My Roommate

Myat Myat Soe is a girl I have been sharing my hotel room with for about three weeks. She is 31 and from Burma (now called Myanmar). She is the sweetest, kindest thing, but is she ever naive. I think that is the way that Burma wants it to be. She got married three months before she came here to study with Language Corps. She has never lived with her husband. She lives with her mother and he lives with his parents. Her mother does not want to live alone, so Myat stays with her. Get this - Myat's husband pays her mother's rent and gives her money for food and clothes and the mother will not let him live with her and Myat. I told her that would NEVER happen in the U.S.; that the husband would tell his wife to take a flying leap (not in those words, of course). The woman is not disabled and she is 52 years old and widowed.

She asked me what I did when I decided not to have any more than three children. I had to explain what a tubal ligation was. Then I told her it was easier for a man to have a vasectomy because it costs less and is less painful than a woman having her tubes tied. She asked me if it was 100% foolproof. I told her that a couple is advised to use protection for a couple of months to make sure he is shooting blanks (also not in those words). So she says - then they can never have children? So I explain to her that there is this thing called in vitro fertilization and how it works. She asked me - how does it (the embryo) get in there. Her eyes were wider than saucers.

Then she asked me when I got married to my husband did I really love him or was I forced to marry him. Can you believe that? I told her that no one in the U.S. is forced to marry anyone except for a few small groups of people who believe the president of their church speaks for God and tells these 14 - 15 year old girls to marry these old men and they do it because they truly believe it is the word of God.

She did not know what the halocaust was or the Khmer Rouge; what was a Nazi or anything about the concentration camps. She never heard of Saddam Hussein, Stalin - or many other wicked men who wanted to control the world. We have had hours and hours of conversations; then, she tells me she wants to grow to be just like I am. (Don't die laughing over that.) I think that since she knows so little about the outside world, she thinks I know everything. But I constantly tell her that I really know nothing compared to what there is to know.

But we spend a lot of time talking about the power we have inside ourselves to be the person we want to be. She told me the most important thing I taught her was not to let anyone ever treat her as if she were "less than" they are. I told her they could be richer, thinner, prettier, smarter, yada. yada, yada - but that no one is "better than."

So the day she moves out, she makes me sit on the bed and kneels before me, puts her palms together under her chin and bows three times, as if she is praying to Buddha (yes, she is Buddhist). She tells me she is sorry if she ever said or did anything bad to me. I told her she didn't know how to do or say anything bad. She is without a doubt one of the finest persons I have ever known. She calls me "Auntie" (well, it is better than grandma.)

Talk about getting an education.

I doubt I will go to Nepal or Tibet at the end of my contract. After being here for nine months, I don't think I can go to another third world country for awhile. Like I said, I am planning to go to Viet Nam in December and Burma between Christmas and New Year's (if I can find someone to go with me, the girl from the U.K. I was going with can't go with me).

More than enough of this for now.