Burma: reality is elsewhere

The office where two surly customs officers sit is covered with cobwebs and mold. A portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi stands on the wall, flanked by an advertisement bearing the coordinates to meet the mythical giraffe women of the Padaung ethnic group. The streets are clogged with young monks and men dressed in Longy. At the last second I buy a ticket for Kyain Tong, laboriously taking space on board a bus packed with packages and tricycles, laying down on a huge sack of potatoes; alongside, a monk in his thirties loses his gaze in the female lineup suggested by Tinder. Half bus leans towards the last seats, craning his neck to peer at the stranger’s movements. They murmur words, I only catch the term Farang, an additive that sticks to him without any respite. They inform by gestures that the path to Taunggyi is blocked: various unrecognized military factions face each other. A common story, passengers say, nothing to worry about. At the bottom of the cliff, green fields come to life illuminated by a bleak sun. Burma has its own scent: a watershed of flavors, a cistern overflowing with profound life. In the east, a small village with a few houses, suddenly ran out of electricity, plunging farms and cottages into darkness. Some tired-looking armed soldiers patrol the alleys of these nameless places, while the face of the popular heroine, a candidate for the new head of state, pops up everywhere, without logic. Painted on patched flags, hung in car dashboards, on battered bicycle headlights or stuck to the front of the premises. Less than a month to go before the country’s first free elections since 1990, when the seats were angrily canceled by the military junta. The tension cuts you into slices and contrasts incredibly with the intense spirituality of the cosmos. Ah Beay, 23, says in a low voice: “Do you see the conditions in our country? Low quality, there is no electricity or connections. The rains destroy most of the communication routes every year, not to mention the guerrillas between the various Karen ethnic groups. , Shan, Wa… kidnappings along the Indian and Bangladeshi borders are frequent “. Ah Beay is not out of balance. We pass an improvised election rally among the roots of a huge tree, by the light of an oil lamp. More soldiers. The loudspeaker yells words and votes. The politician on duty slips into my pockets, nodding, a dozen stickers bearing the words “National League for Democracy”. The alphabetic characters of the Burmese abicì resemble earthworms of various lengths twisted together. Intrigued, I hazard a delicate question, asking Ah Bey for a personal opinion on Aung San Suu Kyi, the famous Steel Orchid: “His father was our father. No one has ever talked about it in the past, but she has always continued to fight for democracy. We are sure that you can win with the support of all of us, history will be decided next month with the elections… things will improve ”. The eternal dilemma. Globalization in exchange for well-being. Burn the weapons to open the doors to unbridled capitalism? I count dozens of desperate faces around. Thirty-year-old girls already old. “Better to be all the same in consumption and thought, rather than go hungry, believe me” the young Ah Bey mumbles, bordering on an animist totem located along the banks of an unknown river that sings before us. At 12.00 precisely a young bonze died. The procession in honor of him starts from a refined temple; those present throw rice and petals in memory of the little aspiring monk. We are engulfed by the flow of energy. A man approaches, authentically asks: “Where do you come from? You are happy?”. Still looking for answers.

The streets of Mandalay are flooded. The city is submerged in water, which purges from the manholes with impetus. I watch her flounder from the car of U-Chit, a thin taxi driver who eats Kunya, a traditional preparation of betel nuts, tobacco, lime and spices. Mixed together and wrapped in thick green leaves, these substances are chewed for many hours, promoting digestion and perfuming the breath, but also to, in some circumstances, reduce hunger pangs. U-Chit with his watery eyes swears to eat twenty packets a day. Every time he spits the juice on the ground, he marks the asphalt with red spots, as if they were outlets of blood. You would know how to find him everywhere, following the tracks like Tom Thumb. Near the U-Bein bridge, the longest in the world, over the waters of Lake Taungthaman, near the ancient Burmese capital of Amarapura, the vehicle emits dangerous flames. Every loss is an opportunity. I reach the mythical plain of Bagan stepping on the pedals of an old Graziella. Wooden plows, sandy tracks, huge stone Buddhas. A pair of peasant women with dry cheeks graze four goats humming like old Mondine del Vercellese.

Shwe Nyaung Station is a white barracks shrouded in dust. I buy a ticket for Thazi, an unknown location along the railway to Yangon. Sixteen hours of travel for one euro of expenditure. The trabiccolo hides a pitfall: it proceeds at a walking pace, overcoming unstable bridges overhanging valleys echoing the love songs of tropical birds. The benches are made of hard, quirky wood and each carriage is patrolled by three armed policemen, focused on smoking Cheroot cigars. The guards rhythmically bombard me with questions. Where are you going? You’re alone? From Thazi you take an Express to Yangon, okay? At each stop, lively vendors engage in flying trades: bouquets of flowers, lemons, pumpkins, screaming children, broken hats. The train continues to rise, 3,000 meters above sea level and even higher. The sky is white as cream, we pierce walls of fog by covering our noses with muddy scarves. In a dive the brakes screech, the haze clears and I am amazed to discover that it was not mist but clouds, white clouds. The uniform vision of dawn repays the sore neck, the swollen eyes, the tongue mixed with two badly calibrated sips of whiskey. The bamboo huts disappear suddenly, leaving room for low western houses still in their infancy. Girls no longer wear colorful skirts and very few paint their cheeks with splashes of Thanaka. The simple beauty of the natives is missing. The general anxiety of the elections in Yangon is felt with less pressure although the people read the newspaper assiduously, some parliamentary villas are armored with barbed wire and small demonstrations in favor of Democracy march in the narrow streets of the city. It rains a lot and the monsoon season is pounding, it continues, a smell of India, from beyond the border tickles the nostrils. I buy some fried onions from a dejected Rohingya * man sitting on the ground. “You recognize them by their skin and their hollow eyes,” whispers Sergio, an Italian diplomat living in the city. A prostitute walks under a lamppost on a side street of the capital. “This is Westernization” continues Sergio. “The first ring I see in town. You ask me what Burma will be like after the elections? Transformed, for sure. Poverty and wealth look at each other from afar, aware of their condition, they walk side by side, without ever meeting “. Crumpled pages of the Myanmar Times take off, carried away by the impending cyclone. In front of the “Maha Wizara” pagoda, father and son play in the heavy rain. It is nice to live in the world with the sky far from home.

• The Rohingya people, an ethnic group of Muslim faith not recognized as a minority by the Burmese government, systematically discriminated against and persecuted for religious reasons, lives squeezed between the Bay of Bengal and a small piece of Bangladesh, in the state of Rakhine. Many take to the sea, remaining adrift for weeks in the Andaman Sea. The lucky ones, intermittently, reach the coasts of Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia.

Matthias Canapini was born in 1992 in Fano. He travels at a slow pace to tell stories with notebook and camera. Since 2015 he has published “Verso Est”, “Eurasia Express”, “The face of the other”, “Terra e dissenso” (Prospero Editore) and “The step of the red maple” (Aras Edizioni).