everything is broken.

I just finished reading a book that one of our Burmese interpreters loaned to me entitled "Everything is Broken: A Tale of Catastrophe in Burma" by Emma Larkin (a pseudonym). The book focused on Cyclone Nargis that made landfall in Burma on May 2, 2008. Focusing on this catastrophe and the Burmese government's response (or more accurately, a lack-thereof, and illicit denial of international aid), the book takes a critical look at the reality of life in Burma today and the military dictatorship that runs it.

If you want a good read that gives you a great look into the life of the Burmese, a highly recommend this book! Below are a few snipits taken directly from the book:

Events happen in Burma, and then they are systematically unhappened...Life goes on, economic conditions become untenable, the people rise up (individually or together), and the army cracks down. It is a relentless, unforgiving, and utterly exhausting cycle.

Parents cannot afford to send their children to school due to the unofficial bribes they have to pay for entrance fees and the inflated price of textbooks and uniforms. Patients at hospitals have to purchase overpriced medicines and sometimes even pay for the equipment necessary to treat their illnesses. People across the country are impoverished by random and illicit taxes charged by the township authorities for common amenities such as street lighting, which, as one letter writer made sure to point out, often don't work anyway.

The letters detail a wide variety of injustices, from forced labor and the confiscation of land to travel prohibitions and lack of political freedom, but the main concern voiced in the majority of the letters is about the rising cost of living. According to this incomplete poll, the biggest fear in Burma is, How am I going to feed my family?

To my mind, this is one of the great tragedies of life in Burma: that recent historical events - both large and small - cannot be honestly and openly acknowledged, debated, or even remembered within the country. Instead, the exact opposite takes place, and Burma's history is swallowed up by a strictly enforced collective forgetting.

Whenever I think of Burma these days, the Buddhist parable the blind men and the elephant comes to mind. In the age-old teaching, a king summons a group of blind men and places an elephant before them. Each sightless man is led to a different part of the elephant's body to touch the animal and feel what it is like. The king then asks each in turn to describe the elephant.

The man who felt the founded head says confidently that the elephant is like a water jar. Another, who felt the cylindrical foot, says the elephant is like a pillar. The man who felt the tusk says it is like an iron rod, and the one who felt the tuft of the tail says it is like a broom. Before long the blind men are arguing over their description of the elephant, since each one is convinced that his description is correct.

It is the same in Burma today. Given the regime's restrictions on information and association, it is difficult to form any public consensus or verifiable version of the truth. While certain events can be accounted for with certainty, there is much that remains unknown. Like those blind men in the parable, it has become impossible for anyone to see or fathom the beast in its entirety.

In a society where nothing can be taken for granted, distorted truths, half stories, and private visions are, by necessity, woven into the popular narrative of events. Burma is a place where the government hides behind convoluted smoke screens. It is a place where those who sacrifice themselves for their country must go unrecognized and can only be lauded or remembered in secret. It is a place where natural disasters don't happen, at least not officially, and where the gaping misery that follows any catastrophe must be covered up and silenced. In such an environment, almost anything becomes believable.