Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
ing by then that she should have waited to see if she could find some­
thing nicer, and at a better price, elsewhere.
Wendy and Wyatt had gone looking for the mysterious woman
and wound up in another corner of the market. Wyatt decided to
take pictures. A group of boys with freshly shaved heads walked
by, wearing the garb of acolyte monks, a single piece of cloth the
color of deeply saturated orange-red chilies, which had been draped,
tucked, and wound around their thin brown bodies. Their feet were
bare, and they walked about as new beggars. One of them shyly held
out a palm cupped into a begging bowl. Another boy slapped down
his hand. The boys giggled. The monks were allowed to beg for their
food, but only early in the morning. They went to the market before
dawn with bowls and baskets, and shopkeepers and customers
loaded them with rice, vegetables, pickled goods, peanuts, and noo­
dles, all the while thanking them for allowing them this opportunity
to increase their merit, merit being the good-deed bank account by
which Buddhists improved their chances in future lives. These food
supplies were taken back to the monastery, where the novices, or­
dained monks, and abbots lived, and a breakfast was made of the
haul, a meal that had to last them the entire day.
But boys will be boys, and they were as curious as any to see what
the foreigners would give if asked. Only a week before, they had been
ordinary nine-year-olds, playing chinlon with their caneballs, swim­
ming in the river, and taking care of their younger siblings. But
the day had come when their parents consigned them to the local
monastery to serve a voluntary course of time, from two weeks to
several years, as all boys of Buddhist families did. Their heads were
shaved during a family ceremony, their locks caught on a piece of
white silk, and upon promising that they would obey the rules of
Theravada Buddhism, they took off their clothes, donned the simple
cloth of the monks, and became sons of the Buddha. This was their
initiation into becoming human. A Burmese family once invited me
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