Priviliege has it advantages

Being in a position of privilege can be quite seductive. Every morning in Mandalay, I am met at the hotel door by my driver who automatically takes my bag and puts it in his trunk. He then drives me to school and passes through the closed gate, opened only for our car, while the other hundred cars have to deposit their kids outside. As kids scramble out of the say, he drops me off precisely at my office door.

On the one hand, I want to tell the driver to let me out where everyone else is scrambling to get into school on time, but on the other hand, I do not want to disrupt his pattern. Now I must know, in my own small way, what leaders of governments and star athletes must feel like as they get everything done for them and all they have to do is show up. You can get to lose the common touch in a hurry. This, added to the fact that I give a workshop every night at the school and the teachers all tend to treat me as some sort of star. They would never dare to disagree, unfortunately .It just isn’t right… but it is seductive. I am beginning to feel as if I am entitled to these privileges because I am white and old.

Hurray for me! Yesterday, I insisted yesterday that the driver drop me off where all of the other cars are parked outside the gates and I walked in, through the gates, across the field full of kids and to my office. I high fived all of the kids, threw a few hoops and talked to some teachers. Wow, now I remember what I love in teaching. It is just plain fun!!!

Today I am playing golf with the husband of a teacher. It will be interesting to see if I pay the 15 dollars for foreigners or they let me pay the 2.50 the natives pay. Let’see.

As it turns out, I did have to pay the 15 dollars a corner. As we drove to the course, we passed rice fields with oxen plowing the muddy fields. There were homes made of ratan along the way and lots of bicycles with drivers overloaded with all sorts of materials. The course was surrounded by mountains on all sides with lots of monasteries doting the hillside. I just kind of wish they spent as much money on themselves as they do on their religion.

When we arrived, we were given an ice cold bottle of water and sunflower seeds to eat. At each three holes we had to sit down and eat all over again. Fruit, nuts, fish, drink and pork( I think). I now know the taste of freshly roasted peanuts by the way. They obviously pick them up from the ground and roast them right in the huts. They were so hot I burnt my hand. They were delicious, by the way.

As I was talking with this business man about democracy, he reminded me that democracy would not be so good for business in Myanmar. Now, at least, they know the rules of the game and it is very comfortable for them. They know how to get licenses, how much to bribe, where to get material, how to exploit labour and so on. ( They have a twelve year old maid, for example). Democracy, he pointed out, would make his life difficult.

As I was driving home in a rickshaw from the Internet café after another futile attempt to use the Internet, the driver begged me to give him $2.00 to take me about 10 miles on his bicycle. I know a driver of a horrible tuk tuk contraption would charge me $3.00. It left me wondering, in this state where no-one would put their money in a bank, if banks exist, nor get a loan from anywhere, how this poor rickshaw driver will every get enough money together to buy a tuk tuk or how the guy selling fruit at the roadside stand will ever acquire enough capital to buy a restaurant etc. I don’t know how the leap is done in North America, but I do know that these people in Myanmar will never escape the cycle of poverty.