composition of unwanted refugees, hilltown rivals and ethnic Thais.
In such a tragic setting, our volunteer group couldn't believe the serenity of the kids and caregivers at Baan Unrak; all were up for yoga practice at 5:30 every morning, and the daily routine was handled smoothly by all orphanage inhabitants --tasks delegated according to age and capacity. The four Buddhist nuns and monks were models of patience, acceptance and dedication; they paid individual attention to each of the children while keeping an eye out for potential newcomers and helping impoverished Sangklaburi residents. I'll never forget watching Dada Adi apply juice from an aloe leaf to a little girl's wounded leg; it was clearly infected and required antibiotic cream at the very least, but they simply didn't have any. We immediately donated all the expensive medical supplies our volunteer group had brought along --and I realised how much these four adults were expected/expecting to do with so few resources.
Today, netizens have agreed to write One Post for Burma --and this is mine. I continue to pray for a nonviolent handover of power from the military dictatorship to a democratic government of Burma; I pray for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, and for her appointment as rightful leader of this struggling country; I pray for the continued energy and strength of the nuns, monks and all the heroes.
If you'd like to learn more about what's going on in Burma and/or at Baan Unrak, please do take a moment to follow these links:
Volunteer in Thailand or Burma
Campaigning for Human Rights and Democracy in Burma
Amnesty International's 2007 Report on Myanmar