The Hermit Kingdom

 

12-242   Burma, 1972    the ancient city of Bagan   part of an archival project, featuring the photographs of nick dewolf

 

Burma, now called Myanmar, is a country that has been for so long isolated by deliberate decree of its ruling military, which has just the last few years relaxed rule to a civil authority, that it has never developed its resources.  It is an impoverished country with a proud heritage and tradition.  The majority religion is Buddhist.  Popularly, Buddhism is considered a religion of peace and goodwill and respect for others.

The country is comprised, though of many ethnic and religious groups.  Among them Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims.  In the diversity of language, religion and ethnic groups Burma has much in common with other eastern countries like India and China.  And that mixture of traditions and heritage often brings with it historic grudges and suspicion, along with persecution and violence.

That's the unsavoury side of things, along with the fact of the iron-fisted rule of Myanmar's generals, myopic and xenophobic in their outlook on the world outside their own.  They had in fact, much in common with North Korea, another dysfunctional, aggressive society where human rights abuses run rampant and people live miserable, impoverished lives, threatened by privation.

But Myanmar/Burma is turning itself inside out, along with the release of its most famous civil rights campaigner, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest.  And the country whose 50,000 towns and villages are not yet connected to the country's primitive national power grid, is set to change.  Burma is a tropical paradise as far as Nature is concerned.

It is an emerald world, though not a very large one; its size analagous to one of Canada's prairie provinces.  It has a plenitude of water, not yet harnessed for hydroelectric power.  And its ancient rainforest has not yet been ravaged for lumber, with forests of teak and other unique exotic wood.  Its natural resources include oil and gas.  Along with precious gemstones like jade, ruby and sapphire.  And it has ample copper and gold.

The world is eager to enter Burma, to help it exploit its natural resources.  China was there first, and has been there when no one else has been, so it could be said China has the inside track on development and exploitation.  Labour is elemental in the country, with women carryhing loads of crushed stones on their heads in roadwork.  Labourers work from 7 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon, earning on average $3 daily.

In Burma, among its 64-million people, and its traditions and falling-apart imperial buildings, grand natural settings of palm groves and teak forests, monasteries and pagodas, the exotic East can still be seen as it was elsewhere less than a hundred years ago.  The Burmese wear their traditional cloth-wrapped garb, not Western clothing as it seen elsewhere in the developed East.  The pace of life is peaceful.  All that is set to change.

Korea, Japan and India are lined up, waiting to be able to extract resources and help Burma enter a new century, a new industrial age.  And right behind them are the countries of the West, including Canada which has recently sent a high-level government-and-trade delegation to the country.  And, sadly, it won't take too long before the natural beauty of the country slowly evolves, the forests cut back, the land mined for its riches.

The Burmese will slowly live better lives, will possess more material goods, have better access to health services and education for their children as they passage into the future leaving their storied past behind.