Fr Kevin's Blog 2 Burma (Myanmar) Trip.

5th Trip to Hmawbi Myanmar

2011-04-08T21:53:00.012+01:00

The Children at Mass

The New Bus the parish and John

and Fiona bought for the home

The sisters who look after the children

with motherly care

The Girls writing and making their thankyou cards to the people who are sponsoring them

A day out in the fun park. The children and the sisters saying good bye to us Min Lou is the driver Hello everyone I have decided to resurrect my blog especially after my recent trip to the orphange that we as a parish have built and also intend to support the children in their clothing, food and education. The parish over the years has raised over £100,000 pounds to this project. I will tell you more about it later on. If anyone would like to donate any money to this project please send it to The Burma Orphange Appeal c/o The Immaculate Conception 63 Yorktown Rd Sandhurst Berkshire UK RG479BS. In the great Tesco add Every little thing helps. here are some of the pictures I took this year. Feb "2011.

Hmawbi Orphanage and Children

2009-05-23T06:15:00.012+01:00

Sister Dorothy and myself being open with each other.

The Sisters, The Fathers and the Children at the opening
The Children and Sisters Ann Shwe Ann Marie

The children's temporarysleeping quarters

The joy of the children as they open the first Christmas presents they have ever had.

Hello, In six days times our parish in Crowthorne and Sandhurst will be starting a Mission, which will be the first they have had for over twenty years. The Mission will be given by a Fr Tim Buckley who is a Redemptorist. So as you can imagine these next few weeks will be a very busy time for me, preparing and making sure everything runs smoothly when it begins.

Since I have come back from Myanmar I have had eight people who have died in the parish, a couple of weddings and a few baptisms and with Sister Geraldine staying with me on an off for eight weeks, the last two months have been quite hetic.

The Hatch Match and Dispatch that is the normal routine of a priests life can at times be very dibilitating for a priest, for one moment he is happy for the people whose child is being baptised or the couple being married, then saddened by the death of a parishioner and dealing with those who are bereaved.

This Bank Holiday Monday 25th May we hold our annual Donkey Derby, which is our main fund raising for the year. We need this money this year as we have incurred a big expense of £50.000 for the repair of the roof, that was just about going to cave in. This is why I have really had no time to update the blog as I would have liked.

I have placed some of the pictures that I took of the opening of the orphanage. I must thank all those people who have spent time and gave lots of monies towards our parish project. They have been most generous in their giving, and may God bless them. For myself the most rewarding aspect of this project is not the sense of achivement but the great reward of all our efforts, the smiling faces of the children we have helped to house and give a home to. That will be the lasting memory of my visit to Hmawbi in Myanmar.

Sr Geraldine goes home to Myanmar

2009-05-08T22:06:00.009+01:00

Sr Geraldine at Shakespear cottage

With friends and with me at St Georges Chappel Windsor (I look big beside sister)

Hello again after two months here in the UK Sr Geraldine has returned to Myanmar to go back to her convent in Mandalay. She was a joy to have her around the parish and everyone was taken up by her. But as is the case there is nothing like home. Her safe return home as also given me the time now to catch up with the blog.

We had a little drama at the airport as she was well over weight. Not may I add her body weight but more her luggage. Her big bag was 36kls hand luggage 13kls and laptop case 5kls. The check out girl was really lovely and she asked her to take a few kilos from each bag. So we were in the middle of the departure hall with the suitcases open trying to get the weight down. We did manage it and I took the excess luggage home with me. I did have a very good idea what would happen so we took an extra bag just in case.

A Kevin Terry was supposed to meet us to take the excess away with him to take to Myanmar when he goes over in October but he never turned up and didn't even telephone to say he couldn't make it. Sr Geraldine was very upset about that. The outcome of all that is I am now left with a bagful of nuns habits, clothes and lots of soap and perfume. I hope I don't die before I get rid of them because the bishop without knowing the full story will think that I was a very odd priest indeed. On that note I will finnish for the evening.

Hardship of the peoples

2009-03-15T06:23:00.007Z

The Children gather round me

A simple home in a village. Seven people were living in this home.

As you can imagine the ‘Credit Crunch’ is really hitting the poor people of Myanmar and they need all the help they can get. Having said that they are a most resilient people and some how manage to raise a smile. Myanmar is called the land of smiles and it is true, yet they have not much to smile. No matter what their Army government throw at them they work round it. When they had the elections last year the government offered all those who voted for them, identity cards. (There was no opposition candidates by the way.) Many voted rather than abstain as they would have normally done, to get the identity card. They are still waiting.

Without these identity cards one cannot get an official job or register for the very few offers that the government give to the people, but most importantly one cannot move officially from place to place. Though the majority with out identity cards do they have to go the hard way. I have experienced this myself and it was no joke. It took seven hours to travel just ninety miles on bumpy and dusty roads and tracks . Though this journey was uncomfortable it was very informative as it showed you the real Myanmar where poverty is rife and the standard of living is less than frugal. More about that later when I go to Cho Yo and Zawgee.

As you can imagine life is very hard for the poor and underprivileged and even more so for those who have no parents to fend for them. That is where people like the sisters step in and help as the there is no help from the government. The whole aim of my trip beside the opening of the orphanage that our parish has sponsored was to cover the work that the sisters were doing around the country. I took a handycam with me so that my parishioners would know that the monies they have given has not been wasted. Being an amateur it is quite jumpy at times but as I went along I got a little better. From now on the blog will follow the movie and I will comment on it.

Life in Myanmar Burma.

2009-03-07T22:30:00.008Z

Schools out. All Children have to wear the same uniform Seminarians visiting the convent

As I said before motor bikes and the likes are not allowed on the main road into Yangon and the roads are fairly good for Burma. However, once you get off the main road then you see the real situation that most Burmese have to live in. The side roads are full of potholes. The pavements are a death trap because of the many broken pavements, the open drains. Even though the roads are crowded with all sorts of people and traffic it is actually safer to walk on them than on the pavement. When you walk down the side roads you really get to understand just how poor the average Burmese are and how everyone is trying to scratch a living. It is very bleak for them at this time.

There is not much work in Yangon at the moment and those who do work especially the shop assistants earn a pittance average wage being about 2000 Chats about a couple of dollars a week. And one wonders how long their jobs will last. The one thing I noticed was the lack of foreign visitors and because of that there was hardly anyone in the department stores only the rich young things, usually Chinese, with nothing to do only window shop. The amount of shop assistants to those actually shopping was about three to one customer. To make themselves look busy they were moving and straightening the products on the shelves. I heard that each night after the store closed for business they had to make an inventory of all the shelves in their care, then do the same thing before they started. This has a two fold effect. First it gave the manager knowledge of how much had been sold and has any goods been taken during the night. The assistants watched you like a hawk as you entered their area and would not leave you alone until you had gone on to the next station. This was so that you didn’t steal anything. If anything goes missing from their station they are the ones who have to pay for it. It is very sad.

As I was walking down the street I happened to pass a paint spraying shop. This was right next to the supermarket. They were just spraying one wing that had just been repaired but there were about eight people on the job. When it was done then rather than switching the engine on which would have wasted petrol they all pushed it out onto the street. Many of the women from the country do the labouring jobs on the building sites. The age range is from the young in their twenties to those who look old but most probable are only in their fifties. You seeing them carrying stones and bricks to the builders on their heads and baskets of mortar. You see them hammering the cobblestones in part of the road that has been damaged by fuel polluting lorries and buses of all kinds, some of them pre-date even me. They put tar on the road with their bare hands. They are poorly dressed and e poorly fed as well. They look gaunt and are full of dust. They get even less than the shop assistants, yet they still work because every little thing helps. It is amazing to see how many women sweep the streets who are very poorly dressed, very undernourished.

There is no such thing as health and safety in this country. Everyone who has a job are just so grateful to have one. Most of the restaurants have only one or two people eating in them. The big hotels are all virtually empty, so the staff are mainly trying to look busy. I know Aung San Suu Kyi (the unofficial leader of the opposition party opposing the Army Generals who rule,) tells the westerners not to come but I think that it is hurting the poor people the most. Those at the top are really not affected as they have money anyway from all the Oil, Teak and Gem stones they are selling to the Chinese and the Indians. The ones that are being affected by the lack of tourist are the ones who can least cope with the downturn of everything. Those who have nothing have even less now, as there is no need for their labour. We went to a Japanese restaurant and we were the only ones there and when you think of all the staff they have to support it cannot go on like that.

If you can afford it go there. You will certainly get value for money. A five star hotel would only cost you little more than 50 dollars plus. It is very pitiable to see such lovely people being abused, suppressed and brutalised. I hate getting political but one eventually has to stand up and be counted because any form of abuse has to be confronted. That is the one thing the western governments have not done regarding Burma. They are too scared of upsetting the governments of China and India. I call it hypocrisy especially now after the war with Iraq and Afghanistan and the situation in Africa.

My view of the situation in Burma post demonstrations

2009-02-20T22:21:00.011Z

Yangon International Airport

Local Bus

Monks before Demonstrations now you only see a handful

The last time I was in Burma I left from the old terminal in Yangon airport. It was very basic and manic with lots of people milling around all trying to help you, but with the ulterior motive of trying to get a few Chats (The Local currency) out of you. This time when Sr Jenny and myself arrived we used the new terminal which was much more civilised and organised, yet strangely enough a lot more boring. Sr Bibiana with one of the pre-postulants met us. We were in and out of the airport in less than fifteen minutes which was a lot better than Heathrow which usually takes at least an hour just to get to the customs exit.
The airport road to the city ran very smoothly but one is struck by the lack of bicycles, rickshaws and motor bikes. I asked Sr Bibiana why there were no motor bikes etc. It turns out that the Army Generals had banned them all from the main roads that lead to the city. They had to use the side roads. One of the reasons for this was so that when the army generals came to town they would have a relative free run. All traffic is stopped when an army general is on the move. The generals as you will see are very controlling and live the lives of princes.
Another odd thing is that most of the cars are right hand drive but they drive on the left. The reason for this was that one of the previous head general's soothsayer said that all traffic should drive on the right hand of the road. The next day it was announced on the TV that all cars were to drive on the right hand in one weeks time. Many people were killed as you can imagine because in the remote areas of the country they did not hear of the change, especially the big logging trucks coming out of the forests.
When I was here a couple of years ago Yangon was a wash with young Buddhists monks, walking, shoping, begging or in the local cafes. Last year there were big demostrations against the unjust goverment of ruling army generals, which were led by the young Buddhist monks. The demonstrations were violently put down by the generals and many young monks were killed and the rest dispersed throughout the country. This is reflected by the lack of young monks in Yangon.
As I said before motor bikes and the likes are not allowed on the main road into Yangon and the roads are fairly good for Burma. However, once you get off the main road then you see the real situation that most Burmese have to live in. The side roads are full of potholes. The pavements are a death trap because of the many broken pavements, the open drains. Even though the roads are crowded with all sorts of people and traffic it is actually safer to walk on them than on the pavement.

Re-opening my blog.

2009-02-09T17:59:00.008Z

Mother General Cutting the cake.

The Children

Hello everyone. I am just back from the opening of the orphanage in Myanmar. As many of you know the Catholic parish of Crowthorne and Sandhurst has for the last two years been collecting money so that an Orphanage could be built on the outskirts of Yangon. This month on the third of February, I had the great privileged of being at the opening of this home. The name of the orphanage is the Home of the Immaculate Conception.

It was a great occasion not for what we had achieved as a parish but because of the happiness of the children whose home it will be, until they are older enough to go out into the world and fend for themselves. The age range of the children is from 5-15. 17 girls and 1 boy. The reason why there is only one boy is that girls are considered expendable and do not have the same value placed on them. The sisters who look after them have no such concept and see every child as a child of God therefore each child no matter what gender is precious and needs the same love and attention.

The Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition do marvelous work in the name of the Lord. And they are dedicated to the works of charity and the education of those children who are from poor families especially from the rural areas of Myanmar. It may be of interest to know something of the conditions the majority of the people of Myanmar have to live in.

The Catholic Community in Crowthorne and Sandhurst

2008-11-02T20:03:00.000Z

Archives from my previous blog fr-kevin.blogspot.com

2008-11-01T07:16:00.001Z

This section is the Archives from my previous blog fr-kevin.blogspot.com
I'm back
Summer Time!!
Settling in
Arriving home
Perth Australia
Reflections in Melbourne and Perth
Goodbye to New Zealand
Easter and the Last days in New Zealand
Leaving the Hospital and Preparing for Easter
Camper Van Part 11
Archives
2006-09-10
2006-09-17
2006-09-24
2006-10-01
2006-10-15
2006-10-22
2006-10-29
2006-11-05
2006-11-12
2006-11-19
2006-11-26
2006-12-03
2006-12-10
2006-12-17
2006-12-24
2006-12-31
2007-01-07
2007-01-14
2007-01-21
2007-02-04
2007-02-11
2007-02-18
2007-02-25
2007-03-04
2007-03-18
2007-03-25
2007-04-01
2007-04-08
2007-04-15
2007-04-22
2007-04-29
2007-05-06
2007-06-03
2007-07-08
2007-09-23