Yangon Thu

You have to beg to be free

I just talked to my relative again about the pending move of all/ most Burmese government offices from the BUrmese capital Yangon to Pyinmana (a not so developed town that's by a highway, roughly 600 km north of YGN).

She has put in her letter of resignation. But like all things in Burma, that has to do with the government, trying to resign from your government job, is highly difficult.

She told me of how she begged her superiors that if she didn't stay in Yangon, there will be no one to take care of her mother, how, it is just cruel. That she has to resign, she has no choice.

They are not letting her go. Although she is sure that her superior is nice and that he will grant it.

But I remind her that her superior probably has to answer to higher ups - and if higher ups in the military say NO, she can't quit - what is my relative to do?

I wanted to tell her, I told you to quit 9 years ago but I don't, because she loved her job, the people at her work that she gets to help and she loved being efficient and she loved that at least she earned some money.

My relative told tales of how last week and this Monday, without warning, the military just carted off some offices to Pyinmana, with people, only having the clohes on their backs, and how there's no water supply in Pyinmana, so they have to go to a well or a river or something, and that the officers sent the women back, due to this.

She also told me how 1 friend who was also a Burmese government civil servent and he came to our house to ask for some money because he didn't have any money to leave his two young daughters, who happen to be motherless.

I listened i horrified silence as she told me all this.

She began crying again as she asked me to pray for her and her mom.

I tell her that I pray. I pray all the time, I pray for everyone because praying is all I can do.

She cries harder.

I hear my heart break as I listen to her cry and I try to say soothing things.

I was forever missing my family since I left Burma.

And then I was trying to bring them all abroad so they can have what I have.
But sometimes I forget that I'm still young and that it's hard and that it takes time...

and that you have to give up somethings, so you can have others.... this applies to everyone.. just that for some of us, it means you have to leave your family, and if you are lucky, the leaving is only temporary.

Posted by Yangon Thu at November 10, 2005 08:04 AM