Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
don’t even know that there’s a history to the names and that others
must make a deliberate choice.
As for myself, I say Burma because it’s been my habit for too long.
I say SLORC because it is one syllable and easier to pronounce than
S-P-D-C. I say Rangoon, because I’d have to think a second or two
longer to remember the other. I am too old to change with the times.
But enough of this prattle, and back to the bus.
WALTER AND B ENNIE disembarked and greeted the border police.
The new driver, Kjau, or Mr. Joe, as my friends called him, stepped
out to smoke a cheroot. The authorities at the customs-and­
immigration shack treated Walter, a fellow Burmese, with suspicion.
But customs people, no matter the country, are like that. There are
never any jovial greetings of welcome and enjoy yourselves. Letter by
letter, the names and addresses of each of our twelve visitors had to
be compared with a set of approved documents, before being hand­
written in an enormous ledger, and then hand-copied into an identi­
cal ledger. This was bureaucracy before computers, before carbon
copies even. Dear God, this could take hours, Bennie realized.
Esmé placed Pup-pup in her baseball cap, where the sweet thing
slept soundly, its tummy full of rice gruel. Marlena had a scarf at the
ready, in case their new canine cargo needed to be hidden from the
authorities. Actually, she needn’t have worried. In Burma, dogs are
not contraband, and there is no quarantine; however, getting them
into hotels might be another matter. Harry sat beside Marlena, his
right hand holding her left. It was a small gesture of affection, a sym­
bol of attachment. He had won the privilege to touch her after din­
ner the night before.
“Marlena, dear, would you like a mint?” Harry now asked as the
three of them sat like monkeys on a log in the back of the bus. In his
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