I’ve thought about for a couple of days what my last entry on this blog would be. For a while I was going to end it in a sad and bitter way, talking about my breakdown in a supermarket next to a frozen pork loin my second day back in New York. I do miss Mae Sot every day, but I have to learn how to take all the joy and optimism those kids filled me with while I was over there and keep it going, keep spreading the light, just like they taught me to do. So I thought I’d share this story instead.

As I was waiting in the airport in Bangkok for my flight back home I walked into a shop to buy a magazine for the plane. My eyes trailed across the racks trying to spot the National Geographic I was looking for when suddenly there was Aung San Suu Kyi staring me down. I was taken aback for a second before reaching out and taking down the Time Magazine from the shelf, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s unblinking face on the cover, the title Brave New Burma tucked under her ear like a lock of hair.

I started to laugh as I headed for the register, hardly able to believe this coincidence.

Okay, so I was in Asia and it was big news that Secretary of State Clinton had visited Burma only days before and yes, maybe it wasn’t that big of a coincidence, but at the time it felt like just the nudge I needed.

I had left Mae Sot in a flurry, hurrying my goodbyes because I couldn’t bear to prolong them, couldn’t linger in doorways or hold on to embraces, because I knew I would never be able to leave if I had. And so I left Mae Sot the same way I came in, like a tornado, half smiling, half crying, cracking jokes and dancing my way out of rooms that I could only hope I’d see again soon. It was the hardest thing I’d had to do…

I remember riding away from BH sobbing. I had held it in as well as I could but the sight of everyone waving as I drove away broke me and I just drove and drove and until I couldn’t see the pale blue walls of my home anymore and I stopped and just wept. It didn’t seem fair. Why did I have to say goodbye? Why did I have to leave this place which had brought me so much joy?

And that was just one goodbye of many. They all stung in their own way and I’m still not over them, probably never will be. But that day at the airport everything felt especially hard. I was still in Thailand, still in Bangkok, even, I could just leave, get on a bus and go back. Make the drive out to BHSOH, pull up and smile and wave at those who had been outside already and saw my arrival. Walk over to the girl’s dormitory to drop off my overnight bag, say hello to grandpa and talk about the latest news, have my bucket shower before dinner and then prepare for study hours with Kyaw Min Tun before cuddling up with the girls to go to bed afterward.

It was all still possible. But then Aung San Suu Kyi reminded me of some things.

Great changes have been happening in Burma, but it still has a really long way to go, and so do I. Mae Sot, I’m convinced, was never supposed to be a permanent place. At the beginning, many of the people living there didn’t think it would be. They thought things would get better, and soon, and that they’d be able to return to their homes because how long could such injustices and cruelties really last?

But they did last, and they’re still going on, despite the medias portrayal of the new Burmese government. There are people dying every day in the ethnic states of Burma especially, widespread fighting still going on, rape and forced relocation happening all the time. So while everyone is hopeful that the wheels of change have indeed started to turn, it’s not over just yet. The fight for justice and the very most basic rights of humanity is still underway. Burma must continue to fight, and so must I.

No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t stay in Mae Sot forever. In the end it’s not my home because it’s not really anyone’s home, or at least not the real home of any of the Burmese people I grew to know and love there. It’s a place that grew out of necessity, and so it draws in people to service those needs, teachers, NGO workers, humanitarians… but it’s not somewhere I can make my life, at least not yet.

My six months in Mae Sot has changed me in ways I didn’t couldn’t even imagine it would. I know that I’ve come out of this experience a better and more conscious person but also one that has a new drive. I’m certain of what it is I want to do now. And while Mae Sot has helped me grow into this woman I’m becoming, I’m not there yet and I can’t stop until I get there, until the fight is won.

The next day I saw a rainbow in the clouds somewhere over the frost-tipped mountains of Japan. I thought, what would my kids think if they were able to see this right now? I pulled the Time magazine out of my bag and gave Aung San Suu Kyi a smile before settling into my seat to read.

I woke up today not knowing how I got here. It’s December 5th, I have to leave Mae Sot in less than a week and I feel short of breath, as if the calendar’s blaring number 5 punched me in the gut this morning. 

I don’t know what it is about Mae Sot — maybe it’s something in the air, or the fact that it’s so easy to lose yourself in life here, or maybe even the weather, constantly hot, that deters you from feeling the passage of time. But finally the leaves have started to fall off the trees here, too, only not from winter moving in but from baking in the hot midday sun. 

And with leaves spiraling down to the ground on both sides of the world, I have to say goodbye to one home, to one family, and reunite with another. Only now the home I left behind seems like the foreign, strange one, filled with things I think to be so trivial and superficial, now. I think about the simplicity of life, the beauty of the people and the distant mountains both, the sadness and happiness I’ve encountered here and my heart starts to break already. Leaving here, saying goodbye, will be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. 

And then as soon as I realize that, I also realize just how lucky I am that this is the biggest trial I’ve had to face in my (short) life. None of this would be so hard if it wasn’t for all of the amazing and beautiful experiences I’ve had here, the kind that have changed my perspective and my life forever. Or the wonderful students and teachers and community members I’ve gotten to know and really, truly love. It’s because of the incredible happiness that I’ve felt here that it will be so hard to say goodbye and for that, I am eternally grateful. 

And I try to tell myself that everyday. To remind myself that yes, this goodbye will hurt like nothing I’ve ever felt before, but man, am I lucky to have it and all of the things that led up to it.  

Adding Light

During the Thai lantern festival many people send up their dreams and secret wishes into the sky, using paper lanterns as messengers, or lighting candles on boats that they send out into the water, whispering their hopes into the waves instead. 

It’s a beautiful time, the full moon shining brighter, as if smiling at all the new orange constellations that are forming in the sky and water. 

When it came time to light lanterns with my kids at school I didn’t know what to wish for. For myself, well, I have everything I could ever possibly want right here in front of me. And then I thought of my students, and all of my hopes and dreams for them. All the things I wish they would believe me when I tell them, like how smart and beautiful they are. All the things I wish they had the opportunity to do in life, like go to university and become doctors and artists and teachers. I thought about how I worry about them and what their uncertain futures hold. 

And then I remembered a striking conversation I had just the day before with a teacher at school. I had just confessed to him that I would be going back home in December and seeing how visibly upset I was he asked me, “What are you worried about? What worries you?” I had to think about it for a moment because I am lucky enough to have so few worries in my own life — I am healthy, have a wonderfully supportive and loving family, I have the chance to go to university, to live and teach in this most beautiful of places. But I do worry some of the time, so I told him, I worry about my family and my friends, about their health and happiness; I worry about my students and their futures. And then he asked me, “Why?” Well, because I love them and I want the best for them. “It’s because,” he said, “you think they’re yours.” And of course my first instinct was to say, well, of course they’re mine, but I think he saw in my eyes what I wanted to blurt out and he stopped me and told me something that both broke my heart but also calmed my mind.

He went on to tell me that no, these kids aren’t mine. That as much as I love them and want the best for them that each persons life always runs on its own track. No matter how hard we try, they will go their way and I will go mine, the way it is meant to be, the way it is destined. And so there is no sense in worrying, in feeling so sad, because all one can do is be there while they can. Although my path in life might run parallel to some of my students’ and one or two might even intersect from time to time, each is our own and letting go of that ownership and responsibility is half the battle. You have to do what you can when your paths are crossed and trust that you’ve done enough, that life will treat them kindly, that they’ll know how to handle the bumps and sharp turns, that they’ll be okay.

Hearing that made the tears come on faster and stronger and sting a bit more. Letting go is never easy, after all. But that night as we lit the lanterns I didn’t wish for anything for myself or for my students. I just wished for light.

The next day a cold, foggy morning dawned on us, the light coming up from the horizon in one of the most beautiful sunrises I’d ever seen.

Burmese Days — Mandalay & Mingun

Mandalay in one word? Dusty.

It was so hot and dry in Burma heat lightning lit our way to Mandalay from Yangon. But what would await us in Mandalay was something I was not prepared for. The dust absolutely seeps into your pores. You breathe it in, and try to blink it out of your eyes to no avail, it stains your skin and hair and leaves you as dry as the Sahara.

The wide streets of Mandalay allow the dust to swirl around and give the whole place a strange colonial-meets-American-western feel. The pace is slower than in Yangon, more motorbikes, less cars, even a horse drawn buggy or two, everything looking even older… another step back in time. 

Burmese Days — Yangon

The flight was short and sweet and peaceful, a nice contrast to the hustle and bustle and general craziness of Bangkok. A slowly setting sun over beautifully still water and deltas was the view as the voice over the speaker crackled in to tell us that we were only 25 minutes away from Yangon International Airport. As we got closer and closer and sped inland towards our final destination there was such a lush landscape in view, the only thing breaking up the green being a snake of a river winding its way from the deltas we had just passed. There was nothing in sight, no houses nor farms nor roads… The time machine had worked, we had arrived in Burma.

The airport was small and the immigration lines were long, but as soon as we stepped out into the heat of the Yangon night it finally felt real. Old taxi cars were jamming into the lane in front of the exit of the airport, trying to get costumers, dust and exhaust mixed in the air as we piled into this mini-bus that would take us to our guesthouse. The crumbling streets of the city made for a bumpy ride as we raced passed cars that looked like they were going to fall apart at the very next pothole, houses that crumbled as you watched, and countless people walking along the dark streets, only really lit up by the headlights of cars. We passed Shwedagon Pagoda, so impressive in the darkness, lighting up the whole sky, immense and beautiful.

And that’s where we decided to go that first night. Drawn to it like moths to a flame we trekked out to the pagoda after we had settled ourselves in the guesthouse, (a simple room – two beds, wooden windows, a fan to blow around the hot air).

It was thrilling just to walk the streets of Yangon, to hop in our first taxi, to see how people really lived in this city that is at the very heart of Burma. Many things struck me even that first night – the state of the roads and the buildings, the amounts of beetle nut that have permanently stained the streets red and left a smell like Vicks vapor rub lingering, the amount of people that speak English, (i.e. everyone), the lights and the fireworks that stood out all the more because of the darkness that hugged the streets.

We came to Yangon at a lively time – the full moon was only days away and the celebrations had already started, fireworks going off every few minutes. The streets were still full of people, even at the late hour, and many people were still lingering around the entrance to the pagoda. There is where we met the first of many Burmese people who would approach us, eager to start conversation, to practice their English, to learn about the outside world. A young man, around our age, came up to us and started to speak, a huge smile on his face as if seeing us was the best part of his day. We made conversation as best as we could, a little bit of English, and little bit of Burmese and some body language thrown in as well. He seemed just so thrilled to practice English and invited us to come to his school, this monastery nearby, to meet his uncle who was a monk there. We agreed that we would come the next morning and parted ways, dumbfounded by the exchange that had just occurred. But it was only the beginning, a great peek into how our time in Burma would turn out.    

And that night, our very first in Yangon, ended with lighting sparklers with a family that owned a tea shop near the pagoda.