Cash in Hand: Learning the Value of Giving in Burma (Myanmar)
Reporter’s Note: This article is published at a time when the people of Burma have, once again, been pressed under the thumb of the ruling military junta, known as the Tatmadaw, following a coup in February that ousted democratically elected officials, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Though her role in the genocidal displacement of the Rohingya has soured her image and tempered her fandom in the West in recent years, Suu Kyi remains the only formidable and respected political figure among the mass populace. In fact, she remains an adored heroine more than 30 years after she rose to power on the back of her father’s name, was imprisoned and then awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
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This Burmese man was bigger than most. Taller and heftier, he defied the short and slender narrative physique of his countrymen. And his appearance seemed to bespeak of his profession, for in many ways he looked the part he played — guardian and distributor. So despite his quiet, hospitable demeanor, I felt slightly intimidated in his presence. Yet, I also felt assured that I had come to the right place.
Sliding the large black trunk, with its gold inlay buckles and combination lock, out from under his spring-coil single bed, the broad-shouldered, pot-bellied man eyed me with one of those knowing glares that says, “You should look away now.” So I obliged, momentarily, while he twisted the numbers on the lock into their ordained order. I glanced around the small bedroom, noticing the Buddhist trinkets on his dresser, the portraits hanging from the wall, a small desk that held a notebook where he would later transcribe our transaction.
With a click and snap, the trunk opened, revealing stacks of Kyat — Burmese cash piled high in rows and columns, stacked from end to end and bundled by the hundreds of thousands with thick, pink rubber bands. There must have been tens of millions of Kyat inside that trunk, collected and stored over the course of years.
This was a man of the financial underworld, trading in the currency exchange. In Burma, now as then (2009), foreign currency is prohibited, and dealers like him are wanted men.
I had arrived in the Southeast Asian country with more than a thousand American dollars in finely crisp $100 bills stashed in my wallet, my shoes and hard-to-reach pockets deep inside my backpack. I had heard that the larger the bill, the better the exchange rate. And while Greenbacks were commonly circulated, welcomed and used for purchases of cigarettes to noodle soup and bus fare to a night’s stay in a guesthouse, turning them into Kyat freed me of having to do the math in my head each time I made such a transaction. They also made me feel both less suspicious to inquiry and vulnerable to theft.
I had learned of the hulking Burmese man from a young, twenty-something American girl I met outside the hostel where I was staying, located a short walk from the Sule Pagoda in the heart of Yangon down a narrow, potholed alleyway prone to flooding during the torrential rains of monsoon season.
From here I could hear and taste and smell and see and touch the bustling, chaotic and consuming heartbeat of the social, political and cultural center of the country, all without much interference thanks to the less noticeable presence of the military government. Its leaders had abandoned scores of warehouse-like buildings throughout the city when it dashed off to build a fortified new capital in a previously uninhabited land a few hours north.
Food markets, bus stops, restaurants, crafts and clothing stores, Internet cafes, apartments and parks spun out from the pagoda like spokes on a wheel. Cars, minivans, buses, bicycles and taxis jammed the uneven and unmarked lanes of the bumpy roads circling the stupa that was built in the time of the living Buddha and predated the city’s more famous Shwedagon Pagoda.
The American girl had worked in the country for a locally based educational nonprofit on and off for a nearly a year at the time, and she was just settling in to a multi-year commitment when our paths crossed in May 2009. Her time in country had taught her how civil society, at every possible turn, sought to manipulate the system of military governance in their favor, how millions of people managed daily to defy it and undermine it and profit from it and trade off it and live with it and get by. They had figured out ways to operate in and around the institutionalized censorship and repression, ways that could not be devised without the imposition first existing.
So when I inquired about where best to exchange American dollars into Burmese Kyat, the American girl kindly and secretly told me where to go and who to ask for, so long as I promised not to share the information. I mostly kept this deal.
I grew more nervous as the Burmese moneychanger laid out the Kyat before me on the top of the trunk, counting off by the thousands and offering me an exchange rate not found at the airport or commercial tellers in the city — an even one-hundred-thousand Kyat per $100 bill. Meanwhile, he benefited from having the purchasing power associated with Greenbacks.
It seemed as though things were going too smoothly. I had found his apartment without much searching. I had gotten his attention when I flashed my wad of cash. Yet he was only too gracious to welcome me in. And now, even behind locked doors, he was giving me what I asked for without much inquiry or incident. There were no guns present — no weapons at all, in fact — only hushed and underhanded maneuverings, as if we were being watched, but not too closely. But it would certainly attract the attention of government minders and everyday thieves if word spread about this man’s lucrative gig and lack of a bank account. I felt spied on, as did most people in Burma I would eventually meet.
Throughout the city a massive whisper campaign allowed people to vent their frustrations with the authoritarian military regime, to get word out about its excesses and abuses. Now I felt like I was taking part. And the feeling would grow stronger once I left this man’s personal vault behind and exited onto the streets of Yangon with $700,000 Kyat in my daypack, ready to launder the money for a reason I hoped wasn’t just personally rewarding.
***
Following a brief uprising and popular protest in 2007 led by Buddhist monks and known as the Saffron Revolution — the Sule Pagoda being ground zero for the call to action — the United States government expanded its mission to resettle more of Burma’s political and civilian refugees.
The Win family — father, mother, two daughters and a son — was among the thousands of Burmese refugees that year to be given an opportunity to claim a new life and home in America. I met them while researching an article I was to write about the populous refugee community living in the neighborhoods around Atlanta, Georgia, where the low cost of living and broad job prospects made for an ideal transition point or, perhaps, a place to grow roots.
At first I thought I might spend a few hours with the Wins, inquiring about their lives, perhaps sharing a meal or two. But there was an evident affection between us and it grew beyond my expectations. Soon I was attending family birthday parties and teaching the father how to drive a car.
The Wins shared with me the essence of Burma — its food, culture, language, hopes and hardships — within the confines of a worn, ‘80s-era apartment in a neighborhood populated with refugees from Somalia, Iraq, Bosnia.
Steven, the family patriarch, walked with a gentle strength, showing the kind of quiet dignity reserved for those who have slept as a denizen in hell. A teacher in Burma, it was a speech he gave to his students espousing the primacy of education in changing the political and social dynamic of the country that turned the paranoid scorn of military officials his way.
Soon after, the Wins had their home and livestock confiscated and were forced to flee their ancestral homeland in the mountains of Chin State, located in the northwest part of the country. They made their way to Yangon and, a few months later, Steven sailed by night to Malaysia, leaving his family behind. He connected with refugee advocacy groups in Kuala Lumpur, where he learned the ropes and hurdles of the United Nations refugee resettlement process while living in a squatters hut with a dozen other men.
After three years, Steven was able to pay smugglers to sneak his wife and teenage children out of Burma. And within a year, the Wins had that apartment in an Atlanta suburb.
The parents struggled to learn English and pay the bills in their first few months in America while the children played catch-up in the local public schools. But despite the obstacles, the Wins embraced their adopted country with an optimism that reminded me of the fortune of being born an American.
The children’s appetite for education was inspiring. The father’s apologies for his broken English revealed his determination to master the language. And the mother, a stalwart even when battling regular illness, held the family together with her warm, consoling affection and to-die-for noodle soup.
There were times, of course, when the Wins rallied their nostalgia. Music videos of Burmese pop singers spliced with aerial shots of the forested mountains and deep river valleys the family once called home momentarily satisfied that urge to remember, to feel an innocent past, be comforted by it, like we all do from time to time with our memories.
The Wins, raised in the Roman Catholic tradition thanks to the proselytizing of the World War II-era British occupation, prayed hard and worked harder, knowing that while so many things lay beyond their grasp, hope was never one of them.
Six months passed before I published a profile of the Win family in the pages of a monthly news and lifestyle magazine, but that would not be the end of our journey together. A year later, I was making plans to quit my job and vagabond through Southeast Asia for a year. I told the Wins about my intention to track down their relatives in Burma — a grandmother, some aunts and uncles and cousins — if possible and if the family was OK with it. I didn’t want to jeopardize the safety of their relatives, but the Wins, though cautious, were excited about the prospect. They told me where to find their family in a neighborhood on the northern outreaches of Yangon and cautioned me about what to say to authorities when I arrived.
Julia, the eldest child, acted as my liaison, corresponding via email with her relatives and advising me on how to navigate the muddy waters of the junta’s spy game once I arrived in Burma.
“Joshua,” she had written once when I checked my email in a café outside the Sule Pagoda, “i told everyone that you are from my college .. ok?? thats not true.. but.. you know it.. right??”
It was like we were caught up in our own imagined conspiracy, wondering if anyone would uncover our scheming. The stakes were low, sure, our intentions barely threatening. But though our ruse was by most standards innocuous, it came with an undertow, a humble subversion of power in a simple act of correspondence. Our careful fantasy made us feel like we were part of that whispering majority in the streets and cafes and pagodas and hostels and homes of Yangon, confident we could outlast the life of censorship and surveillance, oppression and repercussion alongside those who truly endured that brutal legacy.
***
The public buses that carry locals between the neighborhoods of Yangon, to and from their everyday affairs — jobs and visits to Buddhist temples, for example — have only one fare. There is neither coach nor first class. There is no preferred seating area or arrangement of any kind. And, at most times I hopped on, it was standing-room only.
The buses are rickety and wobbly, careening down dusty, semi-paved roads of the city like a boat bobbing on the water — you think the wheels might come off at any minute. The smog emissions could feel suffocating when wafting through the busted-out windows, and the gurgling, gargling murmur of the engine threatened a breakdown at any moment. There was no upholstery on the seats, no leather or cloth or cushion at all, just wooden benches attached to metal railings, sometimes with nothing more than twine, and it’s often preferable, and more comfortable, to stand and hold tight to the guard rails or overhanging bars as if on a subway. It’s actually a helluva lot of fun to ride, in that carnage-could-be-around-every-corner kind of way. And, in the end, the buses usually get you where you’re going — if you know where you’re going, and so long as you know the right bus to take. What’s more, they’re remarkably on schedule.
I had shown the address where the Wins’ relatives lived — scribbled on a slip of paper and ready to be tossed if the authorities came calling — to a gregarious local who spent most days pacing outside the hostel where I was staying, promising a grand tour of the city for a fair price. At first I mistook him for a huckster or government minder, but he later proved to be the private entrepreneurial type he claimed to be, escorting me to a soccer match, and to the iconic temples and best restaurants in Yangon, ceaselessly smiling and always inquisitive about life outside his country, and doing it for a wage that compelled me to tip. He said he knew the address and neighborhood I was looking for, told me which public bus to take and what landmarks — such as a hospital — to be on the lookout for in order to know when I was getting close.
During the entire bus ride, I could feel the weight of the stacks of Burmese Kyat pulling me down like an extra dose of gravity as they lay buried in the daypack slung over my right shoulder. I had the sense of being some kind of low-level mobster, secretly transporting the cash behind the government’s back, with the intent of funneling it to a subversive cause — to cover the cost of medical expenses, school supplies and food for an impoverished family. My front, if searched by authorities, was to play the dumb, unwitting foreigner.
The bus jerked to a stop at my destination and I hopped off just as it got going again. I began walking up a dusty, gravelly lane littered with street food stalls and playful children, and within a minute spotted the church the family once attended — a simple, white V-shaped building outlined in sky blue paint with large double-doors and windows that fold out to make worship services feel like an open-air market. The courtyard was adorned with statues of angels, the Virgin Mary, and Joseph holding the baby Christ, and inside the lettering “God Is Love” in English traced the frame above the Roman Catholic pulpit. From here, the first relatives I would meet — an aunt and two teenage cousins — were just a short walk down an adjacent side street. I was walking the straight and narrow, sure to meet my destiny. But I also got a little turned around along the final stretch.
Nevertheless, I was grateful that finding the home took some hunting, some navigating and assistance, because this played into my fantasies of adventure, like searching for the lost grail, the missing link. After finding the right street, then passing the house unaware and asking around, I stopped at a stand selling everything from pirated DVDs to chewing gum, shared the numbers and words on the slip of paper listing the address, used some made-up sign language, and luckily found a man who somehow, as if he could read minds, understood what and whom I was looking for. He led me to the house, then called from outside its rickety gates to the residents inside.
***
I’ve always felt something approaching dumbfounded wonder whenever I consider that paper, in the right shape, size, color and graphics, carries so much value. I keep waiting for society to give up the pretext that is cash, to rebel against the unspoken contract and silent agreement that money is worth what we say it’s worth. Sure, market forces have a a heavy hand in all this, but the contract itself is built on a premise of mutual understanding. What if enough people choose to be misunderstood? Perhaps bargaining is one minor struggle to undermine or undervalue the whole system — but the system remains nonetheless.
Children will beg for it. Men will kill over it. Women will trade for it. And all of us are complicit in the greed and false sense of power that money, especially cold-hard cash, creates. It afflicts the poor and the middle class and the wealthy equally, just in different ways.
Yet, in the best of circumstances, money can prove its worth when freely given and received, when spent on undeniably good things.
And so I knew the stacks of Burmese Kyat were all I had to give to the Wins’ relatives. I could not impart any wisdom worth a damn. I could not offer freedom or opportunity. I could not teach them anything of practical use. I could be there friend, but only fleetingly.
The only sure thing I could do was bolster their finances, pay some bills, create some savings, splurge on a day of adventure through the city. I could cover some debt, and pay for some medical expenses or household items. I could cover the cost of some schooling, and hope that paid off in the long run.
But, perhaps unsurprisingly, I would find my donation brought me a little something in return.
***
The relatives had been expecting me. Julia had gotten word to them in the days before my arrival. I was grateful, for it made my mission less surprising and less difficult to explain.
I spent the day with the two teenage cousins, touring their neighborhood, visiting their church, playing video games at the local arcade, telling jokes, answering their questions about America. When we returned to their house, their mother — Julia’s aunt — fixed us tea and crackers. She was in good spirit, though her physical health threatened to give her thoughts and concerns away.
Then I delivered the goods — the Kyat. I laid out the cash before them, told them they could spend it however they wanted. The look on their faces said it all, said everything I needed to confirm my aspirations were on the mark.
When I visited again a few weeks later and dumped more Kyat on their laps, they graciously said it was too much. But I insisted. After all, there was still a transaction taking place here — for in return, I got to crush my own sense of inadequacy, and my certain inability to offer anything nobler or longer lasting.
And from that experience, I learned firsthand an age-old lesson: Giving is receiving.
They had unburdened me.
