The life in Myanmar

The life in Myanmar

Before giving you a speech, there is something I want to show you. It’s a picture on my background screen of notebook. It was taken exactly one year ago from now when I lived in Myanmar. Can you feel the clam, peaceful, and happiness from picture or guess how happy he was at that time? The reason why I keep asking you these questions is I was very happy at that time.

 

 

- Why heading to Myanmar

Today, I will tell you a story, my personal story on what I have felt & experienced at Myanmar in Southeast Asia. Actually, I had hated Korea. To say more specifically, Living in twenty-something called youth in Korea did not make me happy.

It’s more likely a stress for me. I can’t make sure where this thought came from, but this thought that sometimes confused with disappointment and skepticism kept growing on in my mind since I entered university. College life in city of Seoul was not that much thrilling, exciting as the Alice jumped down into rabbit hole. You know the story of Alice in Wonderland and the beginning part of story where Alice falls into rabbit hole.

 

 

Just at the first course, couples of times of membership training activities and following drink parties were all of university student specialty. Not more than that. The rest of things were in the extension of high school student’s routine life.

Every day I wake up to go to the college for getting a high score and back to my home for preparing lots of assignments & tests. And this dreadful repetition with same stuffs was repeated day after day. The university life was nothing more or nothing less than a treadmill of high school student life. So I was always dreaming of flying to somewhere else & escaping to anywhere except here, Korea.

 

 - What I realized at interview 

During interview, some conversation for a while, the interviewer who held a flight ticket to Myanmar asked me the last question.

“Other applicants have prepared lots of stuffs and enough qualified with various careers regarding with this volunteering activity, but you are not. So why do we have to choose you as one of our international volunteer members?

Right after the question, I could not say anything. All the words he said was right tragically. I was not the one who had needed skills and previous experiences. Even my major and career have no relevant with volunteer service at all. Time had passed by without a single word between me and him, awkwardly. Then, after a few second, I told him my sincerity instead of a pretentious word prepared the day before.

“I really need this opportunity. If the knowledge which I have seen so far is all of youth life, only the repetition of daily routine existed, I’m going to disappoint seriously. I want to see what young generations are doing in other country and still believe there are some of other life and something special that only youth can try to challenge.”

I know it is not a good way to expose my opinion frankly in a face-to-face interview. But I don’t have a choice that time.

 

 

- Unusual experience

Have you ever imagined a life without cellphone, computer, policeman, of course, including firefighter, restaurant, power line to support electricity, and gas stove? There is a village without kinds of infrastructure what I am saying before in Myanmar. It was an uphill isolated tribe village which is very far from downtown. I’ve been there with our volunteer members for living.

Can you guess what the first thing we need to do after getting wake up in morning? Burn a wood fire. That was the mission we have to do every morning for surviving. Two men have to chop a bundle of firewood and two women have to blow wind by their mouth & fan to put a spark on fire sticks. Grey color smoke always filled up our house due to the poor skill of ours and every villager dropped by and laughed at us when they were on their way to farm for morning work.

We went there to give them an educational opportunity in language of Korean & English, however, from the viewpoint of them, we were the one who really needed to learn how to fire, cook and survive in the mountain village.

 

During the two weeks of isolated,far-remote rural village, I can truly say like this that I felt the highest amount of happiness in my life. From there, I started to play the guitar, write a diary, get to know the feeling of pleasure making friends again that I had forgotten unconsciously, and being a generous person who let the time just goes & flow on, I mean stay lazy. I can assure that I did nothing but drinking a beer day & night, staring a clear sky, magnificent mountains, and enjoy the natural favor of fruit like oranges & mangoes. Fortunately, it was the harvest season when I was there.

 

After a short trip, the interviewer who selected me as a Myanmar team member asked me. “Are you satisfying with your 5-months live there? Have you seen some other type of life you have imagined?” And I answered. “Yes, this experience will remain in my heart forever for the rest of my life. And I, of course, have seen numerous & various style of live not existed in this country, so very satisfied.” Then he replied. “Well done, not bad”