Portraits of Myanmar
Troubled, Isolated and breathtaking - writer and photographer Chris van Ryn journeys to remote Myanmar climbing deep into the mountains. Written prior to the military coup.
First published Life and Leisure Magazine
Despite turmoil in parts of Myanmar, a voyage to its unseen corners is more than rewarding and always feels safe. Meet a woman in central Myanmar who dyes fabric made from lotus stems, a shaman in the highlands near China who practices animism, and a woman from a quintessential village by the Andaman Sea, living in a lost world.
Purple Hands
In a house built on the placid waters of Inle Lake, central Myanmar, a woman squats in a corridor near a cauldron. She tucks her skirt between her knees and dips her hands into a swirling pool of purple. Nearby, another cauldron sits on glowing embers, the steam drifting lazily into the wood paneled room, with its creaking floorboards, and leaks out the window, which looks onto a maze of houses built on water, propped on rickety posts, like old men’s legs, reaching down into the wet. It's amazing they're still upright. Some of them aren't.
The woman’s brow glistens and a lick of crow-black hair hangs over one eye, a droopy eye. Her eyes are dark and she has a mournful mouth. She fishes out a bundle of fabric and begins wringing out purple excess. It runs down her forearms like a bleeding wound, dripping from her elbows.
In another room, near a spinning wheel, a woman slices lotus flower stems with a surgeon’s skill, and, with practised dexterity, draws them apart, exposing a silky web of thread that will be collected, spun, dyed, then woven. A pile of pale-pink flower heads with their spreading fans of petals, this Buddhist symbol of a purified spirit, lies discarded. 7,000 severed stems produce enough “silk” for a single scarf, to be elegantly draped around a tourist’s shoulders. And perhaps - so it’s said - the wearer will be imbued with a meditative calm.
Nearby I hear a rhythmic clacking. I enter a room with half a dozen weaving machines. Through a filter of coloured threads, I see faces lined with concentration, eyes darting left to right, and hands that move swiftly across hundreds of silky coloured threads - some purple - and feet that pump out a clack-te-clack-te-clack percussion.
Back in the corridor, the woman with purple hands faces her cauldron, her back to Inle Lake, just a few footsteps away. Fishermen in the distance perform stunning one-legged acrobatics while casting their nets off the back of their long wooden canoes. The sun reflects off the water, casting her in silhouette. She studies her hands, then glances at me, with doleful, liquid eyes. And in a poignant moment, she lifts her arms, spreads her fingers and thrusts towards me her permanently purple hands.
The Shaman
Aik Yee bites the end off a cheroot and lights up, sending plumes of smoke and herbal scents into the dimness of the hut. Soft afternoon light creeps through an open door, bringing with it the spirits of the village, mountain and jungle, and throwing a beam onto a small mottled leopard pelt and shrivelled lizard skin pinned to the wall.
A shaman from the Akha tribe, Aik Yee is an animist. He manages the ebb and flow of the spirit world. He lives in a village which has wound itself around a mountain top. Once a year, he erects a sacred gate at the village entry, complete with monkey (or other) skull, to demarcate between the living and dead spirits.
The hut is rustic and humble. The floor is compacted earth, the vertical planks are a weathered silver, the roof thatched. At one end is the bed, covered with a mosquito net, at the other, fire casts a smoky scent. Above the fire hang cobs of corn, cheery yellow in an otherwise sepia palate. Aik Yee reaches into a pot, placing a handful of dried wasps on the table, along with some freshly harvested larvae that mature in buffalo poo. He looks at me expectantly. I shake my head.
The Akha people were nomadic, travelling across borders, over mountains and through jungles. They are still nomads - of a different kind. They travel between animism, Buddhism and Christianity, between hunter gatherers and agriculturalists and capitalism, never quite settling anywhere.
The shaman smiles continuously. Whether this is from dealing with spirits or home brewed sake is unclear. Many village men have drifted into alcoholism. Because of scant options, others embrace the cash crop opium, which grows around the mountain and finds markets in China.
Exiting through the doorway, I pass three hanging crows’ heads, their eyes plucked out for medicinal purposes, their beaks prized open with little bamboo splints, from which their spirits escape. On the deck sits an old Akha woman with a proud gaze. She wears a magnificent headdress, covered in silver balls and coins, signifying her ancestry, as if clinging to a disappearing world.
The village is quiet. I pass an Anglican church, with steeple, white weatherboards and red corrugated roof. Coming towards me is a young man with a musket slung over his shoulder, and a woman with tar black teeth, in traditional black dress, carrying a chicken by its legs. Just before leaving the village, I pass the Baptist church with its blue roof.
Entering the jungle, I toil up a slope. The heavy air vibrates. A throbbing chorus of crickets pulsates in my ears, in unison with my beating heart. A sure sign, I am told, that rain is close by. As I move on, the sound loses itself in the dense trees.
From out of nowhere, a dragonfly appears, hovers, darts around dementedly, then alights on a leaf in the sun, its thorax a splendid gold, its wings finely veined crystal.
Now the air carries the gentle peal of buffalo bells. Breathing heavily, watching the insect’s acrobatics in mid-air, standing in a jungle that churns with life, I'm overwhelmed with a sense of wellbeing, a feeling of connectedness to the dragonfly, the flitting butterflies, the buzzing crickets, the towering trees, the Akha tribespeople, the thunderous monsoon rains, the expanding universe. Perhaps it is the spirit of all things, enfolding me in a warm embrace.
The Lost World
Nearby sits an old woman with a remarkable face. Her skin has a jaundiced patina and follows her cheekbones and toothless gums - and the fabric of her life. Her eyes have gone on a long journey and can't find their way back.
I’ve stopped for coffee somewhere between Dawei and Myeik, at a typical streetside cafe with a wide open frontage and interior that looks like a kindy classroom, with low tables and little red and blue plastic kiddie chairs. Sitting, my knees reach my chest.
The village is vibrant: chickens pecking, dogs sniffing about, or slumbering with gently undulating abdomens, pigs rooting in the dirt, and half-naked, squealing children playing chase. There's a motorbike, on its side. An urn sits on glowing embers, from which a pipe percolates clear dewdrops of rice sake. Teenagers pass laughter and a small rattan ball to each other, using only their feet.
I raise my eyebrows - and my camera: “Photo?”
The old woman looks past me, silent.
I think: she doesn't understand.
Nearby is her son. He smiles and taps his temple, then twirls his finger in the air.
I look at his mother - and Alzheimer's looks back.
She's lived her life in this village, toiled in nearby fields, dried little silver fish on bamboo racks, fetched water from the well, outlived her home-brewed-sake-drinking husband, placed incense and wilting flowers in little Buddha shrines, and now waits, surrounded by children and grandchildren and village life, familiar, yet fading. Dementia has randomly snipped frames from the film roll of her life. A cigarette is adhered to her lips, as if it is a lifeline to another world. A lost world. She is wilting like the flowers in the Buddha shrine.
I touch her bony shoulder but she's already facing the other way and doesn't turn back.
If the shadow of Alzheimer’s darkens my door, where would I rather be: in a coastal village with the scent of wet earth and glowing embers and dried fish and a sip of sake, or a rest home with the smell of antiseptic, excellent medical care, absent of family, and nothing but lingering loneliness?
I am about to leave, when a nearby toddler wobbles, then plumps down - plop - on his bottom, wide-eyed, tiny hands splayed. Then I see the old lady’s face. Her eyes flicker. Her lips unfold like lotus petals. She smiles.
Coastal village, I think.
End