Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
I warn you, no one wins. And the children from the local school are
going to perform onstage. Each class has practiced for months. A
special arrangement—I believe you call them skits in the States. Not
to worry, it is quite all right to take photos.”
The fact that Walter said not to worry made Wendy wonder
whether she should. Each time she had seen the military police, she
had become afraid, thinking that her secret mission was evident on
her guilty-looking face, and they might spot her as an American in­
surgent. There was no way she would try to talk to anyone with
those creeps around. Not that anyone could speak English, anyway.
She whispered to Wyatt that she was sleepy and that maybe they
should stay behind and take a “nice long nap” together. “I have some
Nō -Dō z,” he offered. Wendy felt rebuffed. This was his answer to
her offering of love and wanton lust?
The two longboats motored into the lake, cut to the right, and
soon wove in and out of clumps of hyacinth and floating vegetable
gardens. A small river appeared and they took this tranquil route
past a shrubby shoreline, where women drew buckets of water and
poured them over their children.
I have long held the opinion that the Burmese are among the clean­
est people in the world. While they may live in conditions that are
impossible to keep spotless, they bathe themselves twice a day, often
by the river or lake, for there are no private baths for most. The
women wade in with their sarongs, the men in their longyis. The
younger children are not fettered by clothes. Bathing is a beautiful
necessity, a moment of peace, a cleansing of body and spirit. And
afterward, the bather is able to remain cooled through the heat of
the day and is dry by the time the cooking fires are lit.
Contrast this to the Tibetans. They bathe once a year and make a
big ceremony about it. Then again, the weather there is not con­
ducive to more frequent dousing. I admit to having let my usual
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