Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
the chalkboard before washing it clean. He was adept at learning,
and the teacher recognized this, and eventually allowed him to sit at
the back of the classroom. His English grew to be as beautiful as that
of his employer’s children, with the right amount of crispness at the
ends of words and roundness within. When he was twenty-seven, he
was recruited as an interpreter for the British Raj. His command of
the languages did not win him alliances with other tribes, however.
In one remote outpost, neither the British nor the Burman presence
was tolerated, and one day a hail of wild gunfire spattered trees and
bushes, birds and monkeys, and Walter’s great-great-grandfather. It
was amazing that no one else was killed.
As compensation for the interpreter’s death, his son was sent to
study at a secular school for native boys, run by British educators.
Thirty years later, this same boy, now grown, returned to that school
as its first Burmese headmaster. While the academics were first-rate,
the headmaster was just as proud that the school’s cricket team was
undefeated among other native schools. One day, the team was in­
vited to play against its British counterpart. The foreigners sat on the
shaded side, in seats under awnings. The Burmese were seated in the
sun. It was an especially hot day, and when the Burmese team won,
the headmaster cried out, “Huzzah! Huzzah!” and then collapsed
and died. Likely it was heatstroke, but that is not how the story of
Walter’s great-grandfather was told. By the evidence of his last
words, he died of English joy.
The son of the headmaster also found work in education. He
taught in schools established by the missionaries who had flocked to
Burma once the Japanese were run out. Through the mission school,
he met a Burmese nurse with bright shining eyes who worked at the
surgery. She, too, spoke impeccable English, having been raised since
toddlerhood under the guardianship of a British couple, whose auto­
mobile accelerated for no apparent reason, then struck and killed her
parents, who had been their devoted servants. One day, the nurse and
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