The golden country

I want to describe this country to you all. I had very little mental image of what this country would be like prior to our arrival and I think this is because Myanmar is a very hard country to find pictures of, mainly because the government is afraid of journalists and photographers and won’t let them into the country. But I have now made three trips outside of Yangon and want to share some of what I have seen.

Myanmar is a beautiful country. I have been amazed by the many colors here. I have seen many shades of green that I never knew existed. Rice paddy after rice paddy of slightly different greens, some a darker and more mature hunter green like a mango leaf and some younger and brighter. As the rice grows old, ready for harvest, yellow mixes with the green. Black water buffalo thresh the yellow harvested rice and are then lead to the canals where they cover themselves in cool mud that dries gray-brown. The golden husked rice is then spread out beside the road on tarps to dry. Deep pink blossoms on trees overhanging the road make me think of spring in Ohio (however the temperature here does not). The white sand on the beaches is brighter than I’ve seen, and as the sun sinks into the blue sea it grows huge and crimson and then melts away into the water leaving a gently shaded orange and purple sky which soon turns midnight blue. On clear nights outside Yangon, the night sky is pierced many more times by starlight than it is in America. This country has evoked in me a greater assurance that God did indeed create our Earth than I have had in a long time, and I am once again amazed by his intricacy and artistic creativity in doing so.

However, Myanmar is also a country of much destruction. On our recent trip to the beach I saw hill after hill deforested except for a lone tree towering a hundred feet above the scrub of young trees that have grown up to replace a canopy that once covered the entire hill. I also have seen streams clogged with plastics, bags, wrappers and other trash and trash blowing across the ground, in search of a resting place. Chickens eat styrofoam packaging and people throw their trash out the windows of the bus. I believe this is perhaps a result of an influx of consumer, non-biodegradable products into a culture that makes almost nothing which is not biodegradable. This part of my experience, has made me aware of our responsibility as stewards of this earth that God created and how far that stewardship extends beyond “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” or even “donate to your favorite ecologically friendly charity.”