Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
students. But Wyatt forgot that detail, for in front of him was a cool
bunch of boys in cinnabar-colored robes. “Look at those faces,” he
said to Wendy. “They’re amazing.”
Wendy would have described them as unwashed. The boys had
dirt on their cheeks, goo in their noses, and greenish chunks in the
corners of their eyes. Quite a few of them had sores on their lips.
Wyatt turned on his digital camera and took a young monk’s photo.
He showed the boys the still frame on the back. The boys pointed to
one another, laughed, and exclaimed in their own language, “Look
how ugly you look!” “No, look how ugly you look!”
The two lovers continued their walk into the forest. It was dark
and cool in here. They passed blackened circles on the ground. What
is that, they wondered aloud, before seeing a group of men farther
ahead. One was stirring the coals of an improvised barbecue, the
hairy leg of a pig roasting, hoof and all. As they drew closer, they
saw two men standing, one wearing a wooden yoke from which a
pair of car batteries dangled on a rope. What in the world were those
for? The man looked as if he were pretending to be an electrified ox.
Wendy and Wyatt smiled as they passed them; the men seemed em­
barrassed and looked away.
Wendy and Wyatt did not recognize them, the pilots of the long­
boats, Black Spot and Salt, who had taken them across the shallow
waters of Inle Lake. To most tourists, the people of Burma were in­
distinguishable beyond male and female, young and old, attractive
and not. I am not being critical. It is just an observation. I am the
same way with most people, regardless of nationality. But after to­
morrow, my friends would come to recognize these men all too well.
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