A Myanmar Monastery

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This is the story of how I spent a month volunteering in a monastery/meditation centre where I spent time helping monks collect donations to feed 3,000 people each day, teaching local Burmese children English, helping the elderly and disabled to eat and wash and sometimes even assisting doctors with the treatment of patients in the centre - all of which was completely new to me and often outside my comfort zone.



Let me take you back a bit...



7 weeks ago, after boarding my 28th flight in just 12 months I found myself landing in Yangon, Myanmar (formerly Burma). I am still not exactly sure what drew me to this country - maybe it was its mysteriousness that intrigued me with the feeling that it has so much that is left to explore as a traveller unlike a lot of other South East Asian countries which seem to be focused very heavily on tourism and make them easier destinations to travel in.



After already having spent 7 weeks in Bali enjoying the traveller's life of discovering new places, tasting new food, meeting new people and pretty much just spending the day how I wished - which often involved a morning surf, a late breakfast, a bit of reading in the sun, a scooter ride somewhere on the island and then socialising at the beach as we watched the sun go down - I had decided I wanted to keep exploring new horizons and creating new memories but with more of an outward focus - how could I do all this and give back at the same time? Volunteering was the answer.



I found the ThaBarWa Centre in Myanmar through the WorkAway website and decided that this would be my first stop in the country. I originally intended to stay for 2 weeks but as the days quickly passed I realised that the longer I spent there, the more I learnt and understood about the centre and the more I could see where I could help.



The centre (I use this term loosely as it more of a village and/or community that is spread out over many hectares and includes houses, little tea shops, convenience stores, a hospital and village schools) was opened 7 years ago by a monk, Venerable Sayadaw Ashin Ottamasara ('Sayadaw' is the name given to the senior monk of a monastery), who opened his doors to all - the sick, the elderly, mentally and physically disabled, diseased, homeless, hungry and poor. His centre quickly filled and at present feeds and houses over 3,000 people (both Myanmar people and foreigners) including Monks, Nuns and those most in need.

The centre is run completely by volunteers and donations - an incredible feat and a true testament to the people of Myanmar.

My first few days at the centre were a bit of a blur as I was overwhelmed in every possible way – the sights, sounds, and smells were all very foreign and not what I'd label 'pleasant' and it was mentally and emotionally tough - after just a few days I felt exhausted. Much like many of the volunteers who arrive at the centre, I felt in over my head and questioned my reasons for choosing to put myself there.

The Centre, the people who call it home and the living conditions were the things that first caught my attention. I don’t really remember what I had expected but it was a lot harsher to see firsthand than I must have anticipated. I walked around the centre and was overwhelmed at how many people seemed to be, (in what I call now, my naïve view), in a hopeless state. Please let me explain. From a westerner’s point of view, we live comfortable lives in comfortable homes that keep us safe, warm and dry, we wear comfortable clothes that are clean and generally in good repair, we eat food when we are hungry and most of the time we are also lucky enough to choose what we want to eat and where. These things are completely normal for us and something that we don’t really think about too often.

Walking around the centre and seeing that people were living together under one roof, in some places with over 100 people, and sleeping on wooden boards they called beds (no mattress or pillow in sight) with a plastic tub at the end of it which housed their worldly possessions was definitely out of the ordinary for me and something that took a few days to adjust to.

My initial feeling of hopelessness and deep sympathy for these people/patients I have since reflected on and realised that this was purely due to my perceptions of my world and me comparing what I think of as a comfortable, happy life with theirs. After spending many weeks at the centre I came to realise that these people have smiles on their faces, they do not walk around looking depressed and thinking that what they have isn’t enough. In reality, they have a home, a community, food every day and although it is a long way from what I am accustomed to in regards to what I think of as a comfortable, and in a sense, enjoyable life, there was not a feeling of unfairness or sadness in the centre – only the one I had generated myself for these people.

On top of the visual harshness of the centre, there was also a lot of foreign smells and sounds – I won’t go into the smells too much but I’m sure you can understand if I explain there are many sick people and old people who unfortunately cannot move from their beds and rely solely on the help from others, there is extreme humidity some days and then monsoonal rains the next, there are dogs, cats, chickens, pigs and cows who roam freely through the streets and there is no rubbish collection system. On top of that there is also a kitchen that operates non-stop to help feed 3,000 people a day, dining halls for meals that are filled with a vast array of different foods and local shops cooking on the side of the road…it was a sensory overload.

Although it is a meditation centre where people dedicate their lives to the Buddha’s teachings (known as Dhamma) and spend their days in silent contemplation, the centre was a kaleidoscope of sounds. From 5am in the morning until 10pm at night, speakers periodically recited the Buddha’s teachings, motorbikes screamed through the streets honking their horns, people chanted, talked and yelled, construction sites operated, cooking for 3,000 people never ceased and the dogs fought, barked, cried and howled – my gosh did they howl like nothing I have heard before. Anyone who has been to the ThaBarWa Centre will know exactly what I am talking about.

Okay, so now I have spoken a little bit about the centre in regards to what it looked, smelt and sounded like, I will explain the foreign volunteers here and the volunteering opportunities I undertook during my stay.

Every morning trucks filled with monks, Burmese locals and a couple of foreign volunteers leave the centre and travel to collect daily alms (donations) in the streets. It is generally done in silence, no shoes are worn and the walk can last for a couple of hours. A local volunteer will walk ahead of the procession with a megaphone and alert the people living in or walking along the street that the monks are coming to collect the alms. This results in locals patiently lining the streets with their daily donation waiting for the lead monk to stop in front of them and acknowledge their donation and then the volunteers help to take whatever is offered. Buckets, baskets and rice tubs are carried by the volunteers as their way of holding the donations until somewhere along the path you rendezvous with the truck and unload the donations and then continue walking. The cooked meals that are collected are often sorted into either meat, vegetables, eggs, noodles or curries. They are then simply placed into buckets that contain a mixture of similar dishes that generally have the same texture, taste or ingredients. When the donations are returned to the centre, this food is what we ate each day for breakfast and lunch. We often laughed at what a strange combination things were but smiled at how great it tasted. Also knowing where it came from made it an enjoyable experience each day.

It was incredible to see how much was offered to the monks each and every day by the locals and to understand that this was what fed 3,000 people. Myanmar is a Buddhist country and the locals seemed incredibly happy to be able to offer what they could. All the food, money, toiletries, baked goods, cooking essentials and sometimes even medical supplies that were collected were brought back to the centre where everything was shared.

In the afternoon for the first few days I dabbled in a couple of activities to see what interested me – I watched another volunteer teach Enlgish to some local children, visited the village school and played games with 20 enthusiastic, screaming kids and walked the village talking with people.

I was still settling into the lifestyle of a volunteer when I had the opportunity to join a 7 day water fasting meditation retreat at the centre with 5 other foreigners. Although this wasn’t something I had planned to do when I came, I saw it as an opportunity to learn something new and to challenge myself both physically and mentally.

To make a long story short, I lasted 5 days out of the 7 and was happy with that. I learnt a new meditation technique and new Dhamma but I didn’t feel either of these resinated with me as I had found previously with other meditation and Buddhist teachings. On top of this, the living conditions weren’t overly comfortable – it was hot, mosquito infested and eventually the running water stopped so no showers or ability to clean clothes. Eventually I questioned my reasons for doing the retreat and decided to return to the world of the volunteers enjoying talking, eating and running water again. It was an interesting experience as anyone who knows me well will know how much I love food, so to go 5 days without it was an accomplishment in itself in my eyes.

When I returned from the retreat I realised I had been at the centre for nearly 2 weeks but didn’t feel like I had accomplished enough in regards to volunteering and I wanted to push myself past my comfort zone and get involved in things that maybe I didn’t necessarily enjoy but knew would benefit others.

I decided to put my hand up for patient washing in the mornings. This involved taking care of patients, some of which were mentally and/or physically disabled, and otherwise unable to help themselves. I didn’t find these mornings overly pleasant or enjoyable for myself in regards to the physical work, but knowing that I was helping these people with such a basic activity was enough to keep me going. Again, the living conditions of these patients were so far from what I would consider ‘ideal’ or ‘comfortable’ but as far as I could tell after being around them closely, they didn’t seem to be saddened by their situation.

Again, I was forced to look at my own preconceptions and compare it to the reality I was seeing.

In the afternoons I spent a couple of hours teaching some Burmese children English. They had a basic understanding of some words, numbers and colours so I often just practiced these with them each day and found different ways to keep their attention over a couple of hours. It was wonderful to see how quickly they picked things up, how eager they were to learn and how helpful they were to each other if one of them understood something but another didn’t. Although I had never taught English to anyone and often felt I didn’t know what to do, the experience was a really positive one. We had a lot of fun and laughs together and was sad when it was time to say goodbye.

Mixed with the work, the other volunteers I met and lived with at the centre made the whole experience an incredibly enriching one. Being in an environment such as the ThaBarWa centre often brought about feelings and emotions that many people had never experienced before (myself included of course). I found that having a group of supportive, like-minded people around me who were also going through the same or very similar things made the harshness of the reality we faced in the centre just that little bit more bearable. We often found ourselves in deep conversations about life and reality mixed with Buddhist philosophy and meditation which helped with seeing things from a different perspective, questioning our own beliefs and trying to understand how to see things as they really are, not as we think they are or would like them to be.

My time at the ThaBarWa Centre was a mixture of wonderful experiences, harsh realities and mental and emotional challenges. I learnt a lot about Myanmar people, their food, their customs, their religious beliefs and I am completely grateful to have been given the opportunity to be able to experience Myanmar culture in such a way. I will always look back on my time at the centre with a grateful heart – it was an incredible experience.

As I update this I am in Sri Lanka after exploring Myanmar and a little bit of Malaysia experiencing many more incredible situations and having a few unplanned adventures which I will no doubt write about next time.

Until then…

(Check out the attached photos for more of an idea of what things we got up to and what the centre was like)

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Photos

Inside a local's bamboo home
One of my students invited the volunteers to celebrate a Hindu celebration in his home where his mum and sisters cooked for us.