How often do I ever meet any ambassador from any country? Well, until a few weeks ago it was never. A few days into our trip we all went over to the new U.S. embassy in Yangon and met with Mr. Larry Dinger, who is the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires for Myanmar. Because of various policy disagreements the U.S. government has with Myanmar they don’t want to say they have an ambassador in Myanmar. The post is not vacant, however. While I suppose he would not officially say this, Mr. Dinger is the U.S. ambassador in all ways except the name.
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.
