Crowds Harassed and Helpless...But Nevertheless Persistent

We arrived in Bagan around 8am. Our first stop was to the only Christian church for worship. Apparently 2 weeks of not having an English worship service makes me bawl during communion. Perhaps I was simply that hungry for a word of life. I really didn’t think I would be feasting on Jesus here between Buddhism and Baptists. With little good preaching and no bible to read, I savor the moments that do come. Perhaps this is a tiny taste of what it’s like to be a persecuted Christian or a frontier people trying to keep faith, hope and focus on Jesus. It was all a very strange occurrence for sure.

In the afternoon we visited the Shwe gugyi and the Dhamayan gyi temples ending the afternoon with a boat ride on the Ayarwady River. On the boat I tasted some tamarind sugar wafers and toffee/brittle bars with nuts in them. Nothing like a sugar rush to keep you going.

Every site we stopped at greeted us with a crowd of locals flocking around us to sell souvenirs. After a few stops all I could think about was Jesus being harassed by the helpless crowds of people who follow him during his alone time bringing him to have compassion on them. I, however, had little to no compassion for these people. They pressed in on us as soon as the bus door opened and we set foot on the ground. Some of the more talented and experienced sales people made the effort to talk with us and share some of their stories before asking us to support them and their family. This is how I met Mu Mu.

Mu Mu is 35 and has 5 kids. When she asked how old I was (27), she responded that she had 3 kids by my age. Her nearby sales mates chuckled at this fact. Mu Mu lives near Bagan and speaks excellent English which she learned from the tourists over the years. She worked from 7:30am to 7:30pm. As we made our way toward the bus, she asked me to stop at her shop to purchase something in support of her and her baby. I was strongly considering getting a small lacquer bowl or a bracelet (as this was something on my purchasing list), but had left my money on the bus. When I told her that I was not going to buy anything a wave of sadness washed over her face. She offered to wait while I retrieved my money from the bus. Though I felt bad for not supporting her, I also didn’t want to encourage her to continue business near the temple sites. Being tired, wiped out from the heat and severely irritated by the relentlessness of the saleswomen, I had little patience for the repeated drain of “You are very beautiful. You buy a __(insert souvenir of choice)__ from me? Pretty lady! Good deal for you! Lucky money. You like? Just looking okay. You like necklace? You want bowl?”

Is The New Really New, Or Just The Old Again?

All of Thursday was devoted to travel. Our first stop was at a church close to an hour outside of town to greet a Baptist pastor. [Later in the day he would serve as a contact for us.] We wound our way through Syriyam to the Pagoda in the River. Originally built on an island in the middle of the river, this pagoda was quite large with about 8 separate buildings. We started by feeding popcorn to the rubber/butter fish which look like very ugly catfish. We wandered around the pagoda noting the painted panels of a king's dream imagined ~600 years ago. Depictions showed the moral depravity and decline of the population where everything was opposite how it should be--the frog was eating the snake, people cheated instead of helping each other, ponds were deep at the edges and shallow in the middle. Some of the local people who occasionally join us on our travel outings mentioned that it was interesting how this dream happened so long ago and now it was coming true. Seriously....when have humans ever shared peacefully and not cheated one another?? I did find my day of birth corner which is where I would sit and pray if I was a Buddhist.

From here we traveled to see ancient ruins of a Portuguese church from 1749. This was not overly exciting as it was high weeds around the ruins and a crumbling brick structure. The highlight was the tomb of an Armenian buried inside the ruins. This is where we met up with the local Baptist pastor who helped us gain access to the location since it is guarded.