There really is very little going on in Myanmar in the way of NGO involvement, trade (remember the sanctions) or tourism from the West. John Badgley first told me this, but I since had to look it up from original sources to prove it to someone else. In each of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, the total spending, per person, by all outside governments and NGO’s for social welfare of any kind is about fifty dollars per person per year. In Myanmar it is under two and a half dollars.

Not much is happening here, so when something does it is noticed. I suppose for the same reason whatever we can do here, even if small by many measuring sticks, has a large relative impact. Not much is happening in one way, but for us a lot is happening. It’s all relative.

So who else did we meet? One place that receives books and help from us is the ICE-Youth (Information Center for Every Youth) library in Yangon (see video). This has been running since 2002 and is staffed completely by volunteer students. It has both English and Burmese language books. The photo shows the library staff. At any given time normally only three or four of them would be on duty. What kind of students volunteer to run a library? Each year a test similar to our SAT test is given to 300,000 graduating students in Myanmar. Meeting us there were the students who placed first, second and fourth in this test. I took the third photo on the right showing the top top of a small cart near the front desk. It shows what many of these students and others who come into this library are thinking about.

Myanmar Egress is an association which teaches as well as coordinates activities of students and graduates in Yangon. Students in the class pictured are studying international economics. Immediately after cyclone Nargis aid was delayed in getting to the victims. This is the organization that first got aid to the south, and then quickly trained other NGO’s how to operate in the south and cooperate with the Myanmar government. Their English language library is important to them. The librarians pulled a number of books off the shelves, and there on the inside cover was our stamp.

We visited several other no less impressive organizations helping to move Myanmar into the international community. One thing the people in all these organizations agree on is that education and knowledge is the key, with knowledge and education in English being a big part of that, and our books will form a key part of that.

The round table was held on the 31st at the Park Royal hotel in Yangon. In addition to John, Thant, Hector, Sue and myself several other board members from Myanmar came along with a lady named Ju (blue dress) who is currently Myanmar’s most famous author. Thant’s father U Thaw Kaung, to Sue’s right, moderated the meeting. He is on the board or heading up any non governmental foundation or organization involved with libraries on the national level in Myanmar that I am aware of. Dr. May Moe Nwe, part owner of the bookstore along with Thant is at the right. She is also a board member and secretary of Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation. This meeting summarized accomplishments so far and planned our activities through the end of this year. John describes it more fully here.

I need to qualify what I said at the beginning of the previous post. I actually have met and am now friends with Derek Tonkin the former British ambassador to Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia over a span of many years. I met him two years ago. What country do you suppose we were in when we met?

We discussed our book donations to Myanmar and its importance in helping the country to move into the modern, largely English speaking, international community better. While the U.S. does maintain trade sanctions against Myanmar, they have granted our organization an exception, and at various levels, including Mr. Dinger’s, have been most willing to do what they can to help us bring in our books.

The new embassy was certainly impressive, although I have to admit it is the first embassy of any country that I have been in. I wish I could have taken some pictures but that is not permitted at all. I looked on the internet and could not find any there either. If Mr. Dinger reads this maybe he’ll send me some that I can use here.

We met several other people there and all were most helpful.

Near the end of our visit we discovered that many children’s books that Hector had donated to the Asia foundation had in fact found their way to the Embassy library where we found them sitting in boxes on the floor waiting to be unpacked. From there they will be distributed to other parts of Myanmar with some going to the American Center library in Yangon. I would have taken a picture to show you but…

That evening we met Mr. Dinger along with several other ambassadors and some heads of large corporations still operating in Myanmar at a dinner. This was at an impressive restaurant at a very nice hotel. I sat next to the ambassador of another country, with yet another ambassador next to her. Sue sat next to Mr. Dinger on down the table. I will release one detail about Mr. Dinger. If you ever have him over for dinner serve sushi and you will have one happy camper.

Each of the Nargis Library board members spoke briefly to explain their connection to our organization and why we think it is so important. John talked about overall strategy and how our books and more education will impact Myanmar for the better. Hector spoke about book supplies and what books we can bring to Myanmar. I talked about the tremendous opportunity I have found in our organization in that a very small amount of money can make a tremendous difference for an entire country. This is because we 1). have a free supply of very good quality books from Thrift Books and 2) American President shipping lines is transporting our large containers of books to Myanmar at zero cost. We are bringing high quality books into Myanmar for about four or five cents apiece. Finally 3) we have many people not the least of whom are the Bhuddhist monks of Myanmar who are willing to help us distribute and house books at little or no cost to us.

I won’t say it was a gala event because none of us wore a suit or a tie and the ladies, while dressed quite nicely, were not in any kind of formal attire. Still, it was a most interesting evening.