sometimes you can help in small ways too.

This is a picture of a man who is a street vender of what we call in burmese wheel cakes.

I usually eat some narn and beans and a cup of tea each morning for breakfast and then onto the wheel cake man. On my last day in Yangon I decided I should give him some old t shirts and a longyi I dont need any more. When I went to his shop it was closed. But no problem I asked around and found his house. He told me he had lent some money to another seller who was trying to sell in downtown yangon and it didnt work out and he lost his capital to run his business. I asked him how much that was. $5 is the answer. I gave him the clothes and $5 and told him to get back to work and I want some free wheel cakes next time in 6 months time.

 

Will hopefully see him again in december.

12. Buddhist Schools and orphanages Mandalay and Annisikan.

Time soon to leave Pyin Oo Lwin and return to Yangon. I have updated the file for Dr Naga Thein Hlaing. You can download it at http://www.thewheelofdhamma.com/naga/naga_thein_hlaing.pdf


When I was in the delta region I met a civil engineer who is in charge of constructing some of the schools in the delta region. She lives in Mandalay in a big school monastery called Phaung Daw Oo Monastic Education High School. There she is in charge of the construction of buildings and civil engineering of the school.

I planned to visit earlier but because of the heat put it off as long as I could. It is 40 degrees C everyday in Mandalay. Finally I decided to brave it and take a day trip to see the school. Now there are schools and there are big schools. This one is big. 7000 students study there for free according to the abbot U Nayaka. They run two shifts of 3500 per day.
School year starts on June 1st and luckily I went while it was out. Of these 7000 students about 1000 live in the school. There are 600 novices and monks. There are 100 orphans from cyclone Nargis there. 50 girls and 50 boys. There are also several hundred girls who are refuges from civil conflicts within Myanmar. All of them are being taught the secular 10 grades curriculum many go on to university. They are also taught trade skills as well such as wood work, sewing, and computer skills.

This school has support going back to the British colonial days. It is interesting to note a difference here in Burmese and western charitable values. This schools buildings have mostly been built by non-burmese. English, German, Australian, Japanese. I was told that Burmese would prefer to offer gold leaf at the pagoda than to offer money to help run a secular curriculum school like this. When I thought about it is sort of true. When I tell people I am donating to orphanages and schools in Myanmar my friends have given me money to donate without hesitation, but If I come to offer food in the monasteries only my Buddhist friends give me money for that.

Anyway have only one bad shot of the school which gives no real indication of how big it is.
The big blue building in the distance is one of a group. 2 others are behind the camera on the left and right. Others are further off in the distance.

They also have another area of land outside Mandalay which is going to be used as a training centre for agriculture. Ma Chan Chan has recently been to Thailand and studied mud brick construction there so she is building all the buildings using mud bricks on the farm. We went to visit and see the mud brick building which she has just finished 2 days earlier.


Ok so that was a bit of an inspiring and absolutely hot day. Went back up to my place up in the cool mountains as quickly as I could.


This morning I went back to another monastery orphanage here outside town. I made a further donation there and met the abbot whom I did not meet last time. There are over 600 boys at this orphanage. The abbot is an inspired man who has been running this place for 30 years. He himself has suffered the loss of his parents; his father when he was only a few years old and his mother when he was 12. So when he became a monk he started helping others who had become orphans. He has an inexhaustable energy to pursue his goal and is full of energy and resolve. He is just blissed out helping all these boys. He was so positive about everything it is really inspiring. The world needs more people like this.

The place sort of overwhelms me each time I go. I cant really explain my feelings. It just brings tears to my eyes. I dont know if it is joy to see that it runs so well and to see the amount of love and kindness that people have to look after others children. Or just something to do with the feelings of how fortunate I am by comparison to these people. I think of my own parents and what they have done for me and then to think where I would be without them. Maybe it is just a bit of both, my innate joy when I see the power that goodness can do in this world. The world seems a very cruel place to me sometimes and to see the happiness that good actions can produce in this world is to me the most beautiful thing in the world.

A little bit of generosity and understanding is all it takes to make a difference in this world.

If you go and make a donation all the kids come and recite verses wishing you to live long and be healthy and thanking you for your assistance. They are also taught some meditation and buddhist culture besides the secular education. They live in the monastery and go outside to attend local school. As you can see they have to share everything and have to eat out of a shared bowl.

I have a few more things to do here in Myanmar but I have two more weeks and then I am off to Bangkok and making my way back to Australia.

11. Agroforestry

One of the things I have been telling people I want to do is to grow some trees here on unused land of the meditation centre I was living in.  I have just completed planting 1 acre (200ft x 200 ft) on land with 89 Burmese pines that are set about 20 ft apart.

We first cleared the patch of thick growth of wild shrubs that can be seen on the right of the first picture.

Picture 2 shows my hired labourers clearing the shrubs. It is mostly a type of wild sunflower bush that takes over all fallow land here.

Picture 3 once you have slashed the bushes you have to go through and dig up all the roots of those bushes.

Really had a hard time convincing the locals not to burn everything. It is incomprehensible for them to break this tradition. But luckily it rained and I won this time.

Picture 4 convince a local friend that it is great merit for him to take me to pick up the trees from the nursery. Didnt take much convincing.

Picture 5 Some burmese pines on the land. I picked these trees for this acre plot as an experiment. They are fast growing. I have grown them before. Cows and water buffalo dont eat them. They are easily recognised by the burmese farmers as something that someone else has planted so they tend not to chop them for firewood when your back is turned.


I envisage that this plot will in 20 years be a nice pine forest which meditators will be able to walk in and listen to the wind whistling through the needles of the trees. The ground will be covered in pine needles and be very peaceful.

Picture 6 is digging the holes to plant the trees.
Picture 7 is a bag of organic fertilizer I bought to put in the holes beneath the seedlings. Took 2 bags for 89 trees.
Picture 8. is a seedling planted.
Picture 9. Is a view up the field from the bottom corner of the plot.


It took 3 men 8 days to clear the land and took one day to dig holes and plant the trees. I will have to clear around the seedlings in 3 months and 6 months time.

Total cost of this project on 1 acre plot with clearing, organic, fertilizer and planting and maintenance will be $200 US for the first year.

I estimate that each tree would take out at least 2 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere but I need to research further to calculate carbon offsets.

I have possibility to put in another 10 to 20 acres of trees like this in this area. So if you want to do something good for the planet and donate to plant some trees then let me know.

10. Introducing Dr Naga Thein Hlaing.

I have met some pretty remarkable people in my visits to Myanmar over the last 28 years. One of my favourite finds is Dr Naga Thein Hlaing. He is a 75 year old practising surgeon who has developed his own surgical techniques to suit the remote, poor, and primitive area of Naga Hills that he was posted to in 1965-1971. He has continued to practise the same techniques since then so he has 40 years experience now as a surgeon. He is always telling me that a surgeon needs to have: the heart of a lion, eyes of an eagle, the hands of a lady, and the mouth of an angel. You should be able to guage a little of these qualities from the photos attached.

There are only a few simple tricks he has used to perform his surgery. The most important is that he uses local anaesthesia to operate on his patients. This means that his patients are conscious while he operates on them. He is able to perform all types of surgery except chest surgery and brain, using local nerve block techniques. The advantage of this is that he can operate single handed, the patient is not in any danger from the side affects of general anaesthetics. He can constantly monitor the patients status by talking to them which makes it easier to do goitre operations and not cut the nerves associated with voice box function. The patient is able to get up and walk out of the operating theatre at the end of the operation and eat immediately. They do not need to stay in a hospital, he can operate on people in their own homes or villages as long as the place is reasonably clean.

Where he worked in the Naga Hills there was no real hospital in our sense of the word and no supplies of blood. So he used a little lateral thought and developed a method where he sews before he cuts a blood vessel. A normal surgeon would cut a vessel first and then suture the ends of it. He sutures where the ends will be and then cuts. This means he doesn't have hardly any blood loss for the patient.

One of his last tricks is to give an antihistamine at the same time as he uses the local anaesthetic and this increases the time that the anaesthetic lasts by about 4 times.

He has used this type of surgery to become proficient in goiter operations which is his speciality. He has operated on thousands of goiters in both Naga Hills and also in other parts of Burma.

One of the things I like about him is his honesty and sincere regard for his patients. When he lived in Naga hills he developed a respect for them as people and even went around dressed as one of them sometimes. He travelled the area on foot from village to village for there were no roads there.

He has this wonderful collection of old photos from the region. Many of them are before and after shots of people he operated on and so are a bit gruesome. But they are real and valid record of the area. Oh did I forget to mention the Nagas are head hunters!

For this blog I have attached here a sample of the sort of photos he has in his collection.

I am making a document of his work and photos that I will be putting up on the web hopefully in the next few weeks. And I will put in a link to that then. At the moment I have put a document of pictures of one of his operations there. The link is:

http://www.thewheelofdhamma.com/naga/naga_thein_hlaing.pdf

Be warned the pictures show a real operation with a conscious patient! She is even sticking her tongue out in the few of them.
Remember tha although this is not what you are used to thinking about operations you go to the dentist and they do most of their work under local.
Just imagine your docter did the same it aint that hard if you have the heart of a lion...

9. Mahar and Water Festival

Mahar
Mahar is the girlfriend of a friend of mine from Yangon and I stayed with them in Yangon.
She is a very good singer and is sort of out of place in Myanmar, but represents a new generation of artists and singers who have talent and are able to produce some really good music. In another country she would be very wealthy, but Myanmar lacks the means for a singer like her to make much money. Records and music videos are largely pirated and so you get no royalties from them. Your only chance is to do live gigs at a few clubs and venues which are really only frequented by the teenage kids of wealthy people and lets face it that is a small market in Myanmar.  Most Myanmar music is pretty boring to me. If it aint a love song it aint a song here and they are pretty bad lyrics and bad arrangements. Some people surprise you and Mahar is one of them. The two songs I have ripped off her recently released debut album called Raw Stitches are her own compositions. Sure they are love songs, but they have a different flavor and depth.

Now my burmese is really tested by songs as they are a form of poetry and it is the hardest form of language to translate into another language.But the gist of the two songs is this I hope.



One thing missing: can download from http://www.thewheelofdhamma.com/music/onethingmissing.mp3

I dont blame you for leaving me behind. I will give you back my love.
My love I dont forget you, my heart is stricken and in pain like never before just because you are not here.
It is because I wish for the times we had together before to come back again.
My love come back to me and be near me.

And so on ......

I believe in one thing, that I will meet you again.
Please let me have what I want to live in peace like we did before.
Hey my love there is just this one thing missing that is making me sad.

etc....


Raw stitches:  can download from http://www.thewheelofdhamma.com/music/rawstitches.mp3

The blood in my heart has gone cold
And the trust I had in you has been crushed and destroyed
My heart has gone hard 
As punishment for you for my dislike of you. 
Everytime I meet you even though I am not at fault
You are cruel to me and desire to leave me so thats your decision.

But why when I sleep at night. Why does my loves picture still appear in my dreams.
This journey that never seems to end, why cant I find a way to avoid this path.
I want to cut out  the love I had for you from my heart. This thing that never seems to end I will take it out of my heart. I have taken your love out of my heart and  I have sewn up my hearts injuries  again now with raw stitches.

So there you have it listen and enjoy, she is a tough girl this one.



Water Festival

I finished my trip to the delta and then had to come back up country to the mountains because few of you will realise that with April comes two things an increase in the heat and the Burmese new year which is celebrated by throwing water on everyone who passes by. So the 4 days of water throwing this year were from 13th to 16th of April. I have to plan to stay out of sight during this time because as a white man I am spotted by kids easily and they love to throw water on me.

So I have come back to my original monastery where I spent 6 years as a monk and have been given permission by the abbot to stay for the rest of my time in Myanmar.

Anyway in the life of the Burmese kids water festival is a special time and it results in many deaths and injuries from road accidents, but it sure is fun to throw buckets of water at people who are complete strangers and are asking for it.

For me I have organised to eat in a restuarant in the village everyday and so I had to get wet going  there and then coming back as well. It means carrying your money and camera in a plastic bag and seeing if you can idle by without getting soaked.

Of course after the camera goes away I am the next one to get drenched at all these spots.

Oh yeh check out the guy in the last picture he is trying to hold back the buckets of water by pointing a water pistol at us! As if that will work!