The recent military coup in Myanmar might seem of little importance to many of us – just political trouble in a country most could not find on a map, even if they cared to look.
Not only did I find it, I spent three years living in Naypyidaw, the capital.
The Return of Democracy
Democracy returned to Myanmar on 8th November 2015 – my 39th birthday.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won with a landslide. The military kept control of key ministries.
Foreign experts, investors and aid agencies were already flooding into the country. I had arrived six months previously.
I was determined to not spend my free time in my room or in hotel bars bragging about which tax haven I banked in as did most of the NGO staff and consultants. I wanted to see what was going on around me.
Naypyidaw does not have much to offer; the only other major town in the area is Pyinmana, itself notable only as the halfway point on the crucifying 18-hour train journey between Yangon and Mandalay.
I was somewhat conspicuous as the only foreigner in that small town – more so with my cameras.
I heard their language’s equivalent of “My god! Come look what’s coming down the street!” approximately once a visit.
Same World, Different Writer
No other place has affected me as much as the community around Pyinmana’s train station.
I had always wondered if any place remained that was culturally isolated from our own. This illusion was only shattered here by a set of prehistoric parcel scales that had been made in Birmingham. Oh, and me.
The station is nothing special, a hundred metres of concrete with a rusted corrugated roof. The biggest difference to the stations you know is this one is home to a community of families. Each family and their worldly possessions fit in a cardboard box on the platform.
One Sunday afternoon, I was blundering around there, ineptly taking pictures. The residents were used to me – they knew I was not a military spy.
A lady asked if I would photograph her teenage daughter. I waited as the girl, excited beyond compare, ran off to beautify herself as best she could. Imagine never having seen your own picture.
Having no way of sharing the images digitally, I made prints and took them back to the family. The shock and gratitude on their faces! Life clearly had not and would not give them much, I hope I managed to make that poor child feel good about herself, if only for a second.
Of course, I had to take more pictures and this started a cycle as more kids arrived to be photographed. My street photographer’s anonymity was gone forever.
Sometime later, I went down to the station early one morning whilst it was still dark. The residents were all huddled together in sleep on their platform. Many waiting for trains were awake and chatting. One party even offered to share their rice with me – they had next to nothing and would have freely given half of it to a complete stranger in the early hours.
Opposing the Junta
If you have ever looked at a map of faraway places and wondered who lives there, imagine how much worse it is knowing who does and that they are once more helpless victims of a merciless criminal junta.
Prior to the coup, the community was threatened as there were plans to replace the country’s narrow gauge railways with something more modern. Whilst I suspect the station is safe from any redevelopment plans now as the international backers are likely to withdrawn from the project, the fate of the good people remains just as tenuous and uncertain.
Myanmar people are tough – I’m sure if you can raise a family out of a cardboard box, you can weather the junta. These people, like the country itself, deserve so much better.
Lee Russell Wilkes Photography 