The Wedding

There are certain perks that come with this job, and one of them included going to a staff member’s wedding today in Yangon. I am trying to think of the differences to weddings I have been to in Toronto. I guess the most obvious difference is I heard a lot of “mengale ba’s” as opposed to the usual “mazel tov’s”. All of the guests were wearing traditional outfits and there were not tuxedos! The men wore the lengyi wrap around with the traditional Mao jacket and the women wore a double knit wrap around. You can be sure I was the only westerner there wearing a tie. In fact, I was the only westerner there come to think about it.. However, I think I will be in more pictures than the groom since our table was at the very front and we were in all of the pictures since I was sitting beside the bride’s boss who seemed to be a very honoured guest. Another difference, I noticed, is that we sat in the heat for about one hour before anything happened. This, apparently, is part of the tradition. There was food and drink on the table but we did not touch it until after the ceremony.

Finally, the bride and groom walked down the aisle of this large hall, sat in the front on a nice sofa while a few honorary guests including my boss gave speeches. They wore traditional dress which I wish I could show you but the battery for my camera is up north in Mandalay which is another story on its’ own. I gave workshops in Mandalay every day after school including Friday. Since I was leaving Saturday morning to come to Yangon, I told them jokingly that if they were interested in hearing more, they would have to come to the hotel at 6:30 am for the last lecture since I was leaving for the airport at 8:30. Believe it or not, two of them actually showed up! Since I ended up speaking with them, I only had a few minutes to pack and left the battery pack ( which I was charging) in the bathroom electrical outlet and won’t get it back until tomorrow afternoon. I was making sure I would have no problems taking pictures in Yangon. By the way, when I did get the battery pack delivered by express from Mandalay to Yangon, about 500 miles, it cost $2.

As I came into the city from the Yangon airport, I saw thousands of uprooted trees, but they were all bulldozed to the side and there were armies of soldiers cutting them up and clearing the area. I was amazed that the general populace were still smiling and carrying on as best they could. I saw some windows blown out of houses, some corrugated roofs on the ground and large billboards on their side, but there was no water in the road or dead bodies lying around, as I am sure I would see in the Irawaddy Delta about five hours south of here. There is no electricity and all the power is being run by generators. I am staying in a first class hotel so you would not even know from the inside or outside of the hotel that there were any disruptions.

I absolutely hate the broadcasts on BBC and CNN. They are using this story to make political points. For example, they keep referring to what is happening in “Burma.” This really grates me since the country is now called Myanmar and has been called that for almost twenty years. The reason the British called it Burma is because one of the ethnic groups in the country are Burmese so if they are looking for the real name it really is Myanmar. There is no doubt that Myanmar is a fascist state and the generals control everything but I do not think a natural disaster of this order is the time to play politics or manipulate the news.

To-night, in the lobby of the hotel, I met two Scottish guys who were volunteers from the rotary club who had flown over with at least 100 huge tents with all of the paraphernalia to help in a disaster. They were not allowed to deliver and set up the tents where they were needed but were asked to hand over the tents to the military who would distribute them. I am hoping to have dinner with the British second secretary to-night so hopefully can update this from the political perspective later.