The Dream I’ve Left Behind!

News, Special Initiatives Myanmar

At the beginning of February 2021, I found myself overwhelmed, shocked and left in a state of fear and despair just like everyone else did. I kept asking myself what I could do for my country. On 8th February, I decided to participate in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) along with other civilians and civil servants who were working together to disrupt and dismantle all governing mechanisms. My friends told me to think about it, to not make a hasty decision since I am still too young to let go of the position and the job that I have, and a lot of opportunities for my future in the railway sector. However, I decided to continue participating in CDM until the revolutions win. I believe that I will be able to put on my favorite uniform again in the near future.

What a Miserable Banking System!

News, Special Initiatives Myanmar

The banking sector collapsed following the coup in February 2021 in Myanmar with experiencing cash shortage, the Central bank’s difficulties in disbursing enough funds to private banks to cover the account holders’ daily needs, and running out of cash in ATMs as people wanted to withdraw their savings, and new requirements about withdrawals. Two stories by different authors about their experiences with the disrupted banking system were received under the “Living the Coup” Special initiative project and are presented below together since they complement each other.

အာဏာသိမ်းပြီးတစ်နှစ်အကြာ

Special Initiatives Myanmar

အလုပ်မရှိတဲ့နေ့ရက်တွေရဲ့ မနက်ခင်းတွေဆိုရင် ဝီရိယနဲ့စောစောထလို့ လက်ဖက်ရည်ဆိုင်မှာဆုံ၊ မင်းအဆင်ပြေရင် ငါ့လည်းခေါ်ပါဦးလို့ မျက်နှာကိုဟိုးအောက်ဆုံးထိချလို့ သိပ်မခင်တဲ့သူငယ်ချင်း၊ လက်အောက်ငယ်သားပါမကျန် စကားမရှိ စကားရှာလို့၊ အပူရုပ်ကိုလည်း ဟန်မလုပ်အားပဲ ခေါ်မယ့်သူတွေများရှိရင်…မလိုလဲ လိုလဲ အိမ်မှာပြင်ထားခဲ့တဲ့ ထမင်းထုတ်ကလေးကို အိမ်ပြန်ယူလို့ သူငယ်ချင်းနောက် ကောက်ကောက်ပါအောင် လိုက်ခဲ့ရတဲ့ မနက်ခင်းပေါင်းလည်း မနည်းတော့ပါဘူး။

Lessons for a Post-COVID World

Special Initiatives

Confronted with so many deaths of people I knew, I have attended too many zoom masses to learn that spending time with friends and family is important. We realize we can live without a lot of things. Things we used to think were essential. But the really valuable things are family, health, and prayers.

One Year After the Coup

News, Special Initiatives Myanmar

I would strike up a conversation with anyone I know to see if there might be a job opportunity for me. I would even ask people I barely know, and I would ask people who used to work as my subordinates in my previous job. I could not care If I might be looking too desperate. I would swallow my pride, divert my gaze to the ground, and implore them to take me along to their work if there is the slightest hope for me to get a job there.

Give for a New and Better SEA Junction!

News

Dear Partners and Friends of SEA Junction, As you may be aware, our venue has been closed for renovations since mid-March. Our former 40-meter area was unable to accommodate a large crowd for events like before due to COVID-19 containment restrictions in the past 2 years. We were glad that, in February, the BACC offered…

The Day I Felt the Scent of Death

Special Initiatives Myanmar

One day, I saw a shocking news appearing on my Facebook timeline. Five youth including a girl jumped from the rooftop of a tall building after they knew they could not escape from the soldiers raiding their hideout. All died.
I expected such an incident and did an exercise to escape from a rooftop exit. Thinking the fate of the youths, I asked myself: What I would have done if I were there. Suddenly, I felt the scent of death.