Nargis Library Recovery

NARGIS LIBRARY RECOVERY PROJECT NEWSLETTER #9, NOVEMBER 2009

I promised a newsletter at the beginning of each month, but was delayed by our tour of delta libraries and our directors’ round table on October 31, then another week of meetings in Yangon. Fortunately, Jack Simpson filed photos and notes.  Here is my take on NLR events since our last newsletter.

Thanks to the generosity of two corporations—Thrift Books and American President Lines—we are sending large numbers of books to Myanmar; our cost works out to a nickel a book. Our operation holds promise of continuing this efficiency for the next two years. The issue facing us now is how to safely house and distribute these books for potential readers, so our meetings & round table discussion focused on reconstruction of libraries. Criteria for rebuilding or expanding a library includes: 1] a pre-existing committee or board of townspeople sustaining the library with donated land for the structure and sufficient funding to pay the salary of one or more librarians and the utilities; 2] volunteers willing to assist the librarian; and 3] evidence in the community that the library is needed and will be well-used.

Dr. Thant Thaw Kaung arranged for Sue and Jack Simpson, Hector Rivas, Thant and I to meet groups in the delta with these criteria in mind; Exotissimo Tours handled our logistics and gained permission from the Home Ministry for our travel. On both substance and arrangement our hosts were very successful. Travel was slow & bumpy on the unpaved road, but the few local police guards stationed alongside bridges waved us through. We did stop for a few village and town full-moon celebrants who shouted midst gala drum/horn music for donations to local monasteries and good causes. Our trip took us past miles of ripening paddy in huge fields bordered by drain canals all the way to Pyapon, Bogalay and upriver to several villages.

We left Winner Inn in Yangon at 6 am and reached Pyapon around 10, where we visited Saya Zawgyi Centenary Library. Zawgyi, a writer of national consequence, was honored by his community who dedicated this library him after he returned from Yangon and donated his books. The president of the Library Committee is U Myint Aung, a local businessman who greeted us with his three-member library staff. The following afternoon in route back to Yangon we stopped to take photos of other board members, who also volunteer to serve patrons, shelve books and raise funds; meanwhile, that first day we drove on to reach Bogalay by noon and check into a very non-tourist, three-story inn, a huge relief to get out of our mini-bus however spartan our quarters!

Our host in Bogalay was U Aung Nyunt, brother of Daw Ah Win, librarian adviser to our project. Aung Nyunt and his wife, Daw Kyin Nu, operate five sawmills along their river which is one of the Irrawaddy’s many outlets. He is a cancer survivor weakened by chemo-therapy; however Daw Khin Nu’s huge energy compensated for his subdued condition. After serving us a wonderful delta lunch, including laphet and my favored balachaung, she led us upriver in a locally built motorboat to Myin Ka Gone village, a two-hour ride, during which we passed hundreds of similar craft, both large and small. These delta towns are enshrined on the water. We met teachers and a librarian who already are using our donated books; they now hope for a rebuilt library adjacent to their school, which serves several thousand villagers up and down the river. I remind the reader that community and school libraries are not a responsibility of the government; to exist they must be privately funded by local donors.

Our night in small rooms on very firm mattresses was undisturbed by insects or town celebrants, at dawn I was out walking the main street in search of Burmese coffee and that delicious hot stick of donut-like fry bread served in every teashop. As first customer I squatted in my longyi by a little table under a tarp left from cyclone relief; within minutes a dozen locals were doing the same. Few spoke as we sipped & shared appreciation waking to another day; suddenly I visualized all as survivors surrounded by ghosts of drowned family members. Eighteen months before the cyclone had raged from 6 pm to 4 am, devastating towns, obliterating dozens of villages and killing 140,000 that dark night. Yet, here we sat where water surged from the river and wind collapsed walls & blew off roofs, with no trace of wind, water or mire that had been so daunting.

Tomorrow I will upload a few of many photos taken by Ashin Dhammapiya, a monk who repeatedly led recovery teams into the delta, the first within days of the catastrophe. He is now helping our project and contributed his photos revealing the speed of recovery during those critical first four months. More on this extraordinary monk later.

In the morning Daw Kyin Nu led us to an important event she arranged, a donation ceremony for our books at the Bogalay Community Centre. Jack Simpson already has filmed and posted his impressions. We all were moved by the support of town elders, senior monks, and hundreds of school children who likely appreciated release from school to participate. On the heels of that formal event, we visited two monasteries: the Mingala Kantha Monastic School led by Sayadaw Bandanda Konnanka, and the Magkin Yeiktha Kyaung led by Sayadaw Bandanda Konnasarya. Over 600 primary level students are enrolled; many are orphans from the storm.

Sue Simpson expressed her appreciation to the children [and assembled monks] by springing to her feet and leading the kids in reading and exercises designed to stir their spirits. It was a brilliant display of effective communication by an experienced teacher with no command of local language but with mastery of a child’s world. Sue herself was so moved by her experience that she wants to bring college students from Baylor University, a Baptist college in Texas she supports, for three month internships to teach English in delta libraries. Thant and I were hard-pressed to explain how complicated it is to bring foreign teachers into Burmese schools at this time; which seemed counter-intuitive to Sue since our trip into the fearsome delta progressed so seamlessly: no military was in sight and we were welcomed with open arms by local authorities.

Bogalay is one of the larger delta towns with a teachers training college established three decades ago. The Principal, U Mya Kyaw, led our tour of his tiny library, several classrooms and the computer–training laboratory. All 72 desktops were in use, save two that were broken-down; neither instructors nor students looked up as we circled the classroom, they had no time to waste. This collapsed an enduring myth, that the government is opposed to students using computers and the internet. In this distant town, as well as in larger cities I visited in recent years, private companies prosper by teaching business & government employees and students to access the internet highway.

Before leaving Pyapon on our final leg back to Yangon, we visited U Myint Aung’s primary school, a tidy six-room building that survived the storm. It has need for a small library adjacent to the school, a similar situation to what we discovered in Myint Ka Gone village. This mix of public-private education with a library to serve both students and the community may be commonplace in the delta where libraries function as private institutions operating near schools on land donated by the local community.

We returned to Winner Inn, hot showers and a lovely dinner hosted by U Thaw Kaung and family. The following morning Thant joined us to meet the US chief of mission, Larry Dinger. This was an especially busy occasion as the State Department’s mission to Nay Pyi Daw arrived and expected in depth briefings about every feature of Burmese society. But Ambassador Dinger gave us our full hour. Each NLR director described their involvement in our project, especially moving to me was Hector Rivas’ recounting of how and why he and his corporation decided to make such a major commitment. Sue Simpson described her Hyderabad slum project, Jack Simpson gave a summary of his street-children’s recovery program in Nam Rang, near the Cambodian border, they then explained their decision to help Nargis Library Recovery. Dr. Thant Thaw Kaung, our only Burmese board member, delved into our long relationship—back to when he was a schoolboy and I was his father’s colleague—then revealed his optimism about support from the Tripartite Core Group, chaired by Ambassador Robert Chua. Larry Dinger was engaged by our presentation and arranged for a meeting with the US economics and commerce attaché, Marc Porter, who hosted Thant and me at lunch; he also asked Richard Mei, Public Affairs Officer, to arrange for my lecture at the American Center several days later. The attitude in the embassy towards support for private initiatives seemed transformed from my previous visits after 1990, when the elections were held but not recognized by the junta.

While in Yangon we visited and were briefed by founders of four additional libraries NLR has already helped with book donations: the Esme Foundation’s school directed by Ko Nay Min; the ICE-Youth Library led by very bright college students; Myanmar Egress, a program designed by Yangon business leaders; and Nelson International School, a private elementary English-language program with over 1,000 students, most from minority ethnic groups. Nargis wreaked a lot of damage in Yangon, which sits in the upper portion of the Irrawaddy delta, yet these private educational programs have carried on with great success. We are privileged to be associated with each of them.

To be continued!

Our project benefits from collaboration with other NGOs restoring libraries and schools in villages, towns and cities decimated by Cyclone Nargis. The Esmee Foundation contributed this school building in Kyundarmin village, 45 minutes by boat from Pyapon, a town midway between Yangon and Bogalay, which is a transfer point for many of our books reaching delta libraries. These photos were taken recently as our childrens books and writing materials were unpacked and distributed to children the first day of school.

Three directors of NRL [Hector Rivas, Jack Simpson and John Badgley] join Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation directors on October 31 at Park Royal Hotel, Yangon for a day-long discussion about our joint project. U Thaw Kaung will moderate discussion as noted in the attached agenda. Dr. Thant Thaw Kaung will report on how staff of Myanmar Book Centre and librarian volunteers unloaded, sorted, selected and distributed over 100,000 books thus far, and the additional 100,000 scheduled to arrive by year’s end. How that work is accomplished, how libraries are selected to receive our assistance, and proposed improvements in our program will take up our morning discussion.

We hope to begin funding repair and reconstruction of structures in 2010, which is a very different task than replacing books. Discussion of how to raise funds for that purpose, criteria to use as we select libraries, and how we will contract workers to rebuild each library will take most of the afternoon.

NRL directors will visit a number of libraries in Pyapon and Bogalay Townships that we are assisting on October 27-28, then return to Yangon to survey libraries we helped this year, or hope to assist in 2010. We will also meet with program administrators of other INGO Nargis relief projects and embassy officials supervising distribution of the Tripartite Core Group funds [UN, ASEAN and Myanmar government].

Our November post will be delayed so all this activity can be incorporated.

MYANMAR BOOK AID AND PRESERVATION FOUNDATION’S AGENDA
ROUNDTABLE MEETING WITH NARGIS LIBRARY RECOVERY DIRECTORS

Date : 31st October 2009 (Saturday)
Place : Park Royal Hotel, Shwedagon Pagoda Road
9:00 am Opening Speech U Thaw Kaung
9:10 am Introduction to directors of MBAPF and donors Dr. Thant Thaw Kaung
9:20 am Explanation of the Program Details Dr. John Badgley
10:00 am Coffee Break
10:30 am Criteria for selecting libraries for book donation & book replacement subects Dr. Thant Thaw Kaung
11:15 am Future fund raising program John Badgley
12:00 noon Lunch
1:30 pm Review of visits to libraries in delta & Yangon Jack/Hector/John/Thant
2:00 pm Future Criteria of rebuilding libraries Thant/ John
2:30pm Coffee Break
2: 45pm Winding up and general discussion
3:00pm Closing Speech U Thaw Kaung
*A dozen Burmese librarians, publishers, authors and business representatives will participate. Their commitments have made our success thus far possible.

NARGIS LIBRARY RECOVERY PROJECT NEWSLETTER #8, OCTOBER 2009

Our fourth container of books ships from Seattle October 9, with Thrift Books donating 30,000 children’s, 10,000 trade hard/soft back NYT bestsellers, plus 5,000 reference and ‘how-to’ titles and 2,000 cookbooks, plus 3,000 academic texts donated by University of Washington Libraries. As noted in previous postings, 10-15% of these books are sold through charitable book fairs and Myanmar Book Centre stores in Yangon and Mandalay to raise funds for Burmese languages texts and study aids. These were distributed to 83 school libraries in the delta in 2009. By year’s end we will have dispatched 200,000 books to Yangon to distribute or sell at charitable book fairs, which have already raised 13 million kyats.

As we gear up for 2010, our initial goals are being refined by directors of the two NGOs working on this project—Nargis Library Recovery and Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation. Libraries are learning of our effort and stepping forward to seek specific help, such as expanding their facilities, improving their equipment, and training volunteers to staff their service desks. Last month I described the remarkable success of ICE-Youth Library; this month we will meet their leaders and visit a dozen libraries in Pyapon and Bogalay townships, some reachable only by boat.

Our second annual roundtable is October 31 where we will establish criteria for selecting libraries to help, and consider how to induce local libraries to more systematically improve collections and collaborate in rehabilitating damaged structures. Anecdotal reports of ‘books on wheels’ in several regions are heartening, I hope we can learn from local initiatives to use elsewhere, thereby strengthening the entire country’s library system.

This project is entirely funded by individuals thus far, although I continue to contact larger donors and stakeholders within Myanmar and abroad. While corporate book donations and transport have been vital to our success, we would enjoy no progress without cash donations of families. Most of our management costs are defrayed by volunteers, within Myanmar as well as in NRL, however expansion of our effort to meet the needs of more delta town and village libraries requires additional funding.
I am heartened by the spate of diplomatic exchanges the past couple months, from the highest levels on both sides, to proposal to send additional humanitarian aid to sustain INGOs already operating in Myanmar. Both EU governments and the US seem to be taking seriously the critique that Myanmar receives less per capita development and humanitarian assistance than any comparable country in the world. Assigning blame for this situation is not constructive at this time, but enhancing library programs is crucial to improving the lives of all Burmese. Bringing knowledge into local libraries is our passion; we cannot do it alone, please lend a hand. Consider joining the few who are making such a difference for so many.

Call 425-697-5414, or e-mail john@myanmarbookaid.org, or write me at 9911 220th St. SW, Edmonds, WA 98020.

John Badgley, Executive Director
Nargis Library Recovery

Survey of Post-Nargis Self-reliant Organizations. From Yangon weeklies, by Dr. Than Than Win

1)Mobile Library Lending Books Free of Charge -Weekly Eleven

, 1 July 2009, p. 30
Kambawza Youth Self-Reliance Library on East Myopat Road has been sending 200 books every two months to twenty one small libraries in townships, wards, villages, monasteries, and charity libraries in southern Shan State and Kayah State. The program is called Sharing mobile book boxes. It started in 2007. and the Library now has fifteen thousand English books and over five thousand Burmese books for circulation. Transport is by bus, taxi, motor cycle, bicycle, and boat at no charge. Books are loaned for two months, then returned at which time they receive two hundred more books they chose from our collection.

2) Thayet Town Citizens Contribute Money, Pave Their Roads – Weekly Eleven

, 8 July 2009, p. 31
Thabbathudammayon No. (3) road, Aung Thiri, in the southern ward in the west side of Thayet, is 1,200 feet long and 12 feet wide. Mud and puddles accumulate in the rainy season, making it difficult for monks, students, and local residents to use that road. The Abbot of the Paydabin Monastery and donors from the ward contributed 396,000 kyats and needed rocks, earth and labor to repair the road.

3) Roads Paved with Hair - News Watch Weekl

y, 19th July 2009, p. 14
Fifty women have cut their hair and sold it to raise funds to build a road from the west side of Monywa to Alaungdaw Katthapa, which would cost 10 million kyats. Traditional Burmese women consider their long hair as most valuable, therefore this action is highly respected.
Also in Lower Chindwin Division, the women from a village near Mandalay cut their hair and sold it to Chinese wig makers, to raise over 8 million kyats to repair local roads and bridges.

4) Taunggyi Citizens Dig Deep Wells Where Water Is Scarce – Weekly Eleven

, 8 July 2009, p. 31
Taunggyi citizens [Shan States] are digging deep wells in neighborhoods where water is scare. The cost of each well varies from 600,000 kyats to six million kyats, depending on their depth, which can be as deep as 200 – 300 feet.

5) Myaing Village, Ywa-Ngan Township: 400 Houses electrified with Own Hydro Project – Weekly Eleven

8 July 2009, p. 32
Myaing Village, Southern Shan States, has only four hundred houses but developed its own hydro-power station. Their power is drawn from a small stream about two miles north of the village. The villagers worked five years to complete the project & electrify the entire village. Cash for the project was paid by users with a tax of 1000 kyats for a two-foot florescent bulb and 2000 kyats for one television, and 1000 kyats for a VCD player. [1000 kyats = $1 US] The tax sustains the project and pays for street lights. To complete the project, each household contributed an average of 10 weeks labor.

6) Ninety Percent of Old Trees Affected by Cyclone Nargis are Green Again – Weekly Eleven

, 8 July 2009, p. 9
Nine hundred and sixty one trees older than fifty years that were blown down during Cyclone Nargis but not chopped up and carted away, were propped up by local villagers near Yangon. Ninety percent of those older trees are green again, only ten percent remain weak.

7) Funeral Assistance Association Helps Families Dispose of 80,000 Bodies Free of Charge – The Voice

- Monday, August 10 – 16, 2009, supplement p. iv
Our domestic Funeral Assistance Association, a famous NGO, has helped dispose of over 80,000 corpses since Cyclone Nargis. Increasing numbers of families are seeking their help. Currently, at No. 13/A Bohmu Ba Htoo Road, North Dagon Township, they have opened a clinic called “Thukha”, built in a temporary tent to help families with funeral matters. They plan to build a hall for patients to rest, with a park for funeral buses, and a canteen for families. As funeral costs escalate, more people are asking for help from this association.

This month was spent organizing ourselves, sorting our books, fund-raising, establishing our new Nargis business account, and setting goals for the fiscal year, commencing September 1.

Our directors met July 18 at Allen/Jackie Bjergo’s Bitterroot ranch near Missoula, David/Carolyn Leuthold drove west on I-90 from their ranch near Molt, Montana, Jack/Sue Simpson flew from Hyderabad to their Coeur d’Alene home, then drove east on I-90; I bussed the same highway from Edmonds, Washington to Spokane to meet my nephew who demonstrated his energy-efficient car the last 200 miles over the continental divide on five gallons of gas. Other forms of high-tech enabled Thant Thaw Kaung to participate with e-mailed proxy votes from Yangon, and Dave Richards teleconferenced from Lake Forest Park, Washington. Our largest donor, Hector Rivas, CEO of Thrift Books, was rafting an obscure river with his family, out of range by cell-phone, but not out of mind for he is heavily committed by serving on our new Finance Committee with Dave Richards and Jack Simpson.

We considered no less than 22 motions to establish Nargis Library Recovery [NLR, henceforth] as an independent non-profit business incorporated in the State of Washington. Our mission is unchanged, but our focus has intensified, now that two containers of books have arrived, been sorted and now distributed or sold to purchase more appropriate Burmese language books for libraries in Delta towns and villages. Our third container leaves Seattle August 13, with another 50,000 books.

Our intention is to help Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation [MBAPF] select and supervise a first library to remodel or rebuild to meet the need of a local library board. We want it to be an example for new and larger donors as to what our two NGOs can accomplish in collaboration with local libraries. Members of MBAPF have contacts with community library boards and are proposing which are best prepared to use our funding

NLR will support & strengthen MBAP. To serve that purpose, we will hold a second Yangon Roundtable in mid-October to enable our Finance Committee to meet MBAPF directors, who will convey its current goals and intentions. 18 months after the cyclone, what is feasible, and over what period of time? Our Finance Committee is very goal-oriented; they want to plan for what can be accomplished with a certain amount of money, over a certain period of time, by listening and learning.

NLR hopes to fund at least one rebuilding or upgrading project within the next six months. But we need to walk around & talk to the local library board of one or more libraries to better understand their challenges. We may be well-advised to focus on Yangon student needs at the outset, as the demand for scientific knowledge and world affairs is very high in this city of six million people, many of whom are migrants from the countryside.

Thinking of the demand from students for up-to-date books and periodicals, I am impressed by the student-run Ice Youth Library in downtown Yangon. They already accepted some of our books and we may help them expand their capacities, perhaps by renting more space and adding shelving, reading chairs, and more laptops. Journal subscriptions are not what NLR directors have been thinking of, we are focused on getting books into libraries destroyed by the cyclone; however, the challenge of meeting the need of more motivated independent students will be discussed at our roundtable. MBAPF directors are qualified to evaluate their country’s library priorities; NLR wants to fund their top priority.

I find relevant a wonderful book, Imagining India, by Nandan Nilekani, CEO of Infosys. Many of his observations are true for Myanmar as well. One MBAPF director, Dr. Aung Maw, is also a highly skilled IT developer, who for years has seen Burmese youth as Nilekani sees India’s school kids. The hidden strength of Myanmar is their youth’s capacity to change. Nilekani acknowledges that India’s rural population has been a drag on economic growth; but because young brains can be changed via IT, so their society can change quite rapidly. There is hope because that is now happening across India. Our project is exactly what the doctor ordered for Myanmar, for the same reason!

Allen/Jackie Bjergo's Montana ranch hosts Nargis Director's meeting

Our container of 50,000 books landed in Yangon’s pouring rain, then trucked to Myanmar Book Centre and eased up tightly against the building. A forklift slipped two long tongs under each pallet, raising it inches off the floor, swiveling quickly and dashing into the storage room where day laborers clambered inside each giant gaylord box and passed books to waiting hands which deftly sorted them into subject categories. An efficient operation, it exhausted our volunteers and paid staff. They must sub-divide the great stacks into numerous smaller piles for bagging and distribution directly to town and village libraries, and set-aside books suitable for the upcoming charity fair to raise funds for Myanmar language titles. Thant assesses the books as being in good condition, unspoiled by two months of sitting in a container exposed to the elements during monsoon season.

Other happy news! A measure of our project is to consider our reach via blog and newsletters in terms of contributors:

• Auburn, WA– Hector Rivas, CEO. Thrift Books
• Bangkok–Correspondents Club
• Idaho—Jack and Sue Simpson
• Ithaca, NY—Greg Green, SEA librarian & Cornell Southeast Asia Publications
• Lake Forest Park, WA—Dave & Sharon Richards
• Lynnwood, WA– Corey Urbach, Manager, Halfprice Books
• Montana/Missouri—David/Carolyn Leuthold
• Munich– the Flea Market Ladies
• Seattle—Carolyn Aamot librarian and University of Washington Library
• Singapore—American President Lines, Myanmar Mariners Association & Lya Badgley
• Vienna–Daw Ah Win—UN librarian
• Washington, DC—Matthew Daley, US-ASEAN Business Council, Andrew Rice, Delegate,Federation of United Nations Associations
• Yangon— Myanmar Book Centre & Bernard Pe Win, plus over 100 anonymous donors at our February book fair

American President Line — Our newest corporate donor

American President Line has generously donated cargo space from Seattle to Yangon for six containers carrying 300,000 books!  This is a wonderful addition to our supply chain for delivering the more than 1,000,000 books already donated to NLR in queue for delivery to libraries in Myanmar.

Administrative updates

• Nargis Library Recovery is now an NGO incorporated in the State of Washington.  Our relationship with the Institute of the Rockies ends with our own 501-c-3 status, which we expect at year’s end.
• Director’s nominated include John H. Badgley Ph.d, Dr. Thant Thaw Kaung, David Leuthold Ph.d/CarolynLeuthold MA; Jack Simpson Ph.d, Dave Richards, Hector Rivas, and Allen Bjergo Ph.d

Captain Myo Myint Aung collected $1400S from fellow mariners for our project this January, here is his response to our blog today. Life has not been gentle in Singapore, or Myanmar—

June 30, 2009—Sorry for a long pause. Fully agreed with your comment. Knowledge is important and propagation of knowledge is more important. Libraries can bring knowledge beyond schools.

I have been busy these days but I read every email you send and forward to my circle of friends. Times are tough for everyone here, Just a week ago, one of the ship management companies went bankrupt. Some 2000 Burmese officers and crew working on their ships face unpaid wages and loss of jobs. Friends at management level in the Singapore office risk losing their jobs, even with the recent slight economic recovery….international trading is slow, as is shipping.

I hope Obama and his team’s stimulus package takes effect soon so we get out of this difficult time. The Singapore government says that unless US and EU economies gain momentum, we have no chance of early economic recovery in export-oriented countries like Singapore. And right now, we are in the middle of an H1N1 scare. No one has died from H1N1 in Singapore but we have over 500 positive cases and the number increases daily. I am also down with flu – but thank God it is not H1N1 , just seasonal viral flu.

Thanks again for your great work and your team- from Myanmar and abroad–especially in the US.
I will do my best to help this great work..from time to time, as I can. Brgds/Myo
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From: myo myint aung
Sent: Tuesday, 23 June 2009 4:58:30
AIDs from Fruit stall @ Waterloo Street, Singapore

Never knew the spread of AIDS is so powerful. Now better not buy ‘already cut’ fruits. Cut your own fruit and be safe! A 10 year old boy ate pineapple about 15 days back, and fell sick the day he ate it. When he had his health checked… doctors diagnosed that he had AIDS. His parents couldn’t believe it… Then the entire family went under a checkup…. none of them suffered from AIDs. So the doctors checked again with the boy, asking if he had eaten out…The boy said ‘yes’. He had pineapple before the evening he became ill. Immediately a team from the hospital went to the pineapple vendor to check. They found the seller had cut his finger while cutting the pineapple; his blood had spread into the fruit. When they had his blood checked….the guy was suffering from AIDS. But he was NOT aware; unfortunately the boy now suffers from it.
…………………………
When I first learnt about HIV and AIDS it was early 1983 from TIME magazine. It had a cover photo of a test tube filled with blood. I was Acting 3rd Mate on Yick Fung Shipping -with all Hong Kong Chinese officers & crew . A young Hong Kong Captain was the only one on board who could read, speak & write good English. He taught me navigation and seamanship and gave me English magazines he read.That is how I got to know about HIV and AIDS -just a few months before going back to YGN for the 2nd Mate exam in 1983.

Few in Burma knew about AIDS at that time, except for my wife’s uncle, Dr U Khin Maung Tin, who was Director General & head of the government medical research lab in YGN. We talked about AIDS and he asked if Burmese seaman aware of it and whether they should educate to warn seamen?

I told him very few Burmese seamen were aware of it, but in many ports-Malaysia, Singapore and Australia -port health officials were visiting ships and passing out AIDS health guides and putting posters on ship notice board. I said we need to tell Burmese seamen about potential danger of this deadly but slow-developing threat. Later, he said he had requested the BSPP Cabinet to make this problem known to the public, but they turned down his request -saying that AIDS is disease of GAYs and drug addicts, not to worry about the general population. The Health Minister in question, Col Kyi Maung, was serving under General Ne Win.

Within a year the first Burmese HIV positive patient appeared. Sadly, it turned out to be a seaman who was neither gay nor a drug addict, just a working seaman a long time away from home and family. Now Burma has nearly a million (official report is 1/10 of that figure) HIV cases. They include people from all works of life – including military personnel, even air force pilots and naval officers. They all lost their jobs!

How many young children are HIV infected in YGN alone? Go see them at the Shwegondaine Orphanage and see, where my wife Maw assisted as an NGO volunteer there along with French, German, Japanese and Brazilian ladies from our expat community in YGN. I followed her and saw poor little HIV-infected kids abandoned by their HIV parents. They wanted to hug us…to have warm human touch because no one in that orphanage touched them. But only European ladies were hugging them, whereas we Asians were careful not to touch them or let them hug us, except to touch our clothes. They had no direct skin contact, even though we knew HIV was not transmitted by touching, it was really a heart breaking sight. I couldn’t follow Maw any more, whereas my own daughter, about the same age as those kids, often went along to play with them.

INDIA has an HIV population larger than all of Africa; thanks to long-haul truck drivers and cross-border trade, the virus has spread rapidly from India through northern Burma into China and vice versa. Our virus even has mutated into a new strings not known before. The number of HIV-infected people entering and exploiting our innocent and unaware people has rapidly expanded our HIV-positive population.

The BSPP is long gone…and so is their conservative approach to public health and HIV; now big billboards warn people about HIV and AIDS in most road intersections. But do you ever really look at them when driving? Even with our basic knowledge of AIDS- we have difficulty understanding those billboard signs. A few years ago a girl working in our house asked my wife about HIV:-”Aunty – how big is that HIV bug?”
Is Burma doing enough to reach out 55 millions people? Yes, libraries can help a lot. Thank you for this project.

*****************************************************************

Dear Myo, Another reason for good local libraries in Myanmar, where ordinary people can learn how to avoid AIDS. Thanks for this message and for your donation. We are assembling books today for our third container to be shipped early August–50,000 more. American President Lines is donating cargo space between Seattle and Yangon for six containers over the coming 12 months. 300,000 books, some to be sold to pay for Burmese texts, delta libraries greatest need. John

Thanks. We are very happy to see the condition of these books. Thanks to Hector, Heidi and Thrift Books. She added about 17 sets of Encyclopedia and they are in very good shape.

It will be a good idea to visit a library in Delta in December. We can go day trip. We can build our first library if Simpsons and other donors are ready to contribute. But, if you all want to build a library, Yangon will be more suitable. This is because English language books are more suitable for Yangon people than rural area. Thanks. Thant
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Dear Prof. John Badgley,
We received 500€ from our fleemarket yesterday in Munich (germany). We (the house)would like to support the Mynmar Book Aid with the money. Please let me know how I could transfer to you.
Yours sincerely, Christina Terfloth
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Dear Christina Terfloth,
In the name of the readers who will benefit from your consideration, my deep appreciation. Today I will post news of our 2nd container’s safe arrival and the sorting of its 50,000 books into appropriate library shipments. Our Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation will again host a book charity fair, selling about 10% to raise funds to buy Myanmar language books for school and community libraries. The monsoon prevents us from organizing this as an open air event until September when the rains let up; meanwhile we will continue distributing rice bags of books as we did through the Pyapon monastery to delta schools in March. Perhaps you read a description of that process on our myanmarbookaid.org blog?
Please wire the $500 Euros to United Overseas Bank (UOB) % Nargis Library Recovery….John

I recently attended a Washington D.C. roundtable on the topic “Burma/Myanmar–Views from the ground and the international community.”  Chatham House rules keep me from citing the participants; however I am free to report on the prevailing views which directly relate to Nargis Library Recovery project.

Modes of successful engagement for recovery dominated the discussion. Ambassadors, senior US, UN and foreign ministry officials spoke of their country’s experience in administering aid, both before and subsequent to Cyclone Nargis. A consensus emerged that this is an opportunity as much as a tragedy, for joint efforts with domestic NGOs have demonstrated existence of a strengthening civil sector. There was general agreement among those administering projects in Burma that the humanitarian situation is dire, a problem accentuated by the global economic recession, and that aid projects would benefit from greater collaboration and significantly increased resources.

A Burmese participant recently released from an extended prison term contributed this compelling observation:

If I may conclude with an analogy, in surgery the second or third operation for the same ailment is always more difficult, if only because of the scar tissue from previous operations. Well, earlier surgeons working on Burma/Myanmar have botched the job badly. Not only is there more scar tissue, but the original ailment persists–with added complications.

How much justification would there be anymore in looking to past leadership to pull Burma/Myanmar out of the mire? Some individuals in that category are going to fade from the scene soon. It is a new game now–a new, complex and urgent game. Both the two present major players know only one game and they play it ad infinitum. With a multiplicity of lessor players [in other words, a true pluralism], they become off-balanced. 2010 and beyond does open up more political space which can be utilized for reconciliation in both the democratic and ethnic divides. As such, 2010 could become an opportunity for prevention of further conflict in a land that has known little else for close to seventy years.

This is the context that explains my sense of urgent opportunity motivating our library project. Burmese are accustomed to using their libraries for all the old-fashioned reasons, now we can offer access to global information, knowledge crucial to understanding issues that under gird any modern society.

Your comment is welcome.

Our second 40 foot container with 50,000 books is wending its way this week from Singapore past Malacca, Penang, Dawei [Tavoy], and up the Hlaing River to Yangon. Its coastal voyage is along shores rich in lore of Buddhist teaching monks from India & Sri Lanka. They created pagodas and congregations in the deltas of Burma’s great rivers not long after Roman legions conquered Gaul, and Han armies subdued lesser lords and tribes to unify China. Centuries later Muslim traders built mosques and converted believers along Burma’s 1500 kilometer coast from Sittwe [Akyab] south to Kawthoung on the Kaw Peninsula; to be followed by British soldiers, merchants and missionaries who established forts and churches near these ancient town centers. English names replaced the local ones in the 19th Century; then, late in the 20th Century Myanmar’s leaders returned the Pali-derived names to evoke powerful cultural traditions.

This past month we’ve overcome two challenges: moving our second container of books from Seattle to Yangon, and creating our own tax-exempt NGO—Nargis Library Recovery Project. The Institute of the Rockies offered shelter to move quickly after Cyclone Nargis hit, now we have a separate tax-sheltered non-profit corporation. Our project will require years of independent effort. The books we sort & distribute [some we sell to fund Burmese language titles] flow bi-monthly, our next container should arrive in July. Since September we have raised $27,000, much for this purpose, and Thrift Books promises a million books to fill the conspectus designed by our companion NGO—Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation. The University of Washington and Cornell University libraries donated over 6,000 academic titles and texts, and individual donors continue to step forward with valuable contributions.

All this activity sets in motion an enduring process to replenish libraries devastated by Cyclone Nargis. Now we have framed a second goal that requires much more money: reconstructing the libraries destroyed or badly damaged by the storm to preserve the books we are donating. An average $15,000 is needed per library, plus funds for equipment, staff training, and laptops as well as creating a reliable electric source for fans. $30 million is our goal; we need capital for this separate project.

While books and buildings are the heart of a traditional library, in this century citizens, students and scholars must have internet access. Our twin projects are designed to empower Burmese with knowledge of their past, and of the world today so they can they secure their future with knowledge of literature, global affairs, science and technology.

Bear in mind that each dollar contributed will ship five books to our Yangon warehouse from a Thrift Books warehouse, $100 pays for 500 books to be sorted by our volunteer librarians in Burma. This is a great project for students or Rotary or a faith-based group with humanitarian focus.

Meanwhile, we continue to submit proposals for re-constructing damaged libraries and training local librarians in computer literacy; no large investor has stepped forward.  We urgently need good suggestions and volunteer organizational skills to carry out these dual goals. For more information contact us.