Lost on the Innocent

The longboat dropped Eli and I off on the far reaches of Ngapali Beach. Neither of us fancied spending another minute bouncing along the Bay of Bengal in a primitive water craft. We were feeling rotten, our dizziness was punctuated only by our asses' rhythmic slamming into the hard wooden seats.

I never used to get sea sick before having kids. I'm not even sure it was sea sickness making us miserable. I was six days into my "Burmese diet," whereby all food was about as tantalizing as the dung chip I accidently ate. (The chunk of poop was disguised in my bag of pumpkin seeds. Pumpkin seeds are roasted over ox patties, imbuing them with an assy-grassy patina.) Eli was four days into the *diet* and just came off another round of Toilet Olympics and fever. We thought the sun and surf might wisk good health and appetites back into our bodies. We thought wrong.

Sickness, however, rarely stops us from adventuring. Our traveling partners, the Griffiths, called us the "Happy Barfers" after witnessing several rounds of Sheppard Boot and Rally Power. Today our malaise landed us in a itinerant fishermen's village, a long, hot walk/crawl from our hotel.


As soon as our toes touched the sand, a mob of children from the village surrounded us, staring and shrieking and giggling. I had to adjust my slipping longyi.(Longyi: a long, wrapped skirt worn by both men and women. They are cool, comfortable and good at protecting legs from mosquitos.) I untied it and the colorful woven fabric billowed in the breeze like a sail, exposing my bare legs, which sent the kids into peels of laughter. The funny white lady was now the half-naked funny white lady. At first I'm thinking, "huh? Why ya'all laughing? I'm in a swimsuit and we are on a beach. Big deal. What else are you supposed to wear on a beach?" Just then I realized I had never seen a Burmese woman swimming, much less in a bathing suit. I started laughing, imagining the fireside conversation that would ensue.


When their laughter subsided and I cinched my longyi back into place something sad happened. All the children began cupping their hands to their mouths, the universal sign asking us for food. I didn't have food, save a bag of leftover poopy pumpkin seeds that I was happy to unload. I didn't have money one me, not that I make it a habit to give out money. Dammit, I didn't even have pencils or pens I could offer up. If parents can't afford pencils or paper, their kids can't attend school, so I try to keep a stash handy for such encounters.




I'm not new to witnessing this kind of poverty. I've lived in South American and Mexico. I've seen kids glue huffing to keep their hunger at bay, blood pouring from their nostrils as the chemicals slowly and painfully destroy brain tissue. I've seen shanty towns larger than most American cities. Images of abject poverty often haunt my dreams. Confusion, guilt and helplessness at times overwhelm me even though I know these feelings don't change jack and put me in that paralyzing dark place.

Eli, on the other hand, is a novice to poverty. Sure, we've talked about it. He's seen a few pictures in National Geographic magazine. I don't want my kids growing up entitled brats. God no.
Eli has never experienced poverty like he did in this village in Myanmar. He's never seen children ask strangers for food. These kids wore rags, they were dirty, snotty and had oozing eyes. They had that look of mal-nourishment. They were the children of migrant fisherman whose parents earned less than the $3 per day per capita national average. I spend more that $3 every minute. (Add your rent or your mortgage into the equation and so do you.) There was no school in the village, no doctors, no utilities. When the catch is bad, there is nothing to eat. The boatmen told me the catch has been very bad.

I want to make it clear that Burmese poverty is not the abject poverty I've seen elsewhere. The people mostly look very happy, not desperate. I didn't see that God-When-Is-This-Suffering-Going-to-End look. But poverty is poverty and Eli inquired why the kids kept asking us for food. We talked at length about the lives of the children in a village like this one. He listened intently and added his own insight. Sometimes I think I am talking with a 45-year old man and forget he is only 7.

We continued walking along the beach in silence, me pondering what I could possibly do to improve the lives of these children, Eli scanning the shore for flotsam. We saw dead fish, flip flops, shell and coral fragments, tattered flags, anchors, plastic bags, glass, bottlecaps, even a giant horseshoe crab. Eli stopped to examine and appreciate every shore treasure, no matter how banal. The mile and a half walk would take us hours. It always does. Eli then piped up and said the unexpected, something that totally shocked me: "Mom I would love to live in this village. Every morning I could wake up and see what the ocean brings me."

I was struck by utter innocence of my son. After talking about the hardships of life in the village, he still wants to live with with the will and whims of the tide. God bless him.