REFLECTION: THEN AND NOW

With the approach of the new year, I reflect on the immense undertaking of NEH over the past 18 months.

The passage below was my very first impressions of Myanmar in 2015:

The airport seemed OK. It was fairly small, and there were many official police officers. None appeared to have guns though; at least not the massive riffles like in Italy. The uniform was dark trousers and a beige colored top. Each seemed to have adornments on the sleeves and chest, of various colors. There were also many other people standing about. There were three queues for immigration; one for Myanmar nationals, one for foreigners and one for dignitaries. The foreigner arrivals were about equal I think to those from Myanmar. There seems to be a big ethnic variation looking at the faces of the people in the Myanmar line.

The drive in to the city was OK. The road seems a bit disorganised; much like Greece. The main road has two lanes plus a hard shoulder that is used for driving. The road has red and white bricks to either side of it and sometimes there is a central reservation.

The flat is up three flights of stairs. The first has graffiti, and all have that red spit up the wall in the corner as you descend the flight of stairs. It doesn’t smell here so far.

There is an outside gate and a balcony, and a door. The front room is a good size and has 4 windows. There is a section which has been split by metal conservatory style doors to form a bedroom. The wall in there has mold which I will need to be removing in some way.

The kitchen is OK. There is a sink and a counter with three gaps underneath. There is nothing else to cook with and there is no fridge. There is a small mirror on the wall with a small vanity shelf.  I have strip washed twice so far in the kitchen. To my surprise there is running water from the tap. Of course, I am glad I have had the various vaccines, but the water neither looks nor smells as unpleasant as I had been fearing. The flow rate is of course not western.

The bathroom. Well, the bathroom is my least favorite room of the flat, and if I go in there again, I would be surprised. There were two bugs in the bathroom; a white cricket and a brown one. The brown may have been a cockroach. I'm not too sure; I didn't look too closely truth be told. The floor needs cleaning. There is an air freshener which smells something like chemical waste disposal.

There is a toilet. I need to deal with the toilet; fortunately it is separate from the bathroom which means I am able to visit it.

This morning I was woken at 6 from chanting in the local village hall. It is customary to rise at 6 and sleep at 8 so I have been told.

I ache from the bed. My bed is not good. It is a thin cushion on a sun bed. I have a pop-up mossy net, which is pink and nylon. It feels safe and secure. I don’t think I have been bitten. I have only seen 3 mosquitoes which is pretty good I think. I am taking the malaria pills;  I think it's best. There is talk of Rakhine State which is probably teeming with disease. It is only 100 km from Bangladesh as the crow flies.

My first impressions of the country were only based from whispers of war and a rather racist 1950’s portrayal in Rodgers and Hammerstein's ‘The King and I’ musical. I have no memory of writing the piece, but I can read in it my fear and in-trepidation being tempered by a desire not to appear negative. Short sentences which are brief, factual and to the point. I do remember making a video for my mum where I showed her around the four-room flat that I described in my writing; my voice having much the same clipped tone.

However, now, the memory of my shock has faded and I have moved to a point where I appreciate the luxury of running water, and if it’s hot, so much the better. Personally, I have become much more grateful and appreciative of everyday, mundane things; be that hot water or gas to cook with. 

NEH has grown tremendously since my arrival in Myanmar. We are now getting ready for our teacher trainee to train a new trainee and become the trainer! After some fraught moments in some remote locations, we are again based in the relative metropolis of Yangon where we have more stable Internet communication, and are planning our next training location.

I also took my mother to visit Myanmar, where she met the grand majority of the NEH students. Coming from a village in England, many of our students were fascinated to exchange village stories, and to my eternal amusement one student was even bold enough to tell my mum that her English wasn’t very good (more details to come in a new blog post)!

We are full of optimism for expansion into 2017.  We are improving our virtual model of communication, and so far it is working as well as we would have wanted. We hope that the time that we’ve invested being on the ground in Myanmar will translate into a virtual working relationship with our trainees peppered with periodic on-site visits to keep up to date.


Chloe Smith
NEH Director of Studies and Teacher Trainer