Idle worship.

Stalls 4 thru 7.

Billboard gospel.

Small town, big box.

Profit margins.

Fresh.

Ace.

Trust.

Role model.

4 km/h

0 km/h

Pictures and text: ©Austin Andrews / ZUMA Press

For a region that four months ago lent a stage to one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent memory, the waterlogged highway descending into Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta reveals little of what it saw. Uniformed children skip to school in sync, passing the same motley assortment of stray dogs, wayward goats and discarded rubbish endemic to all this impoverished country’s roads. Overstuffed buses, some still carrying advertisements for distant Western cities — their last homes — bounce passengers from pothole to pothole along the eight hour, 80 mile journey to colonial capital Rangoon. And reminders of the paranoid military are everywhere, eyes burning from behind the semi-automatics and highway checkpoints designed to keep foreign press and big city samaritans out of what has become the biggest disaster zone in the country’s history.

Cyclone Nargis made landfall not far from here on the night of May 2, 2008. It arrived unannounced from the Indian Ocean, ripped the mouth of the nation open and, shoving a fire hose down its throat, claimed as many as 200,000 lives before it traced upcountry and dissipated into a thick seasonal storm somewhere near the Thai border. But if the highway keeps its secret well, even the man who’s lived under a rock since April wouldn’t need to stray far before the scale of the disaster, and the amount of work still to be done, becomes apparent. Felt across 20,000 square kilometres of tarp-and-tent villages, Nargis has left Burma with US$10 billion in damage and over two million lives and livelihoods shaken, shattered or lost.

The highway ends in Bogale, a muddy city of 100,000 walled in on all sides by a web of rivers and tributaries. Before Nargis, this was the spoon to Burma’s “rice bowl”, preparing the staple crop and feeding it into roads and waterways to be fought over by a hungry nation. Today, Bogale has all the feel of a makeshift UN refugee base in a war zone, which, in a way, it is. A who’s who of the world’s international aid organisations operate out of tin hovels and insta-hotels; logos for Unicef and the International Red Cross are as common a sight here as Marlboro and Coca-Cola billboards are in other Asian cities. An atmosphere of civic brotherhood pervades even the simplest exchange. One could well imagine lines from the city’s inner monologue: “you’re all in this together,” maybe, or “wait just a little longer, the nightmare might still pass”. Nargis is never far from anyone’s lips.

If anything, Bogale is one of the few places in the delta to have grown in population this year, as heartsick villagers stumble through seeking opportunities to rebuild their lives. Kept on a short leash by the image experts in Rangoon and in the public eye by relief organisations, Bogale looks and feels alive.

The Irrawaddy Division has as many villages as a leaking water bucket might have drops: 11566 in 2005. It was here where, between noon and midnight on May 2, the wickedest wars were waged. Untold thousands of villages were washed out to sea by a four metre tidal wave and peak winds that topped out at 215 km/h. Many have since been rebuilt, with donated blue tarpaulins and camping tents woven into the familiar patchwork of palm frond roofs and bamboo walls. Others have disappeared from the memory of all but a handful of survivors; not enough, in any case, to pick up the pieces and start over again.

The story of Pyin Song Kyay, a small community adrift on a thin strip of land between Bogale and Laputta, is typical of the Irrawaddy Delta, albeit with different numbers and different heroes. One-fifth of villagers here perished, including 21 schoolchildren. Describing the night of Nargis, one man tells me that “looking around I thought we were in the middle of the ocean, all I could see was water”. Another man swam to a floating palm frond to stay afloat, only to find himself clinging to the top of a tree as daylight broke and the water level subsided. With their boats wrecked and crops destroyed, and far enough from any population centres that it was forgotten, the village’s 600-odd survivors subsisted off patience and coconut flesh for eighteen days as they waited for the outside world to arrive.

A walk through the village reveals deep scars. The gentle smiles carried in public by most Burmese are fewer here, replaced by a dull-eyed weariness that suggests that, although their houses have been rebuilt and fields sowed, these peoples’ spirits may take a little longer to mend.

Sixteen kilometres away, near the village of Aung Hlaing, a Buddhist monastery was reduced to a mound of twisted metal and wood splinters. The night of Nargis, ten monks and sixty villagers clutched  pillars and each other as the torrential waters rose past first their ankles, then their knees, then their waists. They didn’t know when, or if, it would stop. U Sittama, the hyper-animated septuagenarian monk who has made this monastery his life’s work, wonders and worries whether he’ll be able to salvage it. Four months after Nargis it looks just as the receding waters left it and it breaks his heart. The “razorblade winds that sliced off treetops” sliced off its upper level too. A stack of tin roofing sheets, donated by a Japanese shipyard, sit unused, too few to cover more than a corner of the structure. Wood for floorboards is still scarce this far into the delta. For now, U Sittama has neither the materials nor the labour to rebuild his dream.

With most of the two million delta dwellers left homeless by Nargis still waiting for their worlds to return to normal, the rest of Burma waits with flickering hopes for their chance at a brighter future. The ham-handed rule of an iron-fisted military junta runs the gamut of adjectives from negligent to barbaric, making a third world mockery of a country that was once among Asia’s most prosperous. International watchdogs hoped the fallout might be enough to usher political change, similar, perhaps, to the events following the 1970 Bhola cyclone in neighbouring Bangladesh when mismanagement of the disaster drove an angry populace toward independence. But instead, Burma’s xenophobic junta wrapped itself up even tighter inside its borders, initially rejecting or hoarding international aid and flexing its military might to frighten a restless people further into submission.

As the international media retires the story of Nargis, Burma retreats back into the shadows of its tragic obscurity. Sixty years into an uneasy independence, and eighteen years after the election that was meant to restore it to democracy, its people resume their generations-long wait. What comes next, no one knows.

A boatman sits on the prow of his newly-repaired fishing boat at the jetty in Bogale, tarps donated by NGOs doubling as storm roofs. 90% of the city’s infrastructure was either destroyed or badly damaged by Nargis’ raging crosswinds and waters.

A temporary school rises like a fluorescent apparition across a seasonal floodway from two new bamboo-and-wood boats.

Villagers and schoolchildren pose for a photo along bamboo runners.

Lessons and a distraction.

Schoolchildren wait for their teacher to arrive and the day’s classes to begin under the light of the blue tarpaulin roof of a temporary school.

Bracelets and bare feet.

Two cyclone survivors, wary of the photographer.

Drop puddles.

A young boy looks over from his lessons.

New mothers pose with their babies. All were at one point presumed dead during the frenzy of Nargis.

A fallen jewel-and-gold umbrella was the only damage incurred by this Buddhist zedi on the banks of the Bogale River.

A novice monk stands with hands folded in front of his destroyed monastery near Aung Hlaing.

76 year old monk U Sittama opens the door to what was once the upper level of his monastery.

Two monks, U Sittama at right, describe the winds and rains of Nargis.

U Sittama sits with two novices in their temporary sleeping quarters.

A zedi under repair.

A villager stands in front of a fallen coconut palm tree.

A convoy of Unicef trucks haul aid into the Irrawaddy Delta from Rangoon.

Repair work continues on a damaged home on the main street of Bogale.

Reflected moonlight shimmers off a new tin roof during a windstorm.

Palm fronds and scaffolding encircle a zedi under repair.

Children congregate along the path to their blue tarpaulin-roofed temporary school in Kyone Sein Lay, a small village decimated in May by Cyclone Nargis, which claimed the lives of as many as 200000 people in Burma’s Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) Delta and is the nation’s worst natural disaster in recorded history. The brick remains of the childrens’ former school, ripped apart by the raging winds and thrashing waters, now pave the way to the new structure.

Twenty-one of this boy’s 122 classmates died in the cyclone. With approximately 150 lives lost, one Kyone Sein Lay resident considers his village “lucky” compared with neighbouring villages, some of which were washed out to sea with too few survivors to pick up and rebuild.

English lessons continue today as before, with students learning basic anatomy and simple sentence construction.

More stories from the Irrawaddy Delta will follow later in the week.

(For anyone who knows me and is wondering why I’m not replying to long-overdue emails, I’m sorry to say you may need to wait a few days longer. I will be away from internet until August 24.)

A shore scene as passengers embark and disembark a three-deck government ferry in Kachin State. Seen here at the beginning of its two-day, thrice-weekly voyage, this ferry will travel down the Irrawaddy River from Bhamo in the country’s north to upcountry trade capital Mandalay.

The arrival of the ferry sets off a bustle of activity at each new town it docks in, with opportunistic vendors and trinket dealers swarming the jetty.

Teak planks span shore to ship.

A jetty scene at Shwebo, south of Bhamo.

Muslims onboard organise for afternoon prayers, mats facing Mecca.

A hatch to lower decks.

Stories after dark (how many faces do you see?)

Locals bathe in the Irrawaddy River near the jetty in Katha. Perhaps best known as George Orwell’s backwaters outpost in his days as a soldier in British India, today the lifeblood of Katha is its connection to the river, Burma’s largest and most important.

Two Burmese fishermen peer out over the carcass of a trawler sunken in shallow water by Cyclone Nargis. Even three months later reminders of the disaster can be found everywhere.

Commerce and play: moments in Burma’s erstwhile capital Rangoon.

Peanut vendor.

Apples by candlelight.

Cover search.

Inflatable colour.

Departure times.

Eyes in the crowd.

Ground rush.

Incredulous.

Indifferent.

Price per handful.

Colonial yellow.

Median muslim.

Wrong bus.

Sule Pagoda in the distance.

Gap.

Flush.

(X) DAYS OF PHOTOGRAPHY is a flash fiction/photography collaboration with David Maney of Jotter Notes. This is Day Twelve.

“…all seemed to be waiting for something to occur; the dead man only
was without expectation.”

- The Damned Thing, Ambrose Bierce

He tried to sleep on the streets, but couldn’t; he still had enough
money to eat.

- Did you see it?

He tried to eat but it just brought on desire, and in digestion, a
misguided hope in sleep.

- Did you see that?

He tried to find the young man who had taken photos of him, so as to
forget them.

- I can see you now.

He tried for a job and got it.

- No wonder.

He tried to understand his contract and didn’t.

- Wait a little longer.

He tried to find a place as far away from his work as possible.

- Just turn your ear.

He tried to sleep on the train to and from work.

- Clutter!

He tried to read ghost stories.

He tried to stay scared when he woke up from nightmares.

He tried to take baths instead of watching television.

He tried bringing cats to his balcony with a tree made of fish-bones.

He tried reading great poetry against the mirror to correct his reflection.

He tried to remember what you can and can’t say about yourself.

He tried staying away, but couldn’t.

- Greed! A band of noise…

He tried to wait outside the entrance for someone to let him in.

- … always using up ideas.

He tried the side alley.

- You want movement?

He tried to smash the bathroom window with his fist wrapped in a jumper.

- Pick up my inconsistent breath.

He tried to balance with one foot on the sink and the other on the bath’s edge.

- If you hear it can you see?

He tried the light switch in the hallway.

- The scuttle of the cat’s claws…

He tried to let his eyes adjust.

- …day and night, without repeat…

He tried to feel his way around the apartment.

- …always in my ear.

He tried to hear her mumbling over the sound of his breath.

- If you want to know…

He tried to clean in search of her.

- …where you are going…

He tried to make out the trace of the dead man’s life to take her devotion.

- …turn around, my sweet, and go…

He opened the cupboard door again and again, but she didn’t re-appear.

- … back from whence you came.

FIN

Text Copyright ©2008 David Maney.

2

2+0=2

2+1=3

3+2=5

5+0=5

5+3=8

8+3=11

A chance encounter with an inner-city bike crew on the streets of Oakland, CA.

The Scraper Boys are a revolving group of urban youth carrying messages of peace around town on colourful, decorated bikes. Their city has seen over 200 homicides already in 2008, including a member of their crew.

Spinning spokes.

Striped spokes.

Starting line.

Symbols.

Mikal.

Wet paint.

Whispers.

(X) DAYS OF PHOTOGRAPHY is a flash fiction/photography collaboration with David Maney of Jotter Notes. This is Day Eleven.

Starting in late autumn, he rented the room that was previously occupied by his victim, and took up a routine. He spent most of his days away from the apartment down by the train yards, waiting for the rain to quit and snow to start falling to cover the city in a blanket.

Today, there were mud pools between the tracks, and a young man in corduroy pants and loose shirt walking around the yard photographing those brown mud pools with a small black camera.

After several days of eyeing him off the young man came over to him and asked if he could take his photograph. He suspected he was in a dozen photos already, albeit in the background behind the mud pools, and the young man was just being courteous.

“Is that all you want?” he asked, trying to come across gruff.

“Yes, that’s all.”

“That’s okay by me then,” and he went back to staring out on the yard.

It was just before knock-off and all the trains had come into station empty and were waiting to go out full with the evening rush.

“Do you think you could sit on that chair up there?”

Presently, he was sitting on the ledge, and turned around to see a metal frame chair lying on its side next to a large wooden spindle of orange cable. His bum was cold, and he felt stupid for not noticing the chair earlier; so he got up gingerly, even though his legs were fine, and made his way over to the chair. He lifted the chair and sat on it backwards so he could rest his arms on its back, and put his face in his hands, and resume staring out on the yard, although he now was being watched. “Great,” said the young man, and made a full circle around him, resting on his haunches, twitching the lens of his camera. His straight black hair flared some in the wind and it was all he could do not the look at young man’s hair and wonder how it didn’t bother him. The first outbound train came out of the station with a handful of passengers still making their way to hand straps dangling from the ceiling. He heard the shutter open and close twice behind him.

“Thank you,” said the young man.

“All done? Can I see?”

“It’s an old camera.” The young man showed him that the back of the camera had no screen.

“Oh, really.” He tried to think of something to say. “Dark-room and chemicals and stuff.”

“In my bathroom.” He could tell the young man’s thoughts had already turned to how the photos would come out. He shuffled his feet as he talked about how he had painted the skylight in his bathroom black, and bought a red bulb so he could see in the dark.

“You best go then.”

It wasn’t yet dark, but he made his way back to the apartment. From the train yard it was impossible to take the same walk back.

He rattled the keys in the lock, opened the door and put down the keys and shook out his umbrella and took of his boots and turned the heels to the edge of the landing so he could step into them easily them on his way out. He walked into the kitchen and switched on the light and stood at the kitchen sink with his hands resting on the counter. Empty, save for a few sticks of furniture he had found outside the building on hard rubbish day.

“Can you please come out.”

She didn’t, so he went to the cupboard door and opened it. She was curled up at the bottom of the cupboard. He grabbed both her arms and dragged her out over the cans of peeled tomatoes and baked beans and a bag of oninons, out onto the ktichen floor. Her eyes were open but she pretended to be asleep.

“I can’t go on like this,” he said.

Every bone in her body popped back in place as she stood up straight. She held her mouth slack before gulping and tightening her lips.

“We have to think about our future.” She didn’t say outright that she wanted him to stay, but woman never should unless they’re foolish, she thought.

It was her choice of words that bothered him. Words are sometimes fivolous noise with their meaning put out before the thoughts behind them are fully understood. Conversation is the game we play where thinking is the practice, and they had been keeping conversation to themselves for over a month; She now boasted that she had already rejected his offer two-times. “So many times, I forget what the question was,” she said. A hollow boast.

“You should say yes, and soon; you can’t be sure I’ll ask again.”

He went to the bedroom.

A month later, an unmarked manilla envelope, without address or stamp, would be slid under the door of the apartment. A further two more weeks would pass before curiosity got the better of her and she came out and collected the envelope and then hurried back to the crawl space. With her torch she flicked through the magazine that had been delivered, and soon thought of returning, but saw that is had no sender. She flicked through after photo after photo, and articles in print to small for her to read, until she came across a black and white double-spread of a man sitting backwards on a chair with his back to the camera. He was mere shadow. All colour was taken out of the scene. The background was shaky and blurry. She thought she could see two trains passing, one on either page of the double-spread. But his shadow casted doubt in her mind. Were the two trains heading in the same, or opposite directions? Were they just the same train? The light and shadow gave the photo an age. It reflected his thinking.

He came back into the kitchen. He was wearing the last of his clean shirts and a pair of pants with an oil stain on the pocket. She broke off her stare and looked at him, tucking a wisp of hair behind her ear. His mouth contorted in a search for words, and after a moment, he just sighed. He walked to the landing and returned with the keys and placed them on the kitchen counter, then returned to the landing and slid into his boots, picked up his umbrella and opened the front door, only to turn back into the apartment and take one step from the landing to see that she was gone. He found the switch and turned off the kitchen light and left through the front door.

“Did you see it? Did you see that?”

(to be continued)

Text Copyright ©2008 David Maney

(X) DAYS OF PHOTOGRAPHY is a flash fiction/photography collaboration with David Maney of Jotter Notes. This is Day Ten.

He returned to the car to find it covered in black, pink and silver graffiti tags, and wondered where she had got to.

Nowhere, it turned out.

She was sitting on the front passenger side and staring vacantly through the graffiti on the windscreen, past him, at the green, white, and yellow glow of the service station. A car came from behind him and shot light through the windscreen. For one moment the shadow of graffiti was marked on her face. She squinted. She was putting it on. 

He had asked her questions all the way down the freeway. After half an hour of no response he started answering his own questions in the hope she would want to correct him.

“How old was he? Mm, I don’t know exactly. Did he have any family? He may have had a girlfriend or three. Really, but none that you saw? He never brought them home. Pity that. He must have had a good job?
She rested her head against the window and closed her eyes.

He continued, “He worked very hard, and got paid handsomely for it; but he worked too hard: late nights, weekends. Sometimes he’d arrive home from work, only to have to leave two hours later. Why didn’t he stay at the office? Sleep under the desk? Routine was very important to him.” At that point he paused. “Was.” He had not meant to say this word aloud, but it weighed all his questions down. He might be the last person to ever ask after this man.  “And how about you?”

He wanted to change the topic of conversation, but was not at all curious about her. If he had any questions for her they were all in relation to him. Her silence, however, was making it rather difficult to talk about anything else.

He unlocked the car and sat down beside her. “Thanks for watching the car.” He passed her a cup of tea but she just put her head back against the window and close her eyes so he put it in her cupholder: “For later, then.”

He started eating his hamburger in the hope it would make him tired. He had driven all day and felt like he could drive all night until morning and still not be through with asking questions that would remain unanswered.

He wiped his mouth with a napkin and took a sip of club-lemonade and sat and watched the comings and goings of the service station. It was like its own little township in the middle of nowhere, with an exact replica one-hundred metres away on the other side of the freeway. From where he had parked he could see straight through the fly-screen back entrance of the kitchen and the woman in a black apron and white top working over the grill. He had worked in a kitchen once, scraping plates and scrubbing pans. They had called him ”dish-pig” because he found his dinner in half bowls of soup and soggy french fries. A young girl, just dropped out of school, took over the job when he left and the boys in the kitchen called her dish-pig as well, which probably wouldn’t have happened if she were queen of the prom. But if she had been queen she wouldn’t have been washing dishes, and he wouldn’t be in a service depot on route to nowhere thinking about her.

To the left of the kitchen was an automatic car-wash. He found the keys in his pocket, started up the car, and drove around behind the car wash, parked on the platform, and put in his money. Through all this she didn’t wake. Her breathing was heavy now and he could hear a slight wheeze in her chest.

The car wash started up and the car slowly moved forward and then stopped in position. First, a high pressure spray. He liked the noise of the jets hitting the car. It was like putting your head under a shower and the only thing you could hear was the water pressure. Second, the rinse. He took his hands off the steering wheel and put his fingers in his ears. He didn’t like this sound, back and forth, squeaky, squeaky. He started to hum to block out the noise, but that didn’t work, so he screamed. Quietly at first, and then loud.

She woke and flung her arm out and whacked him fair across the nose. He was stunned and stopped screaming. But then he started up again. This time louder, as they went through the blow-dryer. She joined him. They faced each other and screamed louder again.

Two truck drivers smoking next to their rig looked at him as he drove past and headed back out on the freeway. He made his way across an emergency road exit and onto the otherside of the freeway, heading back in the direction of the city.

They drove in silence through the night. He wasn’t sure when she slept and when she was awake, as her breathing was pretty much all the same, and she sat against the window the whole way. He liked driving at night. He liked being the sole car on the unlit parts of the freeway with only his headlights to guide him. He remembered back to yesterday morning, and what the man in the pyjamas, beige overcoat and… had said about… at the bottom of the cupboard. When he was in the apartment the night before, that is where she had been hiding. He lifted his eyes and saw a line of lamp posts curling around the top of the hill and a rig slowly making its way up to the top. He changed lanes and sped up to pass.

They made it back to the city by morning. He made it through dawn and his energy increased with the light. Without thinking, he drove to the apartment where they had been only yesterday and parked in the alley. She woke up soon thereafter. Every vertebrae in her back crackled. She looked out onto the street and saw the front entrance to the apartment and looked over at him. He shrugged his shoulders.

They were only twenty metres away from the entrance and he could see white chalk and hand marks on the entrance door where the police had been. A train of school children, tallest to shortest, dressed in safety fluro yellow vests, walked along the sidewalk in front of the building. For a moment he wondered if those were his fingerprints, but then remembered he wore gloves and didn’t go through the entrance door.

She was nervously knitting with her index fingers and mumbling, “purl, purl, stich; purl, purl, stitch…”

He turned to her and put his hand reassuringly on her arm: ”I’m sure you’ve left many strangers behind you.” And he opened the car door and walked across the street towards the entrance door and pushed it open, leaving his fingerprint amongst the others in the remnant of chalk.

She reached over and took her cold cup of tea from the cupholder.

(to be continued)

Text Copyright ©2008 David Maney

(X) DAYS OF PHOTOGRAPHY is a flash fiction/photography collaboration with David Maney of Jotter Notes. This is Day Nine.

A single unmarked car stopped at the steps of the apartment building and put on their hazard lights. On their arrival a man dressed in white pyjamas, slippers, a black scarf and beige trench-coat stepped out from inside the doorway. After a brief conversation between the suited couple, a man with cropped black hair and woman with a auburn pony-tail, they went inside the building. Fifteen minutes later the suited man came back out on to the street talking on his mobile phone. The tail lights flashed as he unlocked the car. He took a casual glance down the street, ran his hand down the inside of his jacket to the holster clipped on his belt, before getting in his car and reversing into the side-alley. Going back into the building he glanced down the opposite end of the street, then ascended up the steps, two at a time.

Soon after a marked police car arrived with its lights flashing, but no siren. Two uniformed policeman stepped out and stood at the steps of the apartment with their hands resting on the holster and baton on either side of their belt-buckles. The taller of the two radioed back to the station. The response came back after a short wait, altogether too loud, and drew the shorter policeman’s attention away from admiring the car in the side-alley. The taller policeman went to the boot of their car and drew out a roll of yellow tape and began cordoning off the sidewalk. As they went about their work the sirens on the roof of the car continued to flash and the low murmur of the highway flow not-so-far off was soon replaced by the tired surprise of residents in the area who came down from their apartments. Some were in pyjamas, others in sweatshirts and shoes with laces undone. Some even went back to their apartments and came back with their children, or a cup of coffee, a piece of toast.

The two policeman stood at the foot of the steps and talked with some of the people in the crowd. Youths walking past with a bottle in their hand stopped and sat on the gutter and drank rounds before someone pointed it out to the shorter policeman and he came over and took it away from them with little fuss, and let them saunter off down the street.

The man in white pyjamas, slippers, and beige trench-coat came down the steps and joined the crowd. Other people in the building followed him. He talked to a woman holding her daughter on her hip, who then talked to the man standing next to her, until the noise had drawn most people out onto the street.

It was almost dawn. 

* * *

They joined the crowd behind the police-line.

He had not slept since the murder and was glad for the smile that came with a cup of black coffee in a styro-foam cup. She declined, instead drank from the can of cola he had bought her. It helped from some phlegm to wet her dry throat. She had several bruises on her arm, covered up by his jumper she wore.

They heard talk of an open front door, blood on the floor, an ether soaked rag, a starving cat, food scraps found at the bottom of a cupboard, and a missing man.

She clicked her tongue until she reached down and squeeze her hand.

They stood there holding hands as sun came up and the crowd broke off to begin there day.

The policeman began to take down the tape, and eventually the traffic picked-up and they had to step onto the sidewalk.

She turned to him, and with a rasp said, `Who do you think they’ll believe?’

(to be continued)

Text Copyright ©2008 David Maney