Setting nets on the Irrawaddy river. |
I sat in the dirty iron shed that serves as
Rangoon’s ferry terminal clutching my $7 ticket
for the 20 hour boat ride to Pathien deep in the Irrawaddy
delta and waited for the foreigners’ ticket master. There was, I thought as I
looked out at a row of a dozen rusty pontoon jetties each with a ferry moored
to it, no way I would ever find my boat without him. Most of the boats had no
markings although the jetty entrances were marked in Burmese script that
reminded me of the patterns in crop circles – intricate, pretty and
indecipherable.
True to his word
the ticket master strode towards me at exactly 2.30, neatly uniformed and
dry-skinned in the sauna air. I followed him as quickly as I could with my pack
and a plastic bag full of snacks. In the middle of the open upper
deck he shooed away a group of elderly ladies and indicated a patch of steel
floor. The deck was divided into a grid of rectangles about 1 meter long and
1.5 wide marked with red paint and numbered. I made myself at home in number 47
while thirty people stared at the funny foreigner with the light-weight
sleeping bag and bottled water. The woman next to me looked to be in her
seventies with a face like a leather glove. She faced me cross-legged and smoked
a huge cigar, the end of which she put into an open tin as she inhaled. She
laughed at me and her front teeth were black stumps where the cigar sat. When I
refused a toke she laughed even harder. I sat back on my bag, using my towel to
cushion me from the raised welds and lumpy steel and watched the deck fill. By
the time a procession of families laden with sacks, cooking pots and battered
cases had finished stepping over my legs on their way to a free bit of floor,
the small deck was crammed. Everyone was good-humoured and gave their
neighbours as much room as possible, going to great pains not to step on anyone’s
grass mat or plastic sheet, slipping their shoes off where it was unavoidable.
I went to explore the boat, feeling big-footed and awkward as I tip-toed and
hopped over legs
Home sweet home. |
Our boat, like
most of the government ferries that ply Burma’s rivers, was a relic left
over from British rule. It was100 feet long with three open-sided decks, a
handful of empty first-class cabins in the bow and a raked smokestack. It was
probably from the 1920s but it felt ancient – every wooden surface was faded, scarred
and patterned from the scrape of a thousand heavy bags and the steel undulated
and curved organically. Down a set of worn-smooth wooden steps a lady squatted
on the floor selling bananas, three-in-one coffee mix and bottled water. I ate
a banana and watched men jump between the lower deck and the pontoon carrying
sacks of rice which they dumped through small hatches. In the hold more crew
worked hunched in the foul dark air to distribute the sacks as ballast. Above
them on the heavy-planked deck, barefoot men stacked electrical goods, engine
parts and unmarked boxes ceiling high. A thick bamboo pole bent under the
weight of a truck engine as 8 men lifted with their shoulders like shirtless coffin-bearers.
They shuffled forward to the shouted instructions of a boy who jumped back and
forth between the pontoon and boat. Once it was safely on board, the men rolled
their necks and slapped each other on the back before repeating the process
with an industrial freezer. They all looked like underwear models.
We untied at
around 4pm, an hour behind schedule and I leant on the rear rail of the passenger
deck and felt the deep throb of the twin engines while I watched the faded
roofs and bright pagodas of Rangoon
sink into the deep green bush. A man in his twenties tiptoed around a sleeping
couple and stood beside me, holding a bag of what looked like the Burmese equivalent
of Cheezels. He grinned at me and grabbed me by the wrist, pouring the yellow,
crispy snacks into my hand. His grin was infectious and he gestured for me to
watch as he threw one of the balls high off the back of the boat. Just before
it hit the boat’s wake, a seagull swooped and caught it deftly. Soon a dozen
birds dived and cartwheeled after our lofted treats as we laughed and pointed
out particularly spectacular efforts in our respective languages. After the
bait was exhausted, he returned to sit with his mother and every time I glanced
towards them he would catch my eye and grin.
Feeding the birds with Rangoon in the background. |
In the afternoon I
stood on the small top deck watching the muddy banks slide by under a fringe of
lush green bush broken occasionally by open boats tied to grass huts stilted
above the mud. Alone on the highest point of the ship and I could see rice
fields framed by buffalo tracks disappearing at a ruler-flat horizon. The vast
network of rivers that wind through the Irrawaddy delta are still the main, and
often only, mode of transport and we passed hundreds of boats. Ugly square
barges sitting half submerged under loads of rice and coconuts barely moved
against the current. Fast boats bounced over our wake powered by converted car
engines that screamed and fanned muddy water high into the air. At the
confluence of two big rivers, the banks fell away and the huge expanse of water
was dotted with hundreds of tiny curved fishing boats powered by a single scull oar.
We docked briefly
at a village where men ran along a long narrow gangplank from the mud bank with
more white sacks. In the evening we stopped at a bigger town and dirty-fingered
ladies climbed over the handrails, stepping over dozing passengers and selling
fruit and fried snacks from wide baskets they carried on their heads. Already
sick of bananas and chocolate bars, I bought a couple of shapeless, deep-fried
things for about 10 cents. They were a kind of corn fritter, cold but not bad.
I hoped they wouldn’t make me sick. There were no lights on deck and after they
left, all I could here were snores over the diesel thump of the engines. It was
9pm – bedtime in Burma.
At 4.45am I was
woken by the warbling trill of a transistor radio. Three monks sat cross-legged
and listened to their morning prayers, swaddled in their red robes against the
pre-dawn chill. The chant was musical and repetitive under a sea of static. By
5.30 they had finished and everyone was awake, preparing breakfast and
chatting. I gave up on sleep and munched on a tasteless bun from my bag. The
night had been damp and my sleeping bag was wet to the touch, the metal deck beaded
with dew. The morning sun burnt off the fog and I spent the day watching the
bank slide past from the top deck. My bag was unlocked downstairs but I never
worried about theft in Burma.
A busy river town we passed in the morning. |
At 4pm, 5 hours behind schedule, I figured we were nearly there when my shipmates begun packing, tying
their rubbish neatly in plastic bags before throwing it into the river.
From the boat,
Pathien looked like a colonial town on the Amazon. Crumbling wharf buildings
with broken windows and faded signs obscured by creeping vines sat beside
corrugated iron houses suspended above the river on rotting poles. All along
the banks, small boats were tied to trees or dragged onto the bank and the
whole place looked in danger of being consumed by the bush. The only vehicles
that met us at the pier were pedal trishaws looking for a fare. My bird-baiting
friend grabbed me by the shoulder and asked for money. I gave him 1000 kyats –
just over a dollar – telling him it was for the Cheezels, but I don’t think he
understood. After I had my passport details recorded in a bare office I walked
along the esplanade past once-grand houses whose top floors overlooked the
river. They looked empty and ready to fall down. Behind them I found a hotel on
a dirt road next to a weed-choked creek.
Two weeks after my
trip a ferry on it’s way from Pathien to Rangoon
capsized while trying to dock at a village during a storm. The boat was
carrying 78 passengers, 10 of whom were killed.
Pathien. |
No comments:
Post a Comment