4:44 PM
Waa Haa Haa
Brick dust is delivered by ox cart in Burma. Photograph: Judyth Gregory-Smith
Today, Hla Myo, who is the manager of a tiny sewing project, helped me to do the accounts to work out how much profit, or helping money as they call it, each of the seamstresses will receive from my time selling their products in Australia and Malaysia. Their helping money is distinct from their wages.
Some of the seamstresses, I discovered, bought gold earrings with their sewing money, which I, with my western notions, thought a strange extravagance for women living in poverty. But I was wrong. The gold earrings are as good as money in the bank: better in fact, for there are no bank charges. When the women are really hard up, they can pawn their gold earrings, or in a complete catastrophe (like Cyclone Nargis) they can sell them.
I have just found out what Hla Myo's wife, Pyone Pyone, plans to buy with her helping money: brick dust. Nothing remotely feminine for her, or indeed made of gold. She wants it to raise the level of their ground floor and the brick dust will be delivered next week by bullock-cart.
It was only then I realised all the houses round here have tamped earth floors. Rich folk would have a concrete floor downstairs – but I don't know any rich folk.
Every morning, Pyone Pyone draws up water with a hand lever to fill their water tank, which empties steadily throughout the day as they draw water for washing. And because they throw buckets of water over their head, the earth floor becomes slippery quite quickly. All the women do the washing, every day, by hand, which is another way the packed earth readily turns to mud. Pyone Pyone intends that her brick dust will sop up the water.
After the floods last year Hla Myo bought half a cartload of bricks, and raised the area around the water tank by one brick, but either the bricks have sunk or perhaps the water table has risen.
None of my friends has hot water. On the corner of many streets are open-air communal washing places where both men and women, each wearing a sarong-like longyi, pour freezing buckets of water over themselves to remove the froth of soap bubbles.
Will Pyone Pyone's brick dust work? I'll be back in June, at the beginning of the rainy season: then we'll find out.
Every week Guardian Weekly publishes a 'Letter from' one of its readers from around the world. We welcome submissions – they should focus on giving a clear sense of a place and its people. Please send them to weekly.letter.from@guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/13/burma-asia-pacific
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