Myanmar – Free Hospital in Yangon

Working as a Health Care Volunteer in Myanmar

I never thought I'd go to Burma (Myanmar) once, but life is full of serendipity. I arrived in Yangon in early April 2019 with a heart embraced by the whole country of Thailand after a 1-month trip in Asoke. The first time I worked as an assistant for doctors and nurses, I understood a little more about the finiteness of human life, and the first time I met and worked with so many international friends. I must bear many responsibilities to many people while here. The first time I longed for the comfort of my home, and the first time I was so sick that I couldn't walk. However, after all, I moved on.

I met Phuc in the last days in Saigon before he went to study in the Netherlands (but later, he went to the Netherlands and named himself Mark, I asked why, and he said to name it after the Facebook founder). I chatted with him until late, so Phuc's mother reminded us we were late. When he was in Nepal, he met many foreign volunteers to restore the economy after the terrible earthquake in 2013, and the whole world seemed to be turning to Nepal then. Later, when he returned to Vietnam, he told me about a volunteering place that foreigners often talk about: ThaBarWa in Yangon. He advised that if I felt tired because of office work, sometimes a long trip wouldn’t hurt. And I realized my trip to ThaBarWa not very long after that.

In addition to working in the morning at the hospital, taking care of wounds, and doing physiotherapy for stroke patients, in the evening, I actively work as a chef to cook for foreign friends. At ThaBarWa, the kitchen receives offerings from the people through daily alms walks and is only served in the morning and noon. At the weekend, I go out to teach the schoolchildren English. The children in ThaBarWa are mainly the children of the people from all over Myanmar who flocked to find a place to take shelter. Many lives have no place to live, others are very sick, and many beggars try to live through the day. I keep working hard to forget that I am very lonely even though there are many people besides me. But I couldn't find anyone who could understand my story that I didn’t belong anywhere. I feel my story is too pathetic to tell, and what is worth sharing as I didn’t want people to feel bad for me either?

And as a matter of course, I fell ill due to my lack of self-awareness. Serve those who don't understand themselves right! And every time I'm so sick, the volunteers guys pull me out to give me medicine and ask all kinds of questions, I moved to tears. Then I recovered from the disease and continued working, gradually getting used to the work progress. I was no longer too tired when I had to hand wash my clothes every day. However, I can't hide one thing from myself: I always felt very lonely. Sometimes when I come home before a good night's sleep, I sit by the window staring at the moon, illuminating a shining temple. Burma is magnificent, but few people know that it is even more beautiful to see the temples in the evening in Burma. The night seems to want to embrace me to pat me to sleep so I can have enough energy for tomorrow.

That's the price I paid for my stay here, so what did the people here pay? There are days when I want to leave ThaBarWa because of the arguments among people from different cultures about minor things. There were many causes, such as different cultural backgrounds, living conditions were not guaranteed, food and clean water shortage, and the need for medicines and medical equipment for patients. That's the price we pay when getting a free service. I bitterly realize the painful truth that money is significant right now for ThaBarWa to operate more stably. I shall go back to modern life as an average person to earn money to pay for myself. Yes, now is enough reason to return to be a part of the economy.

I realized that the journey is not about discovering external factors but seeking the meaning inside to return to my authentic self. Perhaps, when there’s a favorable condition to live in, I wouldn’t have contemplated as much as I do now. There’s a battlefield deep inside my mind that needs to be reconciled. Sometimes I get angry at myself because I hurt myself to be accepted and get affection like other people repeated those behaviors in the past. I violated my boundaries by believing that was the only way to survive in this society. No sooner had I realized I didn’t deserve all this pain than I felt humiliated to admit that I was just anyone who wanted to be loved as an ordinary person.

I went to Yangon on the hottest days in Burma. At the journey's end, it started raining in Yangon, so the trees looked greener. That could be how my heart calms down after two months of habituating here. I began to get closer to many patients, and they were also more comfortable with my presence. Sometimes I need to be more professional or methodical at work, so some remind me. Eventually, I was much better at performing my task in the hospital. I got to know Pedro, a Portuguese volunteer. Pedro was five years younger than me and traveled from Europe to Asia at 18. I couldn’t believe I could be so courageous at his age. But the two of us still got along very well, and as companions on the Old Bagan trip, we even ventured to avoid the border gate to avoid the fare collection. Oops, what an infamous lesson I learned while reading travel books.

These days, Yangon and Myanmar are burdened by the terrible surge of the Delta variant, and I am apprehensive about how the hospitals in ThaBarWa could manage this. I don't even dare to open the WhatsApp group chat group of international volunteers to update the situation. I'm afraid I won't be of any help to anyone. Thanks to what I learned in Burma, I became much stronger before coming to India in June 2019, so will ThaBarWa be more vital during this Covid pandemic just like the way it taught me? I'm not sure, and I feel helpless.

Vietnam, early morning on August 15, 2021