Well, I am back in Thailand for our final debrief. I’ve spent the last three weeks in Myanmar, or Burma. In all honesty, I forgot to think about Myanmar as a country I was going to. I just thought, “Costa Rica, South Africa, Thailand, home.” Myanmar didn’t even make the lineup. Now, I can say it was filled with fond memories.
My team and WarP were definitely roughing it this month. We woke up to dogs barking, roosters crowing, and speakers blasting music every morning. Sometimes in the middle of the night, the dogs would get in fights or just howl, so most of us didn’t sleep well. We didn’t have mattresses in our house, so we blew up our sleeping pads and slept on those. I had a bed frame, so it was nice not being directly on the floor. We made all of our meals, so my team switched alternated between who cooked breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I was on dinner prep and cleanup for three out of the four rotations.
We started ministry at 8:30am. We worshiped with the kids we taught, then started English classes at 9am. I taught a fundamentals class with Emily and Luba. We taught four units in three weeks. We had on average fifteen students, aging from 10 to 17 years old. These kids were the greatest. They wanted to learn, so they paid attention and interacted well. I loved these kids, and I can’t say that for all of the ministries I’ve served in this year. We ended class at noon. They went home to have lunch and my team and WarP ate in our kitchen. We also taught the village kids that live near the college. They don’t have a curriculum to go off of, so most times, we taught them whatever we thought would be beneficial for them. Now, these kids come on their own. No one is making them take classes, but they come and learn English for six hours a day. There are two classes for them, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Sometimes, they’ve come on the weekends because they want to learn English so badly.
For the rest of the day, we take time to read, play games, rest, and hang out with each other. We generally eat dinner around 6pm, so that means I start at 5pm. During that time, I boil rice and cut 3-4 vegetables. We only have one burner that runs on propane. Once the rice is done boiling, I fry the vegetables in the single wok we have. We season our food with salt and soy sauce. We don’t a place to store our food per se, so we keep it separated by teams. It sits against the wall on the floor. Our portions were rather small, so a lot of us lost weight during these three weeks. Not an obscene amount, but enough that our other squad mates noticed that we looked skinnier.
After dinner, we have another worship session with the kids. It’s similar to the worship we have in the mornings, but we sing one or two more songs. After that ends, a lot of us go to bed. There were several nights where I was in bed before 9pm. We didn’t have AC, so sleeping without a blanket or a sheet was normal.
As for our hygiene, we did okay. We took bucket showers if there was enough water. That looked like standing next to the giant trough in our swimsuits and pouring water over ourselves in hopes of getting clean but not necessarily feeling clean. Our hosts did install a shower head in the stall with the Western style toilet, but it sometimes ran out of water. There was no hot water during this time. We also used squatty potties. I’m not going to give much detail to that. Let’s just say it wasn’t always fun.
Travel day: this one was not fun. We left our ministry on Saturday night. On the way to the bus station, I had to hold back tears because I had a sudden feeling of homesickness, and saying goodbye to the kids was one of the hardest. It was difficult to interact with the squad when we met up at the bus station. Travel days tend to be difficult for me because I’m in the mindset of “save your energy until you reach your destination.” I don’t talk much and I just want to get to wherever I’m going. There’s a lot of movement so it can be a lot to take in. Anyway, once we got on the bus and started moving, I got comfortable enough to fall asleep for a little bit. We left Yangon at 8:30pm. We made one stop around midnight to get off for thirty minutes. We got on thirty minutes later and resumed the drive. I fell back asleep, but then woke up around 2am due to stomach cramps. I forgot that I had diarrhea at 4:30pm the previous day, and now it was back to wreak havoc on my body. There’s no bathroom on this bus, so I had to wait until 5am to relieve myself. I had to freaking hold it in. You have no idea how difficult that is. Once we got back on the bus, I felt like I was going to throw up. That portion of the ride was only an hour and a half because we got off at the border of Myanmar and Thailand. When we did arrive to the bus station near the border, myself and three other girls frantically asked if a bathroom was nearby because we were all having diarrhea. Thankfully, there was one behind the bus station, which is just an office, mind you, but it was something. After we finished, we met up with everyone else a block away, where the logistics team organized some trucks to carry our bags closer to the border so we wouldn’t have to walk. Lillian, one of our logistics leaders and my teammate, heard I was sick so I got to ride ahead with Andrew, our other logistics head. After Andrew and I got off, I started to help him unpack the trucks and put our big packs in a big pile on the sidewalk. After one bag, he asked me to just stand with the bags so no one touched them. I’m glad he asked me to stay put because then I felt nauseous. I just thought to myself, “No, I don’t have time for this.” The wave of nausea passed, but I was worried there for a second. We finally crossed the border, which meant that we had to walk over this giant bridge that connects the two countries. I kept praying that I wouldn’t have an accident from walking so much with my big pack on my back and my day pack on my front. The walk wasn’t very long (probably half a mile), but still. After we reached Thailand, we had another 6-hour bus ride before we finally reached our hostel.
In summary, Myanmar was my favorite ministry of all time, making it one of my hardest goodbyes. I’m glad I ended the Race with fond memories of teaching English at Myanmar Mission College.
Thanks for reading!
