Shwebo, Sagaing, Myanmar

It’s not an everyday occurrence that two formerly Jewish guys around 70 years old, born in New York City, who went to the same high school a few years apart and didn’t know each other, who went to the same college, overlapped a few years, and didn’t know one another, love the Museum of Natural History in NYC, are not afraid to wear longjyi and sandals walking around together for a day in Mandalay, have unmarried sons taller and far different than they are, each son with a half sister who shares their father’s paternity, an Asian girlfriend, biblical names, and each man a six foot two inch tall Buddhist with multiple cardiac stents who found the sex trade in Thailand appalling and have been traveling separately in Asia for around three months, ending up in Myanmar for different purposes, but manage to get together for a few days at the end of each man’s journey in Myanmar, to criticize monotheism and come to visit the Burmese town of Shwebo in Sagaing state, where crowds of Burmese people young and old gather to stare and smile as the men wander about, marveling at the pale aliens’ ability to walk and say “Minglaba” at the same time, as well as to say “thank you,” and “nice to meet you” in Burmese.  No not everyday.

Steve and I arrive in Shwebo on Tuesday afternoon and check into the Winn Guesthouse Hotel, more green walls, no decent lights or lamps, entire generations and lineages of old garbage and dust under the beds (well who told you to look, I say blame it on doing cobra in yoga), but with reasonably priced rooms and reasonably quiet.  Afterwards we stroll the streets, I think of it as sauntering, of a decent sized town, smaller and dustier than Monywa or POL … and absolutely devoid of any foreigners, which was the major reason why I’d picked it, other than it’s 4 hour proximity to Mandalay. 

Before long, it won’t surprise you, Mr. Ko Kyaw Minn, who says he is a retired primary grade English teacher, which may explain in part why the Burmese kids here speak such poor English and can’t sing “Old MacDonald,” Ko Kyaw’s English is that poor, that unintelligible, his ability to hear English and understand it beyond primitive, that Mr. Ko Kyaw has adopted Steve and I, kind of like how leeches adopt people.  Do we mind if he wanders around town with us, and do we want to visit his home where he lives with his mother, son, and sisters, his wife apparently having decided within the passed few months that one Ko was more than enough Ko, something I understand quite soon, although Steve is a bit more forbearing, so I’ll call him Steve’s guide, not mine, an innocent enough retired soul, looking for entertainment in a small and dusty town, and a free pastry or cup of tea if that should happen, who genuinely wants to be of service, and inevitably is, recommending restaurants, getting us directions to the Internet café, translating for us, introducing us to at least a dozen people each of whom he says is his “best” friend, and telling us each repeatedly –to me annoyingly – that he will never forget us. 

Naturally, when we tell Ko we want to visit the pottery making villages along the Irrawaddy River, about twenty miles east of us, the next day, Ko is quick to offer to find us motorcycle taxis who will charge us what he says and what sounds like a reasonable fee … and he does, showing up in the doorway of our room before 9 A.m., one of the motorcycle taxis being his son’s motorcycle, which Ko so obligingly will be driving, “if that’s okay,” which of course it is, especially if Steve is his passenger rather than me, as I find his constant ingratiating narrative just a bit too much, preferring the strong silent types in my two legged featherless guides

The immigration service … Steve’s line about tragedy or farce

The women at the pagoda building fund drive

The guesthouse owner in Kyauk Myaung

And the pottery villages are nothing less than spectacular.  I mean spectacular.  Abundant with special soils of red and yellow clay, dozens of amazingly talented potters, throwing immense pots, larger and heavier than I can lift, moved about with specially fitting harnesses, carried between the shoulders of two men, brought to wood fed kilns, that burn for close to 48 hours straight, some of the massive kilns capable of holding eighty to one hundred of the big pots as they are being fired, before they are moved on beds of straw by oxen drawn carts down to the river for shipment south and beyond.  We watch a three-foot diameter pot being thrown.  The skill of the potter who works in tandem with an assistant is otherworldly.

Back in town we revisit the graphic silkscreen t-shirt producer who does shirts as business promotions and had refused to sell  some feed company shirt but said he’d make me a shirt … and when I get back 24 hrs later he has 2 shirts for me that he gifts to me … and refuses to take any american or myanm money, but does accept it when I take the shirt off my back- shiva