Mandalay was not at all the city I was
expecting. It is chaotic and mostly under construction, maintenance or repair. The
streets teem with activity and everybody lives under everyone’s scrutiny. It is
not without charm however. There were some incredible back alleys full of
bustling life and frantic trading, groaning markets, and an astounding number
of traditional craft workshops still providing employment and a decent living,
it would seem. In addition there are some very ritzy modern shopping malls. Chinese
investment is responsible and rampant in the city and many locals see it as
exploitive from what we could gauge from our conversations with them. It made
me think about how foreign investors had flocked to China when it first opened
up. Who taught whom this modus operandi?
We stumbled into a home workshop that hand
pounds bamboo to produce paper in a process that looks positively ancient, as
did the stones, hammers and blocks on which it was done. All this activity took
place in a tiny portion at the front of the family home- not more than 1 meter
by 2 meters and facing directly onto a residential alley. Just around the
corner, following Lonely Planet directions, we found a gold leaf workshop and
saw just how that paper was put to use using identical equipment. We were also
taken to woodcarving, marionette making and silk weaving “factories” where
technology hasn’t yet had any impact and long hours of tedious labour go into
each individually crafted item.
But by far the most inspirational day was
the one we spent was visiting 2 monastic schools with an employee of the Studer
Trust. http://www.studertrust.org
We are harboring hopes that we will have
the opportunity to go back and work with this organization once they have their
teacher training program up and running and it was with these thoughts in mind
that we wanted to see first hand the work that they do in Myanmar.
Aung Myay Oo Monastic High School was the
first of the schools we visited. It is in Sagaing, which is a pretty little
stupa studded hilltop overlooking the Aryarwady River just 18 kilometers from
Mandalay. A kindly, humble English-speaking Abbot, who hasn’t the heart to turn
children away when their parents bring them to him from the distant northern
regions, runs that school. This means the school is totally overcrowded despite
the proliferation of new buildings, which have been added since its inception.
The children often do not speak the
national language on arrival but they do thrive on the love and attention
lavished on them. I was delighted to be told that they are free to choose if
they want to be novices or lay scholars and that later that decision can be
reversed if they so choose. The vast majority of them selects a religious life
and lives in nearby nunneries or monasteries, with only a few living on site or
with neighboring families.
This school began with just 30 students, 3
monks and 3 teachers and has grown to about 1,700 students. The trust has
provided classroom buildings, toilets, computers and some money for extra
tuition for summer school classes but the Abbot himself has to find the funds
to pay the salaries of the 39 volunteer teachers and we were told that they
receive about $35 a month!
Classroom buildings surround the dusty
little yard and the precious little space that remains for play is severely
limited but they are doing their best to green it even with a limited water
supply. Once again our representative of the trust tried to emphasize to the
Abbot that enrollment had to be contained but it was obvious that he would
continue to do what he thought was best.
The 4 year-old kindergarten students, mostly
dressed in their religious robes immediately stole our hearts. The gentle
nature and commitment of the monks, nuns and novices as well as the teachers
was immediately apparent. Students at all levels were diligent, respectful and
so happy. Laughter and shy giggles greeted us in each of the classes we stepped
into and the walls reverberated with the loud chorusing of rote learning. Even
with 104 students at the class XI standard there were no discipline issues or
behavior problems. They were eager to interact with us even though most of
their English classes focus on reading and writing. Everyone seemed bent on making
the most of the educational opportunity available to them.
Before we left a huge bundle of notes was
handed over to the local carpenter and it was explained that he would begin the
process of acquiring more raw materials for the next building project with
these funds. He heads a team of workers who construct for the trust at
different locations and for a basic fee. Employing local workers, sourcing
local materials and using simple construction is the way they have kept costs
to a minimum and been able to provide more for less in this organization. We
were mightily impressed.
After a lunch break in which we
disappointed our representative by having already visited all the local sights
in the area a few days earlier, we took off for the second school in the south
of Mandalay thinking that we had already seen the showcase school, only to
discover that it too was a totally different but equally amazing school.
The Ta Tine Shae Monastic Middle School is
also led by a beneficent Abbot, who obviously derives great pleasure from the
work he does. He also shows an unexpected enterprising spirit in that he is
able to fund the salaries required to keep his school running by growing
vegetables and flowers in a plot of land behind the school. Local people assist
with the transportation and marketing and are so impressed with his good work
that they have donated the land for his use and raised the funds to build new
buildings based on those provided by Studer Trust.
This school also has an enchanting school
population of village children. Here most of the students live with their own
families, who work the surrounding fields and by far the majority of them are
not novices. The school has a green, tree filled courtyard with an ancient
building set in the middle. Neither the current Abbot or any of his
predecessors know the exact age of the building but it is decrepit and
returning to nature. Our brief meeting inside it had us wondering just when the
floorboards of the upper storey were going to deliver us all to the concrete
floor below. Thankfully not when we were there, but we were told that only the
younger (lighter) children were able to assemble on the upper floor. Open-air
classrooms, which are perfectly able to provide natural light and ventilation,
surround the courtyard. This is a definite advantage in a village not yet
connected to the electricity grid though we did see those poles marching their
way toward the village on our drive in.
The teachers with the exception of the
Abbot and his right hand man were all young and enthusiastic. Those 2 masters
struggled on with the kindergarten and grade 1 classes numbering around 50 students
in each and we saw students as young as 5 years old, willingly teaching their
peers, while the Abbot himself proudly lead us around his domain. The total
school population is only just over 400 and that adds to the small community
feel about it.
We were told many of the young teachers were
past graduates of the school and therefore perfect role models for the
children. This innovative Abbot had halved class sizes for the higher levels and
introduced partitions to the classrooms provided, to improve the learning
environment. None-the-less the noise level in the courtyard was incredible, as
loud voices shouted in unison from every room. These buildings have no walls
and are very basic but highly functional. Even those as yet incomplete were
full to bursting with eager pupils, who were allowed the privilege of keeping
their sandals on indoors since there was no concrete floor as yet.
We had thought that nothing could top our
experience of learning Burmese style in Sagaing but here we were proved wrong
and this was perhaps an even more positive learning environment albeit with
limited resources and funds. The courtyard full of mango trees heavily laden
with fruit and the benches around the base of each tree for students to eat
their lunch made me think that these students were fortunate to live where and
when they did. It made sense when we were told that this school was the
favourite of the founder of the foundation who tragically died in a car
accident earlier this year.
I should also say that neither school knew
we were coming for a visit and what we saw was a regular school day and that
was very heartwarming and inspiring. Our very committed and informative guide
for the day Tai Lynn also endeavored to answer every question we posed, provide
as much detail as possible about the trust and assure us of the total integrity
of the organization. It was so totally obvious that accountability and
transparency are core values and he was exceedingly dedicated to the cause and the part he
actually plays in it.
