Burma Journal: Curiosity and Hope in the Land of the Lost

They say that Venice is sinking, but really, when you arrive in Rangoon, it becomes clear that if any place is slowly edging deeper into the earth, it's this one.

There's a certain romance in the crumbling colonial buildings, covered in black mold like shrouds of mourning, or the public buses from the late-'60s, crammed with Burmese of every stripe, some hanging off the back with only one foot onboard. This is what the tourists come for -- a passing glimpse of especially acute third-world poverty that gives way to a countryside that has been (thus far) exempt from development, no Starbucks or Burger Kings to be seen. Just lush, green hills, quiet villages and monasteries filled with chanting monks.

I haven't been to the Burmese countryside, although I've always wanted to go, and I'm quite sure that some parts of it are stunning -- trapped in a mystical time before the Internet and subways and franchises. I won't begrudge the tourists, either: The Burmese are desperate for human contact, concrete evidence that they haven't been forgotten by the rest of the world; the tourists represent glimmers of life in the universe. To me, this human contact is worth far more than whatever change ends up falling into the pockets of Burma's generals, who siphon off dollars from hotel bookings and souvenir purchases.

I've spent the last few entries in this Burma Journal focusing on the extraordinary Burmese men and women who are fighting against one of the world's most repressive regimes, putting their lives on the line in the name of basic human rights. But after a few days in Rangoon last week, what struck me most about the visit was the citizenry itself: Fear and despair are omnipresent, but so is the commitment to try and make a decent life out of an impossible situation.

At the American Center, an outpost of the American Embassy in Rangoon, newspapers, magazines, movies, books and classes are available to any Burmese citizen able to pay the $5 yearly membership fee and withstand the interrogation and monitoring from the military government that comes with a visit to the center. Much has been written about this place, but it's still disarming to walk into a room filled with monks in saffron robes reading the International Herald Tribune, Burmese students reading Fortune (despite the fact that Burma's economic landscape is a calamity) and thin, elderly men lining up for an evening PowerPoint presentation on creative teaching practices. This curiosity, this desire to maintain a link to the outside world, is an expression of hope, of optimism that one day they will rejoin it.

I met one day with a young teacher who showed me copies of American films that she has reproduced illegally for students eager to learn more about cinema; the titles included "The Killing Fields" and "Hotel Rwanda." These were pirated, uncensored copies and could be seized at any time. Worse yet, the teacher could be detained and incarcerated for having supplied them -- but when asked about this possibility, she just shrugged. This was simply how it was done.

My cabdriver, whose parents had long ago been diplomats, told me with great enthusiasm about his time living in Washington, D.C., several decades ago. In the middle of this, his car broke down in bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic in downtown Rangoon. He spent 15 minutes under the hood, tinkering with the transmission, adding oil. The car finally restarted. An hour later, it broke down again.

"This car here, it costs $18,000 in Burma," he said, referring to government inflation of basic goods inside the country. "In America, you can find it in the garbage." When I left him, he cheerily waved goodbye.

There are frustrations here -- unbelievable substandard living conditions, neglect, and a lack of basic services that we cannot possibly fathom, living, as we do, in the age of unlimited, immediate access to pretty much everything. The Burmese people are not unaware of the preposterous circumstances under which they have been forced to exist. But they have not stopped pursuing information and ideas and technology -- they just know they have to work harder to get to all of them.

In this way, their culture exists at once both inside and outside of their own country: the rules of the military junta are a wholly Burmese construction, but at the same time completely irrelevant to the character of the country. Perhaps the most vivid illustration of this was in a classroom inside the American Center, where elementary school-aged Burmese children had made collages out of images cut from magazines. Above a picture of Barack Obama, one had written "Our President." This wasn't misplaced desire; this was national pride.