Yesterday I went to Khok Kloi with 3 FED employees and two Thai individuals from an NGO in Chiang Mai. NiNi (whose role it was to translate when needed to ease the language barrier between the other Burmese FED employees and the Thai women from Chiang Mai), Ach-Chan (probably a butchering of his name, but since it really has no english translation anyway…), and I sat in the bed of the truck as it rumbled an hour or so towards Khok Kloi. Many moved around to provide room for me to sit in the front of the truck, but I convinced them that I would truly rather sit in the bed of the truck, as opposed to cramped into its air-conditioned cab. This seemed hard for the others to believe, but by the time I had to climb into the cab on the way home they fussed about with what seemed to be fear of a supposedly earlier expressed claustrophobia on my part. No, I just like the wind in my hair and space to stretch my feet, not to mention better access to the beautiful view.
After stocking up at the 7/11 with water and gasoline Ach-Chan gestured towards me, speaking to Nini in Burmese. She giggled back, and when I looked at them with an inquiring face she translated, “you’re cute!” I laughed and responded, “so are you!” which broke the ice and allowed us to be in each other’s company with the wind roaring through our ears, subduing the pressure to have more conversation; exchanging cute smiles all around would do. However, after we dropped a health worked off at the first learning center not too far from KhuekKhak Ach-Chan moved to the empty seat in the cab, leaving Nini and I alone in the back. With only two of us there was somehow more imperative to chat, something we easily began. And so begins the story of how a little piece of my heart remains in the bed of that truck with the dizzy snail, aggressive centipede, and my memories of an earnest girl with enough passion and curiosity to take her anywhere, if (and this is a big if) she ever wants to leave.
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After she’d learned enough french to satisfy her Nini began to tell me of her family. Her mother is ill with diabetes and from what I can gather something more serious as well. Her father is either 34 or 64 (again, from what I can gather) and working on a rubber tree plantation, or at least he was in the past. I learned that Nini means Brave and Win means Life, her favorite colors are blue and green, she’s never been out of Thailand, she’s fluent in Burmese and Thai, and better at English than most people I speak with here. Talking with a wide-eyed eighteen year old like Nini inspired all sorts of poorly guided philanthropic thoughts in my (retrospectively naïve) head as I soon found it my imperative to figure out how to get this girl to the states; I wanted to share with her maple syrup and autumn leaves and lakes and snow and… my home. When she asked me what snow felt like I was overcome with more emotion than I’d felt since being here. I cannot explain the feeling because in fumbling to overcome it I lost the ability to comprehend it. It was like the weight of the world had been emptied onto my shoulders but it wasn’t something I needed to wriggle out from under either; it merely left me feeling hollow and confused. In hindsight, perhaps it was the unconscious realization that Nini would likely never get to see snow, though at the time it may more accurately have just been a personal revelation that not everyone’s childhood was like mine. However, my sadness that she had never been exposed to snowball fights or snow angels or Christmas vacation is obviously biased towards the assumption that I am from a luckier lot, a complicated assumption that is also obviously not entirely complete.
Later on I felt guilt rise to my face when I had little response to Nini’s, “when you go to Canada, what do you do there?” besides that I stayed in nice hotels and ate good food. However, my life did not strike her as more fortunate than hers, just inconceivably different. The differences between my life and her’s were so unfathomable to her that they seemed trite and amusing, rather than something to take heat about. Full awareness of her attitude didn’t hit me until I asked what she would like to do after working at FED and she responded with a big smile and shrug, “I think I would like to work at FED always!” My heart sank… maybe my rapidly developing ideas of showing her around LP and finding someone to fund college for her in the states were a bit ambitious after all. Seeing her innocent certainty and comfort with forever at FED reminded me that she is not like me. She’s not seeking the American dream. She’s completely content and more than happy to learn new languages just because. To take interest in the people around her and the things she’s doing… just because. A college degree means nothing to her, and her interest in religion (“sometimes I ask—why they so different? How they become so different?”), languages (similar musings), and other people are just… interests. For curiosity’s sake. In that curiosity I still see a child looking to be shaped into a bright and inquisitive adult in ways similar to how I was shaped, but I think her development will take a much different form than mine. Growing minds are a beautiful thing, but what is the worth of an intellectual’s mind in KhukKhak, she seems to be saying with her smiles and pleasant approach to life. I, of course, would argue that an intellectual’s mind is something worth cultivating so that someday one could see a life beyond KhukKhak, yet here again I run into the argument of whether I think something is better for someone actually means it is better for them. I don’t have an answer to this and I don’t think I ever will.
This could easily devolve into a back and forth between Alyssa the right and Alyssa the compassionate, and while that’s a conversation worth having I hope to save it for now and have it with others besides myself—both Westerners and Burmese alike. If anyone has a thought on this conundrum of outside “help” and the difference between ignorance and genuine contentment, please please share it with me. It is something that I will be thinking about a lot here, measuring my impact and that of the NGO and my fellow volunteers. I know some of my readers have had third world volunteer experience, and I hope to hear your opinions someday soon. Furthermore, it is an issue that I think everyone can relate to in their own lives as well. For instance, many women run into this dilemma in the work/family juggle. Is one seen as too complacent if she chooses to raise a family over pursuing a promising career? I think we may just settle on: it depends on the person; everyone will have different opinions on what’s best for someone, but in the end it is up to the individual to decide and then respect her decision. However, to end with one final argumentative thought—isn’t the issue of opening one’s eyes to ‘opportunities’ different than the personal choice to pursue a certain life path once one has been afforded those opportunities?
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