Life was hard and it was what I needed. During my week with the 3,000 residents (1,000 of which are patients) of this donations-run sanctuary for all, I focused on self discipline and awareness of the present. I woke at five to meditate, ate two meals a day, and meditated once more in the evenings. At night I had to accept the ants and mosquitoes that weaseled their way into my bug net. Things were getting intense—a Brazilian physician had found my Instagram which led to her finding me in person.
Alms run in Yangon.
Before ThaBarWa, never had I ever…
Washed the remaining limb of an amputee
Washed a dwarf
Changed a diaper
Had a patient relieve them self mid-diaper change
Had a patient die before I ever saw them
Had a patient who was in the process of dying
Had a patient drool on me
Had a patient cry on me
Had a patient with a massive fungal infection
Seen a dog walk around with its intestines coming out of its ass
Gotten repeatedly electrocuted by a doctor of traditional Burmese medicine
Meditated one-on-one with a Cambodian monk
Made concrete with a Sri Lankan monk
Learned to count in Vietnamese with an old man from the Mekong delta
Begged for food (alms) on the streets with a Brazilian physician
Had food poisoning together with a runner up of Top Model Denmark
Getting There
For the most up-to-date information, refer to the ThaBarWa website.
From the Sule Pagoda bus stop in downtown Yangon, locals helped me take Bus 31 to Thanlyin. After about an hour, I alighted near the Kyaik Khauk Pagoda, at the Phayarr Kone Lann Sone bus stop. Obviously these words are confusing as crap, so definitely download Maps.me and look them up. I then used Maps.me to walk to TBW, although you can also save some sweat and take the cheap motorbike taxi.
Patient washing with other international volunteers.
Food & Accommodation
At the time, volunteers ate from the alms, or food given to monks out of charity, for breakfast and lunch. There were local diners to order Burmese food for dinner at. I have heard that volunteers now receive fresh vegetables to cook their own family-style dinners—a welcome change as it was common for volunteers to get food poisoning. It is a good idea to bring healthy snacks and fruits from Yangon.
I loved the alms though. It was all I needed. Breakfast was rice, salted spicy fish, and fried peanuts with coffee or tea and a banana. Lunch was all sorts of proteins and vegetables, more on this later.
We lived in the USA Hall, a dorm with a pretentious name. We got sheets for our thin mattresses, genders were divided between separate floors. No AC, just fans. I became quite close with some of my roommates.
USA Hall- simple dorm for international volunteers.
The Medical Aspect
Before Anny arrived, there were no doctors living with all these people.
Some volunteers were nurses, nutritionists, or physical therapists back in their home countries. Still, it was clear we had little direction in properly caring for the patients. So many of the sick needed IV drips and pharmaceutical drugs, or even easier fixes such as more fiber or regular physical activity, yet we could only try to stay afloat in the vicious cycle of changing bandages on bed sores and changing diapers. We weren’t curing, only sustaining.
The obvious root of the problem was lack of money. With that said, so much of the healing process lies within how a patient is treated as a human being. Language barriers were surprisingly easy to overcome with smiles, inflection, and body language. And they loved to people coming in from around the world to lend a hand.
The patient contact experience was invaluable to me. Every day was definitely yet another precious opportunity impossible to find in America. The work was so real and raw. It further ingrained my need to seek training and become a professional.
The most classic alms donation.
Volunteer
I am a firm believer that making a difference as a traveler is near impossible, which drives me into the medical field. Most of the time, the best way to help is to give money.
So to do something for TBW, one should stay a month or two (a Myanmar meditation visa lasts 70 days).
Depending on the amount and variety of long-term volunteers, morning and afternoon projects were organized and overseen. Every evening, all volunteers were delegated into teams for these projects.
Patient care was making rounds to the handful of cases we kept up with. Mainly some light washing, changing bandages and diapers, and applying creams. Patient washing was giving full-body bathing to disabled or paralyzed residents. Alms run was joining the monks in the mornings as they walked through the streets of Yangon to help carry the heaps of donated food in plastic buckets (or cash in a metal bowl). Drain was making concrete blocks to cover up drains throughout the center, as they were collecting rain water and harboring mosquitoes and all the diseases that come along with these unwanted residents.
Everyone changed up what they participated in throughout the week and no one worked alone. It was a tough atmosphere perfect for having fun while learning about Burmese culture and Buddhism.
Afternoons in the library.
Day 34
I know a sign from God when I see one.
“Just tell your parents something is wrong with me.”
“Oh, believe me, they KNOW something is VERY wrong with you.”
But come on, $830 for a flight from Florida in July and August, on the exact day I’ll be landing in Vietnam? Purchased with this short of a notice? I wasn’t about to let it go.
Erich was beginning to see a glimmer of Vietnam in his future. Which meant he would stop shortly. Even if I did manage to convince him from 10.5 time zones away, it would take two years, and/or the price would quadruple. So yeah, he can have the flight and wrap his head around it later. I’m used to buying flights now. In fact, this was my fourth purchase this week.
*****
I couldn’t mind the entire bus laughing at me and whatever words the money collector was saying to me because I was shoving my face with fried chicken on a stick from the Indian food stalls of 28th street.
The thing about trying to catch the local buses was that the bus numbers were written in Burmese. They look like circles and ‘J’s.’ I was escorted off the bus even though we’d pulled out of the station. I was simply walked to the bus in front of us in traffic.
The thing about traveling is you just trust things to fix themselves.
Magically I was now on Bus 31, after confirming with the nicest lady who knew a drop of English and proceeded to try to pay for my fare.
I knew I was close when the stray dogs increased exponentially.
I was handed a booklet and felt almost as if I had stepped into the “Pray” pages of Eat Pray Love.
Alms run sightings.
Day 35
I carried a large metal pail as others dumped cooked fish into it. My other hand also held a pail, accepting bowl after bowl of pork.
I didn’t expect to be in back in Yangon so fast, but where else had I expect donated food for 3,000 mouths to come from?
My travel plans with E had fallen to a heap of rubble. Despite adopting the label “growth year” for his next 365 days, a mixture of fear and finances forced me to cancel the ticket I’d gifted him. I almost missed my alms run as a side effect of the stupidity of American culture.
Alms.
This beat trick-or-treating by miles. Just like the Halloween tradition, my job wasn’t easy because I wanted to eat everything. I watched the cuts of perfectly steamed fish meat swim in oils and broth, holding back my temptation.
Good thing I had breakfast, which was rice, some salted fish, and some boiled water. The sanitation of plates and utensils was, of course, highly questionable. This I decided after I finished eating and handed my dishes to the washers outside, squatting on the ground over basins.
No, I wasn’t dreaming. I really was begging through the streets of Myanmar, walking next to a long line of monks. Women were so happy to come out with a pot of steamed rice and place one scoop into each monk’s container.
Money, and everything else, went into a highly confusing sorting system by other volunteers. And when I say everything else, I mean everything. I spied samosas and energy drinks and chocolate wafers and peeled jackfruit and boxes of vermicelli.
A sorting system without rules.
I prayed I wouldn’t cut my feet or contract ringworm. Maybe the presence of Buddha would keep me free of the foot infections that so many of my travel friends have suffered from thanks to all the standing dirty water in Southeast Asia.
Day 36
“Don’t expect rainbows and unicorns.”
“You mean there’s no pots of gold waiting for us?”
I was proud and grossed out to say that I had changed my first two diapers. The second patient was lying on bits of her own feces and rice. When we were wiping her down and removing the soiled diaper, she was simultaneously relieving herself.
Of course the gratitude all over their faces makes it worth everything. My tasks are not what a physician would ever do, but every moment in ThaBarWa was an experience I needed to have. It was realistic and reflective of the rest of the world.
I was not sure how much I agree with this work though. There are five hundred patients, and it took seven volunteers over two hours to see a list of less than ten names. What made these names the lucky ones who got their wounds changed? I can’t imagine how many more cannot go to the bathroom by themselves, or were also suffering from open, infected, or even insect-infested sores. They were on their death beds, waiting to die, waiting for silver linings when someone will walk them around or take them to physical therapy. None of us volunteers actually knew what we are doing, from a clinical point of view, some of us were desensitized, and the nurses are even more desensitized. Perhaps I’m just weak and making myself feel better for only staying a week. Not enough to heal anyone, not enough to form a deep bond. But maybe I’m not wrong to move on, go back to the physicians and medical students in Yangon, and eventually get real training myself.
Again I took a moment to note how different this summer was from the last. For one, it’s summer. Mosquitoes and the heat were now a part of me.
But it’s been so rewarding. I now laugh to myself about how I once felt, like so many others, that patient care was so inaccessible.
Day 37
The ThaBarWa volunteers often get sick. Our meals are from food that must be slowly collected in cheap buckets and trucked back for over an hour. It is unknown when each family prepared the food, for all we know it could be the week’s leftovers from a restaurant.
Nourishing our bodies with alms- worked fine for me.
Alex from Austria told me he started his first alms run with a white shirt. On the way back a guy was balancing with one foot on a bucket of soup and his foot punctured the plastic cover, splashing it everywhere. He returned with a red shirt.
Jono form Argentina had been here for three months and was recovering from his fifth or sixth digestive upsetting; he had lost count. I asked him if he was mejor, and he confirmed that yes, he felt better. In trying to ask for a raw egg for him to boil later, to spare him from eating any more cold egg curry from a pail, I was sent between several staffers and even a monk before they got the message.
I chatted with him at lunch, telling him I had not been more productive that lazy Sunday beyond receiving a Thai massage from Alex.
It poured all day so I didn’t go take patients on walks. Instead, I had a date. With a 77-year-old man from the remote villages of the Mekong Delta, exactly where I am determined to go for the last hurrah of exploration on my trip.
Now I’m gonna stop writing as the sun is setting and the Cambodian monk is already halfway done with guiding another meditation session, and I had better hurry and go get shoulder-straightened and cross-legged.
Collecting gravel for the drain project.
Day 38
I am less cynical about the difference volunteers can make during my second patient care shift. First of all, Jono and I have a blast with our pots of gold. Being super short on wet wipes, competency, and Burmese vocabulary only makes a friendship run deeper.
But for real, it was a relief to watch Anny make more of a difference with one glance than a team of volunteers could make in months. If we were giving each patient more days, she was giving them more years. I could see and feel THE reason why I steadfastly want to be a physician in a world where being a nurse, ARNP, PA, PTA, CNA, are quicker, cheaper, and offer more patient contact.
Anny knew when each treatment in the supply closet should be used. And when she explained, everyone listened. With intent. Without their own input.
She pointed to the telltale border around each fungal colony on Josephine’s body to teach us. The letters MD and nothing less are necessary to be taken seriously.
Josephine was an endearing older patient being eaten alive by fungus. Until yesterday, none of us knew what it was and had been applying an anti-itch cream to it for God knows how long.
Day 39
It was both shameful and mind-boggling to me that the poorest country in Southeast Asia could make sure 3,000 people seeking refuge in this place received wholesome meals of real protein and all sorts of vegetables, while back home we are trying to cover up the obesity epidemic. We make excuses for the shit we pump into our children. For example, a slice of pizza (that is closer to a slice of plastic than anything else) is considered to be a serve of vegetables because of the tomato sauce. Our portions are obscene, racking in four-digit caloric numbers at a time.
We tried alms in a new neighborhood today. My buckets were largely empty, but we received plate after plate of dried rice with a neatly folded bill on top, much like a flower perched on a bed of soil.
Transporting to the alms run site while clutching collection pots for steamed rice.
Day 40
Ronaldo. Another case of good news inspiring my faith in humble volunteer work.
He was a man found with horrible burns, and his trust issues combined with a distinct mark going all the way around his foot were indicative that his accident wasn’t all that accidental. We think someone tortured him.
Until this week he could not stand. For a month volunteers had to peel off dead skin from new skin. And because of the degree of his injury, Anny explained that his whole body was undergoing months of catabolism, resulting in his quadriceps shrinking to the size of a man’s arm.
Now he was smiling. Being a doctor is most importantly to be full of love. Anny quickly figured out this patient didn’t need anything fancy. He was dehydrated. Remembering material from my nutrition courses, I agreed that he really just needed extra calories and tons of protein.
I rushed through the rain to buy a banana off the street corner. He inhaled this, along with over a liter of water.
“New Dhamma Lady” was dying. Until now she was doing well, in a good mood every time volunteers bathed her.
Now she had no pulse, nor consciousness. Just struggling with endless gasps of breath.
We walked away. That’s what happens in the world of poverty.
She’s in a better place now.
Day 41
Today was my final day. I struggled with a French volunteer to turn “Swollen Lady” onto her other side, only to reveal fresh bed sores. It felt like I was trapped in an endless game the devil was playing on me.
She looked fat, but it was all retained fluid. Half her body was just bones. Just. Bones. The other half she couldn’t even open her eyes or move her leg. Every visit I made to this woman I changed her diaper and cleaned her face with baby wipes and she was always, always so grateful. I needed her more than she needed me.
Anny, Cat, and I took a taxi straight to downtown Yangon. The next days were uneventful beyond Cat and I taking turns to throw up as we were the last two in our dorm to receive the bug that had gotten passed around, and Anny and I fangirl-ing over Cat’s photoshoots after I figured out she was recruited for Top Model Denmark as a highschooler.
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