I wake up late on the Saturday, call my lunch date and cancel. Sleep is so important. I needed it not just wanted it.
“ Cultural lesson CK – the Burmese have great pride. Never affront their pride.”
I know this already but it gives new meaning to that thing where you clean before the cleaner arrives. When I see her I jump. “Minga la bar Sharo!” She laughs at me in my silky little leopard print playsuit and the jumping thing. I laugh too and give her a hug.
I want to sleep for a thousand years but I have things to do, I have to go into the office, sort stuff out, put some work into getting back to the Lover in Singapore. This relationship is my priority at the moment. The condition precedent is that there had to be a “me” in “my”, I have to know thyself and love thy shadow self. I cant just show up and be an expat wife drinking iced mochas all day and lounging by a pool though, even though he has said this would be really good. "You have to remember beautiful girl, that I was in a 10 year relationship with someone who pretty much did just that."
Tim Kelly went through the formalities once upon a time and asked his wife to be’s father “don’t you want to know about my finances?”
“No” said the father. “The Gillin girls keep themselves.” I know in the short term it would be fine but it is a hard message to shake. When I heard it I remember I really liked it, would have like to be there in that moment.
You taught me such important things, always in a round-about about way, by example, but each lesson was real, each shibboleth rings true.
I love the fundamentals- be a good person, have integrity, treat others well, try and help those less fortunate, see the funny side, always. You never said the last one aloud, but the way we would sit on the balcony in Balmain and laugh until you were almost crying, looking out into the lavender garden as we wiped away tears. I like being in your world, it is a cool place. Be independent, never be hung up on money, always admit when you are wrong, share the credit if you were right.
This morning, out of respect to Sharo, who has reached my room with her broom, I get out of the house. There is some kerfuffle as I get dressed and spray perfume on, go to shut down the symphony. I wonder if she likes Vivaldi or has heard four seasons before. I wonder if she likes winter. I give her another hug because I am happy and say thank you in mangled Burmese. Her smile says 'you're welcome'.
I put on pink sparkly lip-gloss and pack a backpack like I am going on a grand adventure and leave.
I buy some iced coffee at the junction and look in both directions – one way, the city, civilization, air con, beautiful Traders hotel, the place were the auditors and partners buy bread. I walk a few steps in that direction and turn around, decide to go where I will see the people, be in Myanmar.
I knock off a couple of mundane tasks and ask the medicine lady (for you could hardly call her a chemist) where to buy orange juice.
“Taxi, five minutes” she points.
“Thanks”
I go a few doors down and order lime juice. The chap reappears with coco cola. I pick up one of the tea cups on the table and avail myself of tea from the pot sitting on the table occupied by the chap next to me. He is heckled and cat called by the other denizens.
After that everyone leaves me alone. I am usually alone here. I like it. Space to think and watch.
The people here are more than proud, they are dignified and respectful and honest. I never feel unsafe, although perhaps I ought to.
Friday was mental.
In the office I went from trouble shooting to hugging.
“Hey Nay, some bird form Navigat came around with the company stamp to stamp some stuff and I had no idea what we needed so I told her to come back. She also gave me 12 photos of this guy” I hold them out.
“Ah, yes, she was meant to stamp the UMFCCI checklist! She was meant to stamp last week but she dropped her phone in the toilet and I have not been able to speak to her since.”
“This deal is supposed to close next week. What a mess. This is not your fault of mine.”
“Very untidy! This is not so good a way to make business”
“Agreed. They are making the f*cking electricity that you and I enjoy each day!”
Jon and I attend a meeting t the Myanmar Port Authority that afternoon. I need to go to the bathroom and navigate, contemplate a squat toilet in chained stilettos. It seems too hard and I decide to wait. We leave.
“Was that useful to you?” I ask him at the elevator, which was installed in 1975 or thereabouts. It does not remind me, in any respect, of the lovely old elevator in the Market Street David Jones, where the beautiful old man with silver hair would announce the floors.
“Yes, We know that they are not involved with the project we want, so I guess we know not to f*ck around trying to get information out of them about Daweii, But it seemed like it was interesting to you?”
“Yes, it was great. I’m not sure I could piece together all the random stuff he said into a coherent and issue-separated memo, but I really enjoyed it.”
“He liked you. He would actually be a good person to know”
“I agree. And I do love when someone is new in the job and keen to meet everyone, do stuff right. Fix the mess left by the last guy - It doesn’t last long.”
“No. You should definitely stay in touch. Hey, remember that 15 minutes at the start of the meeting – What the f*ck is a ‘stevedore’?”
Helen arranged for us all to go to supper. Her husband was describing a violent stabbing in Phom Phen. “There is some PTSD in the Khmer culture. It is as though they have seen such horror that they know when they have crossed the line and when they cross it they lose all restraint. It’s not about money or survival anymore.”
I think about this and how I felt crossing the border into Cambodia for the first time, riding on the back of a Khmer kid’s motorbike with no sense of danger, hair flying every which way from Sunday, exposed and free and feeling like I had put in place a piece of a jigsaw puzzle of myself, completed something on my to do list. I realized that it was because I wanted to be around people who had survived something awful and come back from it. I wanted to know how they acted, how it felt, how they viewed risk, if at all. Can you really feel risk after surviving the Khmer Rouge and Brother #1? When there are no old people around, because Pol Pot killed most of them, who will write your story? Some westerner doing their PhD?
I wanted to know what it felt like to come from a war torn bloody history and it all just ‘ends’, the remnants encapsulated in the killing fields and the TL 21, to be told that life is normal now, so just get on with it. There was something in the Khmer collective identity that always fascinated me, that I wanted to know more about.
They ask me why I wanted to move to Laos and I tell them the story, about sending the role to my friend, accidentally meeting the local director, about the opportunity to build something, but I realize secretly that I maybe I wanted to know Burma a little all along.
Like you, I wanted to see a place at its primitive beginnings. I wanted to see what the people are like before everything happens, the sky-rises are built, the drains are closed, they get an idea of money. I wanted to be amongst raw and real humans. I wanted... I don't know it is still a work in progress but I always knew I wanted to come here, like the ‘Desh.
At the end of dinner in the old colonial hotel I say “I have to go. Hey thanks so much for organizing this Helen. I really needed to, like, be with people. To talk to people. I didn't realise how much I needed it. Thank you. It has been an insane week.”
“Yeah that’s how I felt! I didn’t realise. I hadn’t spoken to anyone except Shaun this week until you mentioned that Nick Angel had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken both his legs. And then we both laughed for 2 minutes straight.”
“I heard this arvo that he is ok. He broke a vertabray in his neck and will be back on Monday but has to wear a collar.”
I laugh some more. “It is so not funny. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I am laughing.” She is cracking up also so I feel less bad. We are laughing at the absurdity not at the fate of poor Nick Angel who has fallen down the stairs, obviously.
I have been living with the auditors in auditor land the last week, as the financial year closes, working nights, eating auditor suppers and listening to auditor conversations. I am finding auditor stuff funny at the moment. That’s not good.
Helen mentions: “Did you know that Aung calls you The Laughing Nun. In Cambodia they're calling you The Prisoner of War.”
“No. I did not know this. But I am a god damned prisoner, I left a hectic life in Perth for sleepy Vientiane - "like a little sleepy country town" they said. I wanted to live in a little country town for a few months, take a holiday. I was exhausted. I wanted to build something in my sleepy country town. And now I am in hectic and mental Yangon. But there must be a reason.” I look to the roof. "There is always a reason. God had some plan. God must have intended this." Maybe I gesture at the roof.
“Often, I feel the same.”
"Me to."
"Me to."
"Me to."
They all look to the roof as though the answer is written up there. It is not.
"So we have each other, is that correct? I need you all."
"We have each other. And more!"
