Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
. . .
M Y DEAR FRIEND VERA wrote the book on self-reliance that she
had been hashing out in her mind during her time in the jungle.
Thinking about it had kept her going, had given her a focus. Putting
her thoughts to paper freed her of some burden she never knew she
carried. She wondered whether she had captured what her great-
grandmother had written in her book, the one she never found.
Vera wrote about the funny techniques she came up with to sur­
vive mentally. When she felt she could not bear to walk another step,
she conjugated verbs in French. She had always wanted to go to
France and spend a whole month there. Years earlier, she had signed
up for French classes, but she was always too busy to go. She could
study in the jungle, where it served no use except to practice it. As
she conjugated, she had no room in her brain to think about fear or
discomfort or the futility of asking, Why me? “Je tombe de la mon­
tagne,” she had recited. “Je tombais de la montagne. Je tomberai de
la montagne.”
And then she came to the uncomfortable questions. She had once
been so sure of what she meant by helping others. Wendy had
wanted to give Tibet back to the Tibetans. And Vera argued in turn
that you had to give up idealism and make the Tibetans self-reliant.
You had to find them jobs. Her intention was to make them strong.
Her organization tackled social problems in exactly that way.
But how did you know whether your intention would help, or
whether it would only lead to worse problems? Sanctions or engage­
ment? How could anyone know which approach would work? Who
could guarantee it? And if it failed, who suffered the consequences?
Who took responsibility? Who would undo the mess? Would anyone
be around to care?
No one had any answers. And it made Vera want to shout and cry.
She did not write that in her book. Instead she recalled the night
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