Fieldwork in Myanmar

YANGON & SOUTHERN SHAN STATE, MYANMAR

In March of 2017, I had the good fortune to travel to Myanmar as part of a capstone project for my Master's degree. It is only after said Master's degree is now complete that I find the time to finally write about the trip and sift through photos. 

The morning we landed in Yangon was cool but sticky, the air lightly scented with jasmine and bougainvillea. Feeling woozy from back-to-back night flights without much day in between, I winced at the bright morning sun and fished out my sunglasses while I waited for our driver to appear. Tall, lanky, and slightly hunched, Tan Saw appeared wearing a faded t-shirt and plastic sandals, and a green plaid longyi (the traditional wrap worn by both women and men in Myanmar). He had an enormous smile and impeccable though accented English and I didn’t protest when he slid the backpack from my shoulders. From the back seat of the air-conditioned and heavily jasmine-scented sedan, I watched the city slowly waking up. Most of the colorful wooden shops were still shuttered from the night before, but a handful of shopkeepers were out sweeping the sidewalks with the short-handled straw brooms. A few women in brightly-colored longyis waited at bus stops. My travel companion commented on the unexpected greenness of the city, huge trees lining the streets and reaching up over the rooftops, sprouting in courtyards and alleys. The streets seemed comparatively quiet and orderly for Southeast Asia which we attributed to the city-wide ban on motorbikes.

By the time we reached our hotel, the air was noticeably warmer, the mercury rising with every passing minute. We checked into the hotel, but fearful that travel exhaustion and jet lag would turn a nap into an all-day affair, I set off with two companions in search of food. Around the corner, flower stalls spilled into the streets, and a nearby noodle stand was crowded with families. We found an empty table and settled in on the green plastic stools. An overly optimistic young waitress greeted us in Burmese fully expecting that we’d understand at least the essence of what she said. We smiled and greeted her in English, and she called for reinforcements. Two more women came over, their cheeks shimmering slightly in the bright morning sun thanks to the circles of Thanakha, a type of bark pounded into a fine powder and used as both a moisturizer and sunscreen. One produced a menu with the swirling characters of Burmese lettering but a few tiny faded pictures. After some pointing and nodding and awkward laughter, three bowls of noodles arrived, sprinkled with peanuts, lemongrass, chiles, and a dollop of a clear gelatinous substance whose origins were best left unknown. A young girl came over and poured steaming golden tea from a plastic thermos into tiny porcelain tea cups. While I sat slurping noodles, watching street dogs sniff around the gutters for any morsel of sustenance, I thought how happy I was to be back in Southeast Asia.

That bowl of noodles was but the first of many such breakfasts over the coming weeks, as I traveled around the southern part of Shan State. We were there as part of a capstone project, to conduct field research on social inclusion in the Value Chains for Rural Development (VC-RD) project funded by USAID/Burma and implemented by Winrock International. We had the privilege of visiting tiny farming villages that most foreigners have little access to, and in each, farmers and their families invited us into their homes, poured bottomless cups of tea and graciously answered our questions about their livelihoods, their successes and challenges. In one village, young women bubbled over with optimism, having learned business skills from the project that they hoped would lead to bold new career opportunities and the possibility of a financially secure future for their family. In another valley, as the shadows grew long with the sinking sun, women hoed at hard clumps of soil between rows of bright green soybean plants. They spoke honestly of their frustrations around farming soy, and of feeling trapped, and I felt pangs of guilt that at the end of our conversation I would get up and leave, and ultimately return home where the possibilities for my future felt wide open.

We spent our days furiously scribbling notes on every conversation and every observation, interviewing dozens of farmers and leaders, and conducting focus groups with a hundred others. Between villages, as we bounced over dirt roads, we talked about the recent political changes in both Myanmar and the U.S., and about nationalism and ethnic tensions in our respective countries. We talked about our education and our travels, our childhoods and our future aspirations. Every night we landed in a new place, collapsing in bed after a curry dinner. The fieldwork added an intensity to the trip, the compulsion to not only observe the intricacies and eccentricities of this foreign place, but also to burn the images and conversations into my memory and my dog-eared notebook. While perhaps an exhausting way to travel, it was also one of the richer travel experiences I’ve had thanks to the constant companionship of a local staff member who tirelessly answered our endless questions about not only the project and agriculture in general, but also culture and history and food and politics and religion.