Introduction

To start, I will say I’m skeptical of writing about my daily life in a public forum. To me, blogging often comes across as self-aggrandizing. Basically I’m worried that I’ll sound like an asshole. That being said, I’ve been encouraged by a number of people in my travels and back in the states to record my daily happenings. I’ve been pretty happy using Snapchat for that (davidbsnyder is my username if we aren’t already friends), but I’m at least going to try to make a post of around 500 words once a week for the next few months that I’m living in Myanmar. This first post will be an introduction to how I ended up living (semi-illegally) as the only foreigner in a small mountain town in Myanmar. I sense that probably my readership will be limited to my friends, and all of you know the basics of the story already, so feel free to skip to the other stuff.

Like most stories, this one starts with rejection. When I turned 20, I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t spend more than 2 years in my twenties doing anything: that I would jump around from school to job to job to school figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. Well, it started out according to plan – I graduated from Hamilton with a double major in Mathematics and Creative Writing, no student debt (thanks mom and dad!), and aspirations of being a celebrated poet or short fiction writer. I figured the first step would be to find a decent paying job that allowed temporal freedom and access to an intellectual community. I found that at an elite private high school outside of Denver, where I taught Algebra II and Statistics for two years (along with being the mountain biking, JV Baseball, and Mock Trial Coach). During year two of teaching, in a bout of supreme overconfidence and ennui, I gave notice that I would be leaving the next year to pursue writing at an MFA program. Problem was, no MFA programs seemed to want me. I applied to 14 schools, was rejected at 13, and waitlisted (and ultimately rejected) at another. Maybe I’m not that great of a poet? So, unemployed, I decided to work again for a travel company that specializes in taking western students to Southeast Asia on Service/Adventure/Learning trips.

On the other side of the world, my pedagogical demographics hadn’t changed much (educated, privileged, curious students), but my scenery had. In my second summer working for this company, I was asked to create an itinerary and curriculum for a (problematically named) trip entitled “Tribal Issues.” Basically, I was tasked with teaching western students about ethnic groups in Myanmar and the Thai border region as part of a two week trip. To shorten this a bit, we ended up partnering with an NGO in the town of Kalaw that works to educate and support children from remote rural areas. After visiting this NGO 3 times, I asked its founder if I could come help his organization during the lead-up to the elections in Myanmar on November 8 (he is one of the leaders of the opposition party in this area, and couldn't devote the time he needed to his organization during the campaign season). So, after returning to Denver to pack up all of my shit, and traipsing around America for a month or so, I returned back to Kalaw in early October, and have been working here since.

At this NGO I call myself “Volunteer Director of Programming.” Basically what that means is that I run the trekking operations (more on that later), I organize activities for the children, and teach them English. For a number of reasons, the organization does not have enough money to pay me, so I stay afloat by receiving temporary work with the travel organization that I mentioned earlier, and cutting into the money that I saved up while living rent-free in Colorado

So that’s the background. To start I’m going to post an article I wrote in the lead-up to the most recent elections to give some historical and political context to the country I’m living in and talking about. 

Also, I'm calling the blog "Thit-Yow," which means "one person." One of the most common questions I get when I meet Burmese people in the local wilderness is a surprised "Are you alone?". More often than not, "thit-yow" is my response.