Liebe Eulen, ich bin gestern zufällig einen alten Text gestoßen, den ich auf unserer vorletzten Asienreise (2003-06) als Reisebericht aus Burma an unsere englischsprachigen Freunde verschickt habe. Naturgemäß gibt es keine deutsche Version, aber vielleicht hat die eine oder der andere trotzdem Freude daran. Wer die "Weißen Blüten" gelesen hat, mag sich an das Kapitel am Inle Lake erinnert fühlen - hier ist meine persönliche Erfahrung dahinter. Aufgrund der Länge musste ich die Geschichte leider in zwei Teilen einstellen. Für alle grammatikalischen, Rechtschreib- und Tippfehler entschuldige ich mich im voraus. I'm not a native speaker.
ACHTUNG: Auf Seite zwei dieses Freds findet sich ab sofort Suzanns Übersetzung des Textes ins Deutsche! 
A DAY ON INLE LAKE
The sun is already up when we get out of bed, so we hurry to get dressed and walk over to the restaurant, where we greet lovely Thu Thu, our friend and owner of the guesthouse. She places bowls of tasty Shan Noodles on the table, which we empty quickly, because Kin, the boatsman, is waiting for us outside. He leads us through the small town of Nyaung Shwe, literally “Golden Banyan Tree”. The vendors watch us as we pass the market, that is already in full swing. Burmese tend to get up early.
A pick-up truck is overtaking us, carrying dozens of peasants with straw hats on their heads. They wave and shout and laugh at us, and without understanding a word, we recognize their friendliness. All of them, men and women alike, wear longyis, that typical Burmese garment similar to long skirts, and colourful shirts or blouses. Still the difference between male and female clothes is distinct: A man’s longyi has checkered patterns and is tyed with a knot at the hip, while their counterparts more often than not have floral designs and are worn tucked in around the waist. Anyway, you’d never take a Burmese Lady as a man, because of the usually very long hair, their fragile frames and the faces. Oh, those faces! At least two or three of the farmer girls on the truck look like princesses in disguise, and one might wonder how many million royal maidens there are living in this country?
We are nearing the canal, the glittering pagoda next to the bridge already in sight. It looks as if a gigantic mirror has been broken and all the pieces attached to the towering structure. What a spectacle this must be, once the sun collects enough strength to break through the morning mist and shower the pagoda with its rays.
Here’s our boat: long, black and slender, dozing on the still waters. Kin urges us to be careful, as we descend the steep banks of the canal: our friends Meike and Dirk from Hamburg, Steffi, and finally me.
The first step into a boat is always the most shaky one, soon afterwards you usually feel comfortable and ask yourself why you moved so insecure in the beginning. Kin starts the engine and off we roar. We wouldn’t mind a little less noise, but then we are desperate to reach the lake and don’t complain. What could we do, anyway? Row the boat, like the two women in that canoe we are just overtaking? They get a little wet as their small wooden vehicle dances helplessly on the waves we are producing, but instead of swearing at us, they wave and smile their big smiles.
We take up speed and the morning breeze is still cool in our faces as we rush down the canal. First there are wooden houses to both sides, a little later they give way to fields that look pretty bleak this time of the year. But only a few more days and the peasants will wake them from their sleep and call them back to duty. Like an army of ants, marching up to torment the tired earth, the farmers with their sharpened tools and irrigation will prepare the dry ground for another generation of saplings. So that the sun, the rain and maybe a little help from Buddha will once more turn the fields into green vasts and enable the peasants to have another rich harvest of what is Asia’s true, white gold: rice.
But what do we care about grains and pains? We’re off to see the lake!
And there it is, finally: a quiet expanse of water surrounded on three sides by green hills, which I feel compelled to call mountains in my speechless awe. Truly, we all, for one rare moment, are silenced by the beauty of the landscape before our eyes.
Not too long, though, until one of us directs the attention to the water beneath. I’m afraid it is me, being the least able person among us to shut up when appropriate. But then I have my reasons to break the silence: the water below is pristine, so clear it makes you want to drink from it. At least as long as you´re not aware the Intha people living on these waters use the lake as their graveyard. But that is another spot far away, somewhere hidden, which they would never show to tourists. And shouldn´t, I think, for there´s got to be some respect for other customs, for the different, and some places left undisturbed from our long noses we are so willing to poke in everyone else´s business.
Yes, the clear water. You could easily see the ground, for the lake is pretty shallow, if it wasn´t for the slim plants that raise their tips towards the surface like the heads of curious, mossy snakes. In between them, there´s an awful lot of fish hiding. Big, tasty fish, that is. I´d like to know if those poor creatures have the slightest idea of the danger posed by the one-legged fishermen that cruise the lake day after day in their pursuit?
One-legged? Well, not quite, but the fishermen of Inle Lake developed an odd technique of hunting down their – maybe – hapless prey, that makes them look like. They balance on the very tip of their canoes on just one leg and use the other for rowing. This way they have a better view of the lake´s surface, which they search for bubbles betraying fish. Once they spot some, they row over, faster and with less effort than anyone using his arms, and lower a kind of basket into the water. Finally they poke a spear through a hole in the basket and try to pierce the fish - if there is one. We never see it work, but then the markets are full of fish, and it´s hard to imagine them showing up by themselves to surrender to human appetite.
We relax and make ourself comfortable. After the first shot of surprise and delight has vanished from our blood, it´s time to sit back and let the impressions sink in. I lit a cigarette, then close my eyes for a moment. Nothing left but the hammering “tuk tuk” of the engine, and the breeze, that is getting warmer by the minute now.
We’re approaching a pillar with a gilded peacock on top of it. Kin slows down the boat and leans forward to tell us the story behind it. In a whisper, for it´s a legend!
There is a big pagoda in Ywama, the capital of the lake, that houses five old statues of Buddha. Once every year these statues were placed in a barge especially built and maintained for this purpose, and rowed around the lake for a week, from village to village, from monastery to monastery. This procession on water is the biggest and holiest festival in the region, so I bite my lips not to interrupt his tale by asking if the barge is rowed with legs, too.
One year, he continues, there was a storm coming out of nowhere, capsizing the barge amidst the terrified worshippers, who struggled to keep their own boats afloat. Immediately everybody and his son jumped into the water to dive for the statues and all but one could be retrieved. They tried hard, but number five had simply vanished. So you can easily imagine their surprise when they finally returned to the pagoda, grieving, and discovered Buddha number five had already returned to his place by himself. Looking wet, with plants dangling from his body, and maybe a bit tired, but just where he belonged. The Intha people took the event as a hint that number five is not too keen on traveling, and from then on he has stayed at home when his four more adventurous comrades set out for their yearly tour of the lake.
The spot where this infamous incident took place was later marked with the peacock-crowned pillar we see in front of us.
We enter a village, and what an enchanting village it is! Not situated on the shore, but on the lake itself, wooden houses built mainly on stilts, though some might have been erected on tiny islands. Hard to say what is solid ground in such a dreamlike world. Kin has reduced the speed and we are merely drifting down the small canal that serves as the village’s main street, with even smaller ones branching off like side alleys. An old lady appears from one of those tiny waterways, maybe visiting her neighbour for a chat, and of course she is using a canoe. There are no footpaths here, going somewhere means using the boat, even for the shortest distance. We give way to the lady, because Kin respects the rules of traffic, or at least old age. In return she offers us a big, toothless smile – and waves at us. In fact, everyone does: the housewives doing their laundry on a footbridge; an old man who waters the flowers on his veranda, people of all ages who watch us from their windows, a girl breastfeeding her baby, although she seems far too young for it – everybody raises their hands to greet us. We’re intruding their world, but they make us feel most welcome doing it.
The people of the lake lead a good life. For Burmese circumstances, they are comparably wealthy, living on the fish, vegetables and fruits the lake offers. And they are enterprising people, a lot of handicrafts produced everywhere in the villages.
The environment is clean and quiet and the climate pretty mild, because the lake is situated 875 metres above sea level, far away from the hot and dust-ridden plains of Central Burma. Actually, the sun feels like that of a mild European summer day, it warms my skin and contributes to my well-being. If not quite as much as the peace around me, that floods my heart smoothingly through all my senses.
Watching these people living their daily life makes me wonder about their state of happiness. What are their hopes, dreams and fears, the hardships they face? Love and joy, sadness, pain and death, I presume. Like everywhere else. Maybe they hope for a bigger boat, instead of a Mercedes Benz, and I bet they care a lot less about their life-insurance, but in the end they are just humans like everyone else. As long as I haven’t seen anyone with gills, I refuse to look at them as semi-amphibious – but the day isn’t over yet.
We leave the village behind and cruise through fields and gardens now. I wonder how they can grow vegetable here, still so far from the coastline, until I realize that the gardens are floating. As we move by, they sway on the waves following our boat. And I realize, too, that the farmers working the fields aren’t drunk, but waddling on a man-made surface. They collect the water hyacinth from the canals, where it spreads in abundance, bind it together to thick mats, strong enough to carry a man, add some soil brought from the coast, and off they go growing tomatoes, cucumber and the like.
I turn around for a last glance at the village. An oasis of peace and friendliness, it seems, in a world that is getting weirder and harder to understand every day. But who knows what cruelty and passions are hiding behind that idyllic surface? I brush my thought away, don’t want my image of it destroyed. What I see are enviable people, who managed to settle down in a unique landscape without disturbing it. For them nature is a friend, not an enemy or even a stranger. Be it like that.
A traffic jam! About the least thing I expected on Inle Lake. Boats, boats, boats everywhere. We sneak our way through to the landing, where Kin ties our boat, between hundreds of others, looking exactly the same. I wonder how many hours it will take to identify it later on?
Kin leads us on a path bypassing the souvenir stalls. “No good”, he informs us. Seems he had trouble with those guys before, and now he’s paying back by withholding tourists from them. Fine for me.
It’s a 20 minute walk on a sun-bathed dirt road. Shortly before we reach the market, we are introduced to the basics of bullfighting: an ox cart is trying to knock us over! We accept the challenge, let it come close and jump aside in the last moment. Olé, we shout, but the tired beast isn’t even turning his head to look at us while trotting on as slowly as ever. Come on boy, show a little more fighting spirit! Maybe it’s simply not in his nature?
-Bitte Teil 2 im nächsten Posting weiterlesen -
Abseits der einschlägigen Eulenfreds schreibe ich doch ein wenig ernsthafter - sorry. 