Another checkpoint. Sometimes they just wave you through, but sometimes they stop you in the middle of the night and pull everyone off the bus one at a time to check papers, bags, etc. A young soldier shines a light in your eyes and asks, “You like Myanmar?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I like it fine.”
He copies the information from your passport and visa, then tells you to wait for the other passengers. You stand amidst a group of nervous uniformed boys who cradle Chinese-made automatic rifles. When everyone’s cleared, you get back on the bus, and twenty minutes later… another checkpoint.
* * *
The worst bus in Burma was a rusty shit bucket with holes in the floor and hard seats placed so close together that I was forced to chew my knees for the entire eight hour ride from Mandalay to Shan State… Mist rolled thick and heavy in the valleys below as we chugged up a pass. Then the bus slowed and stopped: another fucking checkpoint.
Trucks lined the side of the road, their open beds filled with sacks of rice and vegetables. Soldiers in olive drabs mounted the trucks with menacing two-metre-long steel spears. The soldiers straddled the sacks and plunged their weapons deep into the cargo, piercing through produce, looking for what? Refugees? Weapons? Rebels?
A soldier came onto our bus, young and nervous like all the rest. He held his rifle in one hand while he glanced at our papers. He peeked at the crates and bags stuffed in the back of the bus, then called out the window. Another soldier boarded, this one with a spear.
Goddamn him, I thought, if he punctures my rucksack I’ll… But my anger lapsed. Better my rucksack than some poor rebel soul on a mission to topple tyranny.
The soldiers poked around then left—my bag and all the others were left intact. The bus chugged into gear and we rounded the summit.
* * *
In Maymyo we stopped and were surrounded by women with baskets of strawberries—a remnant of imperialism? In other towns, women sold rice cakes, cool bottles of Star Cola, slabs of mysterious meats, fish with sugar cane rammed down their throats…
I bought plenty, shared with the other passengers and they shared their food with me. When language allowed it, they also shared stories.
I heard about the horrors of their military government. I heard how the people suffer and bleed while their fat leaders live in mansions and drive imported cars.
“I can tell you this,” one man said, “because you are a foreigner. I know you won’t talk. But my own people? The Burmese are dying to stab each other in the back.”
* * *
Back to the bus:
“Burma,” an old man in a worn Nike golf shirt and tattered skirt-like longyi says, pointing to himself. He then points at me.
“Canada,” I say.
He looks confused.
“Canada,” I repeat. The man shrugs and goes back to his window, back to the rolling tragedy of his country.
Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Shawn Otis
