Myanmar, bye.

Don't know if you guys still follow the news as ardently as before when General Paper reigns supreme? But I think the news about the current political situation in Myanmar has been everywhere recently.

Anyway, my trip to Myanmar has been cancelled. Although this was somewhat expected, (after all, people are getting killed now and we all don't want a replica of the Korean hostages in Afghanistan) but I still feel a whole truckload of emotions. Today at the meeting at REACH where we announced our decision to abolish Myanmar's projects, I told the team that I'm going through a grieving process. I felt anger at the untimeliness of it all, disappointment that all the bloody work came for naught (yes, I know, I used the word "bloody"), sadness that I cannot experience Myanmar and then utter denial that such a thing ever happened. Excuse my melancholy all you people, but this was a project planned in November 2006 and to have it ripped apart at its seams just like that is not just hard to stomach. It's painful even to swallow.

To have this project abolished was bad enough. Now, the worse thing that can happen is that people are dropping out of the team. " I don't want to go to Cambodia.", "My mindset was already set for Myanmar, I cannot change it." (Our alternative arrangement now is to go back to Cambodia by the way) Sigh. Double Sigh. 2 of my closest expedition friends are pulling out and they were with me at the early stages of the project. They may have good reasons to leave the team but at the moment, I feel too abandoned to be rational about their leaving. And perhaps more people will eventually pull out. If that happens, I don't know if I have the strength to go on with this project.

People may think that this is all just for volunteerism and it's simply nothing much. But do you all know something? When you go over there and you really try all means and approaches to make the other person's life better irregardless of how insignificant your action may appear to be, the experience changes you so drastically that you're too overwhelmed at that moment to even realise how much you're grown. Cambodia was life-changing. I miss my little baby. But if I go back there again, will I see him? Will I know that it's him? Will I just come back and miss more babies whose lives have so touched my heart and live with the knowledge that again, I'll never see them again? All of these questions make going back to Cambodia seem so difficult.

I'm sorry Shuyu Chan that I cannot describe to you how I felt just now in MSN. It's just that I don't know if I even can find words to really exemplify how terrible I feel about this. And I don't think any of you really comprehend why am I even feeling this way. But I shall try and this post is for you to understand a part of me that I've never ever shared with you, Silin, Shiqi, Gupo etc even though we're the best of friends. =) Try to emphatise with me a little ok. And if you're already bored with this rambling, you can ignore me in MSN when I'm moody or otherwise in silin's words, I may resort to "verbal diarrhoea" on you guys again.

Let me tell you guys about my Cambodian baby okay. haha..Try not to sleep off shuyu!

His name is Trina. He lives in an orphange that's badly corrupted. They "recycle" babies, conning the Ang-mohs who come to adopt the babies that the babies they wanted are already being adopted when this was in fact untrue. The first time I set eyes on him, he was lying on the floor and even though he had a nanny with him, the nanny only GLANCED at him every once in a super long while. Trina was, when I first sighted him, covered in his own shit and urine. He was smelly and was attracting flies. When have you ever seen a baby surrounded by flies? The sight, I promise you, will reduce you to tears. And what really pained my heart was that he was just lying there so helplessly and no one, absolutely no one was doing anything for him at all. That was the first time in my life when I realised how dangerous apathy was.

I made a fuss by the way. I told the nanny twice about Trina and only then did she clean him. After he was cleaned, I picked him up. Realised he had a huge bulge where we, normal human beings have a flat tummy button. Astounded by the size of his, I asked the nannies there. They told me how Trina's mother due to a lack of education and healthcare, was forced to give birth by herself. When cutting the umbilical cord, Trina got infected thus resulting in such a huge bulge. That was the first time in my life when I realised the importance of equal opportunities.

One of the nannies then told me about how Trina was a cry-baby. And how he would cry non-stop all the time. But guess what. When I was carrying him, he did not cry at all but would only suck his thumb. Haha. I carried him in my arms for the rest of the afternoon. When it was time to leave, I had to put him back into the sarong. Mind you, the sarong was only a feeble piece of wire with cloth. The moment I put him back, he started howling and he refused to let go of my little finger. Everytime I think back of that moment, I remember his helpless eyes again and how such helplessness was merely echoing my own. That was the first time in my life I felt such uselessness. Eventually I left of course, and that night during debrief, everyone spoke about their own little stories. And I remembered how one youth got so emotional that she had to leave the room because she was in tears.

And now, with such experiences from Cambodia, when I see the images in Myanmar, the brutality and the violence, I'm only reminded of how foolish all of us human beings are and how, more often than not, it is always the poor, the disabled, the children, the widowed, the deprived who are left to pick up the pieces. I hope the people of Myanmar gain their liberation from such oppression soon. It's about time too.