And now for a little bit of hope, straight from Myanmar, to supplement what's been in the news lately.
Ashin Ottamasara was a successful Burmese businessman who quit it all to become a monk at age 33. He opened his apartment as a meditation retreat, especially for other businessmen. Land was then donated and in addition to continuing meditation retreats, he decided to open the Thabarwa Center in 2007 to anyone in need. Anyone. It's become a home for all with no discrimination of age, condition, background, nationality, or religion. Orphans, the sick, elderly, homeless, hopeless, refugees, blind, deaf, disabled, and mentally ill are all welcome here with no payment, contract, judgement, or end date. This has resulted in a population of over 3,280 residents these days, including monks and yogis (those who practice meditation), and 20-30 foreign volunteers at any given time.
Early on in my travels looking out over the sea from Koh Samui, another traveller shared this place with me, and it's been on my Myanmar itinerary ever since. Six months later, after a couple days in Yangon, I took a taxi an hour outside of town to the Thabarwa Center.
Volunteers can show up at any time and stay indefinitely. Many came for a few days...a few months ago. They are encouraged to continuously do good deeds by practicing patience, tolerance, detachment, and meditation. There are just a few basic rules here related to doing no harm.
When I first read about this "center," I didn't envision something so large in scale. It's really more of a village that has grown from donated land. There are families who live in their original houses and Thabarwa has been built up around them. Word spread and more and more land has been donated; there are 40 some similar projects around southeast Asia. It's a crazy, lively place with lots of activity. There's a library onsite, a seamstress, fruit and snack stalls, and a shop that sells basic necessities. Motorbikes rumble through the streets alongside monks, novices, and nuns, hundreds of dogs, a few cows, a monkey, and at one point, a bear that showed up (that one had to stay in a cage). And of course all the residents who call this place home.
This is not a nursing home or homeless shelter, and no gates get locked up at night. Thabarwa means "natural," as in "a natural place to live." Food, shelter, and medical care are provided at no cost, such that some semblance of normal life can continue. There are residence halls, mostly dorms, each with a resident that serves as hall manager.
Others who need more attention are in one of two basic hospitals onsite. There's a head nurse onsite and her aids are kept busy, but there's no advanced equipment or critical care here. A local doctor is always booked and a rotating team of Korean acupuncture doctors stays busy every day. A dentist comes in a few days per week. Many volunteers have experience is physiotherapy, nursing, osteopathy, or pharmaceuticals. Others just chip in wherever they are needed.
A typical day for volunteers might go something like this:
5:15am yoga
6:30am breakfast. Rice, maybe with beans, and a pastry and banana on a good day.
7am help monks collect alms. At least ten trucks and buses, each with a dozen or so monks, head out to different neighborhoods around Yangon every morning. A taxi with a loudspeaker led the way, announcing our presence to the locals, as we walked behind and our bus followed. Residents came out of every house with offerings, typically a serving of rice, curry, and money, sometimes packaged goods and fresh fruit as well. For two hours we continuously collected these offerings. Rice went into five gallon buckets. Curries were collected in separate bowls but then dumped and mixed into slosh buckets in the bus. Packaged goods and fruits went into woven bags we carried, then emptied and sorted on the bus. What started as a half empty bus returned half full of monks, half full of food. This food, plus occasional produce donated from markets, fed the village every day.
Mornings could also be spent doing patient care in one of the two hospitals.
This is not a fully staffed facility, so volunteers help transport patients, change bandages, wash patients, and assist with physiotherapy.
12 noon lunch for volunteers (Burmese and foreign). This always consisted of rice--there's an industrial rice cooker that goes all day to supplement the alms in feeding over 3,000 mouths. Along with that was the aforementioned little bit of everything curry, which might have small whole fish and prawns, potatoes and beans. Far from the finest dining, but it filled our stomachs.
2pm art time for patients and kids. Despite a stiff language barrier, we had fun. Many kids arrive as orphans and study in the monastic school onsite as novice monks. For the others there is a nearby government school available, though attendance is an issue for many kids with no dedicated mentors.
Afternoons were also spent visiting residence halls to "make them move." Without some encouragement, many residents hardly leave their beds. Bed sores are a big issue, so any movement we can encourage was good. Some halls took some warming up before getting interested in participating. Others lit up whenever we walked in. One woman couldn't participate "because she's blind." A volunteer took her arms and guided her through the gentle exercises. She loved it.
4pm Burmese class. One patient with very good English was interested in helping us learn some basics. A wheelchair-bound, disabled Muslim, he was enthusiastic, funny, and loved being able to get out of his room and interact with us. It was good to get some basics down, but the pronunciation subtleties were tough to grasp.
5pm meditation led by a volunteer or resident nun. Nothing here offered the serenity of a "meditation retreat" as the street outside was full of loud motorbikes and dogs, which made an hour long session even more of a challenge.
6pm Dinner for volunteers, prepared by volunteers. If we didn't cook, there was a cheap, simple restaurant we could buy dishes at for about $1. If we did it was rice again with whatever sides were around, and maybe a stew with vegetables. One night someone whipped up pasta, which was a welcome change.
7pm Volunteer meeting to discuss the day and plan tomorrow
8pm meditation
Each evening volunteers also gave English lessons, which were open to anyone, including residents and students from the university next door.
There was no attendance sheet or obligation to do any of these activities. Volunteers were free to do whatever felt right. At night we would turn in to basic volunteer dorms.
It was tough to see the condition of the more severe patients who needed to be at a real hospital, maybe even the ICU. This wasn't top notch medical care. But I had to remind myself people come here as a last resort, and what they receive is much better than the alternative. For those without friends, family, or money, that alternative was suffering on the street. Some may recover and move on; many are long term patients or here for hospice. I was most impressed that 10 years old, this place is still true to it's initial noble mission: to welcome and help anyone and everyone.
Meditation is encouraged as a part of the healing process and is widely practiced at Thabarwa. "Most of the people here are not healthy, not young, not rich, but their minds are healthy and clean, with fewer attachments than most people in society. This is the place of healthy and wealthy minds," says Ottamasara.
The streets were at time dirty by western standards, but in the last year proper daily garbage collection, and things have vastly improved since then. Things are always changing here, slowly but surely improving.
I don't think a single day at Thabarwa is enough to appreciate it. It's not an easy or especially comfortable place, it's tough to find continuity with the constant turnover of volunteers. But the place grows on you as you get to know it, the patients, and the other volunteers. After four nights I felt like I was getting to know the place and I can see why many stay for months and are drawn back once they leave. Thabarwa is a special place.
Ashin Ottamasara was a successful Burmese businessman who quit it all to become a monk at age 33. He opened his apartment as a meditation retreat, especially for other businessmen. Land was then donated and in addition to continuing meditation retreats, he decided to open the Thabarwa Center in 2007 to anyone in need. Anyone. It's become a home for all with no discrimination of age, condition, background, nationality, or religion. Orphans, the sick, elderly, homeless, hopeless, refugees, blind, deaf, disabled, and mentally ill are all welcome here with no payment, contract, judgement, or end date. This has resulted in a population of over 3,280 residents these days, including monks and yogis (those who practice meditation), and 20-30 foreign volunteers at any given time.
Early on in my travels looking out over the sea from Koh Samui, another traveller shared this place with me, and it's been on my Myanmar itinerary ever since. Six months later, after a couple days in Yangon, I took a taxi an hour outside of town to the Thabarwa Center.
Volunteers can show up at any time and stay indefinitely. Many came for a few days...a few months ago. They are encouraged to continuously do good deeds by practicing patience, tolerance, detachment, and meditation. There are just a few basic rules here related to doing no harm.
When I first read about this "center," I didn't envision something so large in scale. It's really more of a village that has grown from donated land. There are families who live in their original houses and Thabarwa has been built up around them. Word spread and more and more land has been donated; there are 40 some similar projects around southeast Asia. It's a crazy, lively place with lots of activity. There's a library onsite, a seamstress, fruit and snack stalls, and a shop that sells basic necessities. Motorbikes rumble through the streets alongside monks, novices, and nuns, hundreds of dogs, a few cows, a monkey, and at one point, a bear that showed up (that one had to stay in a cage). And of course all the residents who call this place home.
This is not a nursing home or homeless shelter, and no gates get locked up at night. Thabarwa means "natural," as in "a natural place to live." Food, shelter, and medical care are provided at no cost, such that some semblance of normal life can continue. There are residence halls, mostly dorms, each with a resident that serves as hall manager.
Others who need more attention are in one of two basic hospitals onsite. There's a head nurse onsite and her aids are kept busy, but there's no advanced equipment or critical care here. A local doctor is always booked and a rotating team of Korean acupuncture doctors stays busy every day. A dentist comes in a few days per week. Many volunteers have experience is physiotherapy, nursing, osteopathy, or pharmaceuticals. Others just chip in wherever they are needed.
A typical day for volunteers might go something like this:
5:15am yoga
6:30am breakfast. Rice, maybe with beans, and a pastry and banana on a good day.
7am help monks collect alms. At least ten trucks and buses, each with a dozen or so monks, head out to different neighborhoods around Yangon every morning. A taxi with a loudspeaker led the way, announcing our presence to the locals, as we walked behind and our bus followed. Residents came out of every house with offerings, typically a serving of rice, curry, and money, sometimes packaged goods and fresh fruit as well. For two hours we continuously collected these offerings. Rice went into five gallon buckets. Curries were collected in separate bowls but then dumped and mixed into slosh buckets in the bus. Packaged goods and fruits went into woven bags we carried, then emptied and sorted on the bus. What started as a half empty bus returned half full of monks, half full of food. This food, plus occasional produce donated from markets, fed the village every day.
Mornings could also be spent doing patient care in one of the two hospitals.
This is not a fully staffed facility, so volunteers help transport patients, change bandages, wash patients, and assist with physiotherapy.
12 noon lunch for volunteers (Burmese and foreign). This always consisted of rice--there's an industrial rice cooker that goes all day to supplement the alms in feeding over 3,000 mouths. Along with that was the aforementioned little bit of everything curry, which might have small whole fish and prawns, potatoes and beans. Far from the finest dining, but it filled our stomachs.
Afternoons were also spent visiting residence halls to "make them move." Without some encouragement, many residents hardly leave their beds. Bed sores are a big issue, so any movement we can encourage was good. Some halls took some warming up before getting interested in participating. Others lit up whenever we walked in. One woman couldn't participate "because she's blind." A volunteer took her arms and guided her through the gentle exercises. She loved it.
4pm Burmese class. One patient with very good English was interested in helping us learn some basics. A wheelchair-bound, disabled Muslim, he was enthusiastic, funny, and loved being able to get out of his room and interact with us. It was good to get some basics down, but the pronunciation subtleties were tough to grasp.
5pm meditation led by a volunteer or resident nun. Nothing here offered the serenity of a "meditation retreat" as the street outside was full of loud motorbikes and dogs, which made an hour long session even more of a challenge.
6pm Dinner for volunteers, prepared by volunteers. If we didn't cook, there was a cheap, simple restaurant we could buy dishes at for about $1. If we did it was rice again with whatever sides were around, and maybe a stew with vegetables. One night someone whipped up pasta, which was a welcome change.
7pm Volunteer meeting to discuss the day and plan tomorrow
8pm meditation
Each evening volunteers also gave English lessons, which were open to anyone, including residents and students from the university next door.
There was no attendance sheet or obligation to do any of these activities. Volunteers were free to do whatever felt right. At night we would turn in to basic volunteer dorms.
It was tough to see the condition of the more severe patients who needed to be at a real hospital, maybe even the ICU. This wasn't top notch medical care. But I had to remind myself people come here as a last resort, and what they receive is much better than the alternative. For those without friends, family, or money, that alternative was suffering on the street. Some may recover and move on; many are long term patients or here for hospice. I was most impressed that 10 years old, this place is still true to it's initial noble mission: to welcome and help anyone and everyone.
Meditation is encouraged as a part of the healing process and is widely practiced at Thabarwa. "Most of the people here are not healthy, not young, not rich, but their minds are healthy and clean, with fewer attachments than most people in society. This is the place of healthy and wealthy minds," says Ottamasara.
I don't think a single day at Thabarwa is enough to appreciate it. It's not an easy or especially comfortable place, it's tough to find continuity with the constant turnover of volunteers. But the place grows on you as you get to know it, the patients, and the other volunteers. After four nights I felt like I was getting to know the place and I can see why many stay for months and are drawn back once they leave. Thabarwa is a special place.