From Burma
To Minnesota
Around the World with Echoes of a Global Life
burma
My New Book is Out!
The day has finally come. It feels like I have been working on this book forever.
But now, here it is!
I have set up some pages to go with the book. Lots of pictures and videos. Praise from readers. And info on where to get it. Also info on how to get a review copy. Click on Much More Info below or on Echoes of a Global Life in the menu above.
ECHOES OF A GLOBAL LIFE by Kathleen Gamble
A story of survival from Burma to Moscow and beyond. Memoir. Travel stories. Living in interesting times.
Echoes of a Global Life is part memoir, part travelogue, part history lesson. Kathleen lives in a world of constant change. Moving from city to city she says goodbye to one and starts to explore the next. Never two the same. She is a survivor. She keeps on going. Through trauma, including a plane crash, and other scary times, there is also humor. Kathleen was born in Asia and lived on five continents before she was eighteen. She takes you to Burma, USA, Mexico, Colombia, Nigeria, Switzerland, and Russia. She weaves in parts of each country she carries with her. Her family lives through a coup in Burma, student rioting in Colombia, two coups in Nigeria, and political unrest in Russia. Sometimes things are fabulous. Sometimes they are not. She is a Third Culture Kid, rootless and restless. As an adult she lived in Moscow for nine years during the 1990’s where she witnessed history in the making and a terrifying exit. Life is never boring.
Friday Photos – To Ithaca and Back again
I am featuring random photos each week that pertain to my upcoming book, Echos of a Global Life. We left Burma when I was three and moved to Ithaca, New York. When I graduated from Nursery School, we moved back to Burma. After only one year, there was a coup and we had to leave. We took our time on the way back to the US and ended up in Rye, New York.
While living in Ithaca we traveled around the East Coast to Virginia and Washington DC with my grandparents.
That chair currently sits in my living room. I like it.
When I was five we moved back to Burma.
On the left is a Chinthe. A Chinthe is a Burmese “lion”. They don’t have lions in Burma so this was what they thought a lion might look like. They guard and protect the temples. In the background is the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon. On the right I am practicing my Burmese dancing.
That year we took a trip on the Irrawaddy River and spent some time at an elephant camp where I got to ride an elephant.
On the way back from Burma we stopped in Taipei.
And Tokyo
Bus tour in Tokyo
My new Japanese Dolls
Friday Photos
My postcard collection is done and I am back here at ExpatAlien.blog. I wrote a memoir about ten years ago and self published it. I recently decided I wanted to do better so I have re-written it and updated it and found a publisher and it will be rolling out pretty soon – Echos of a Global Life. Leading up to the great reveal, I have decided to launch a bit of a teaser. There won’t be tons of photos in the book but I have lots of photos. So I am going to feature random photos each week that pertain to the book with a short description. At least I’m going to give it a try. Friday seems like a good day for it. Friday Photos.
Here we go.
The 1950’s. Pyinmina, Burma.
I was born in Burma to Expat parents who were living on the campus of an Agricultural Institute. Top left is “Tigger”. My father always told people he killed the tiger but he didn’t. Back then it was a lot more common to find tigers in the area. If they were killing livestock or getting close to town, somebody would kill them. They are known as the Indochinese Tiger and are currently critically endangered due to poaching and habitat encroachment. They were originally found throughout Southeast Asia and in 1970 there were thought to be about 40,000 of them but now there are only about 200, mostly in Thailand.
I lived in Burma the first three years of my life and I enjoyed it.
Pushing Through Daylight Savings Time
Daylight Savings Time. It is controversial. It is way too complicated for me to go into it. It is kind of like jet lag. Takes about a week to adjust to it. Messes up your schedule. Makes you tired, disoriented. But without the exotic new location.
Book
I finished reading Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig. It is a novel but it is based on the author’s family and her mother Louisa, who won Miss Burma in 1956. It was a beauty pageant she won twice. The beauty pageant was held from 1947 to 1962 when the government banned it. (Interesting fact, one of King Thibaw’s grandsons started the beauty pageant. I learned about that in The King in Exile).
Louisa’s mother was a Burmese woman of the Karen (kar-en) ethnic group who married a Jewish man who was born in Burma but grew up in India. After World War II, Burma became independent of Britain and set up its own government. The Karen ethnic group wanted to be an autonomous state and were promised this if they joined forces with the Burmese. After the new government was set up they discovered they were to be absorbed into the new Burmese state. So they became rebels and continued to fight for their independence. In the book, the Jewish husband, Benny, decided he wanted to align himself with the Karens and do everything he could for them. This included procuring guns and working closely with the rebels. He ended up being tortured and locked up both in jail and in house arrest.
His wife, Khin, was a survivor and went through many hardships. She had an idea to enter her daughter into beauty contests because the head of state’s wife was involved with them. This made it possible to become close enough to talk her into helping Benny get out of jail. Louisa went on to win the Miss Burma contest and become famous both for that and for acting in several movies. And then she married the head of the Karen opposition and ended up running for her life.
It was a good book. Lots of ins and outs, surviving war, getting by, being rich, being poor, suspense. And some history. Louisa certainly had an interesting life.
In 1959 my family was living in Pyinmana, Burma, and my mother writes:
The all-Burma beauty contest for both men and women (“Miss Burma” and “Mr Burma”) was held here last weekend. The ice cream party was held here at the Institute on the day they all arrived from all over Burma, and then for two nights they had programs, weight lifting contest, demonstrations of boxing, and beauty contests until 2:30 am the first night and until 4 am the last night! They started at 6:30 pm. Bill went the first night for a couple of hours, and I went the second night for about 4 hours. It really was very interesting, and one accordion solo with accordionist singing Burmese songs was perfectly lovely. He was worth the whole evening for me. But we didn’t get to see hide nor hair of the beauty contests because those were the very last thing! The weight lifters broke several SouthEast Asian records, and the beauties told someone they had never been treated so nicely as they had been here, so we are most glad for the good publicity for Pyinmana. Usually all people hear about us as a city is bad.
Random
I dreamed that I met somebody with beautiful pink hair and I decided I wanted pink hair but I didn’t want to copy her. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do. Maybe if it was a very light pink?
Burma (Myanmar) Books of Interest
The King in Exile, The Fall of the Royal Family of Burma
by Sudha Shah
I just finished reading this excellent book about the last king of Burma (Myanmar). It is well researched and full of details about the times and about the family up until modern day. The last King of Burma, King Thibaw, was deposed by the British in 1885, and exiled to Ratnagiri on the west coast of India. He, his two wives and four daughters lived in a small palace basically as prisoners. He was not allowed to leave his house without permission. He was given a small allowance to live on and pretty much ignored. His sad life ended in 1916. Three years later his queen (his second wife died before him) and daughters were allowed to return to Burma but only to the capital of Rangoon, not to their former home in Mandalay. Two of the daughters remained in India and two went back to Burma with their mother. The saga continues through their children and grandchildren. It was not a happy life and a constant struggle to meet their debts. Although it is non-fiction and historical, it is not dull. The author does a good job to hold your interest.
Other books about Burma:
The Glass Palace
by Amitav Ghosh This book is historical fiction about the same time period as The King in Exile. It goes into the fate of the king but also tells the story of colonialism in the area covering Burma, India and Malaya. I read it a while ago and remember I did skim over parts of it but I also remember it really captured the deposed king’s despair. If you like historical fiction sagas that have it all, you would probably love this one.
The Golden Land
by Elizabeth Shick
This is pure fiction about a Burmese American woman who goes back to Burma in search of her roots, her childhood, her family. She has memories of spending time in Burma twenty five years earlier and a boy who influenced her. She returns looking for her sister but also for him. It has suspense, intrigue, love, history, politics. It is a good read. Interestingly enough it is the first book written by a serial expat who lived in Burma for six years.
Miss Burma
by Charmaine Craig
This one came highly recommended to me. I have not read it yet. It tells the story of a family and their eldest daughter who wins the first Miss Burma beauty pageant. The beauty pageant was held from 1947 to 1962 when the government banned it. (Interesting fact, one of King Thibaw’s grandsons started the beauty pageant. I learned about that in The King in Exile). This book is about an ethnic Karen woman who struggles with her new fame, civil war and unstable politics of the time.
Golden Earth: Travels in Burma
by Lewis Norman
Shortly after World War II, Lewis Norman travels throughout Burma documenting all he sees. It was a very unstable time in Burma with insurgents running around killing people. He writes about the politics but also about the people and the beauty of the land. He went there specifically because he was afraid it was a county that would be closed to outsiders at some point soon. He was right.
The Lady from Burma
by Allison Montclair
This is a murder mystery I came across by accident. It probably doesn’t have anything to do with Burma but looks like a real nail biter.
And if you are interested….
Aung San of Burma: A Biographical Portrait by His Daughter
by Aung San Suu Kyi Aung San was the man who made Burmese independence from the British possible. He is a revered hero in Burma. This is non-fiction.
Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s opposition leader and Nobel Prize winner has written several books about her plight and that of Burmas itself.
You can now travel to Burma as a tourist and many tour groups have trips going there. They mostly go to Rangoon (Yangon), Mandalay, Inlye Lake, and Pagan (Bagan). I was born in Burma to a expat parents and my family lived there off and on until the coup of 1962.
As of July 2023, the US State Department travel advisory page states:
Do not travel to Burma due to civil unrest and armed conflict. Reconsider travel to Burma due to limited and/or inadequate healthcare resources. Exercise increased caution due to wrongful detentions and areas with land mines and unexploded ordnance.
Cooking in the Snow
No, that’s not me…
It’s snowing again. What else is new. I saw a movie years ago, I don’t remember the name of it or really much about it except it was about some nuclear war in the future. What I remember about it was the nuclear winter. It looked like it was snowing all the time. (It might have been The Day After) When I moved to Moscow I used to say I lived in the nuclear winter because it snowed constantly. That light steady snow that never accumulated much but just kept coming down. This winter feels like that. Constant snow.
I’m typing my mother’s letters she wrote to her family from Burma in the early 50’s. I’m almost done with 1953. She helped to edit the Rangoon International Cookbook put together by women, both expats and Burmese… and Indian and Chinese, American, English, French, Australian…In the Forward it says:
“There is a Thank You written invisibly to every contributor and source of treasured recipes, named and nameless. But here we wish to record our special thanks to Mrs. Sung San, honored with Burma’s martyr-hero, and beloved herself as Daw Khan Kai for her service to her people. In the midst of new and heavy responsibilities as Chairman of the Social Planning Commission for the Union of Burma, she has found time to give us her entire delicious “company menu”, with the recipes for the nine distinctive Burmese dishes therein.” (She was Aung San Suu Kyi’s mother)
One recipe contributed by my mother is an old favorite of mine. There were no lemons in Burma but she substituted limes and that worked fine.
Lemon Sponge Pudding
Combine:
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. grated lemon peel
1 1/2 Tbsp. soft butter
3 Tbsp. flour
2 egg yolks, beaten
Add: 1/4 cup lemon juice
1 cup milk
(Mixture may have curdled appearance, but no matter)
Beat: 2 egg whites until stiff and fold into mixture.
Pour into buttered 1.5 quart casserole.
Place in pan of hot water
Bake at 325°F uncovered 40-45 min or until set (1 hr).
Serve warm or chilled. I like it warm!
The cook book was published by the Woman’s Society of Christian Service of the Methodist English Church, Rangoon, Burma 1954
About this time my father was traveling around Burma visiting schools to potentially help with agricultural education. He writes:
“I returned last Friday evening from my trip up country. We had a very enjoyable trip for that area is comparatively free from insurgent activity. We were able to drive about 150 miles away from Mandalay without a guard. That has been impossible until recently. On Sunday we were in Maymyo (by car) and the following Wed. the insurgents blew up the train and killed 14 between Mandalay and Maymyo. Day before yesterday the insurgents blew up the guard train and the regular train following behind between here and Moulmein. They then attached the train and killed several and robbed all the passengers. On our trip we were royally received everywhere we went. These people genuinely seem to like to have us visit their schools. At several schools we were presented bouquets of flowers and at practically every school we had to have tea or food. All the schools are clamoring for agricultural teachers so my program should continue to grow. They have never had teachers of agriculture in the schools before and the ones I turn out this year will determine how effective my program is for I’m the only one in Burma doing this work.
The Honorable Vice President of the U.S. is visiting here this week. There was some comment in the papers before his arrival that the Communists were going to demonstrate to protest his visit here but nothing has come off. There was a short meeting on Tuesday of the Embassy and TCA personnel to meet Mr. Nixon. So, when I get home you can shake the hand that shook the hand of the Vice President.”
So, interesting times…
Cheers
Footprints in the snow and other thoughts
More snow today. I’m getting tired of it. I drove across town yesterday to meet my cousin for lunch. It honestly felt like I was crossing a minefield. I was dodging potholes all the way. Some of them were very large. I feel lucky and surprised when I find a street that is fairly smooth.
I bought my train ticket from London to Dundee online but somehow I must have screwed it up because it turns out I have two train tickets from London to Dundee on the same train, three seats apart. There are so many different ways to buy tickets I guess I went back and didn’t realize I doubled up. Now I have to go back and try to figure out how to get a refund and hope I still end up with one ticket. I am obsessing over every detail of this trip. I was fine until I realized that I arrive the morning after Coronation Day. I’m sure London will be a zoo.
Today’s featured postcards at PostcardBuzz are of Guatemala. The postcards are paired with a couple photos I took when I was was there in the 1960’s. Here is more about that trip:
My first plane trip in many years was in the first class section on a PanAm flight from Mexico City to Guatemala City when I was twelve. We were the only ones in first class so I got to be kind of chummy with the flight attendant. Toward the end of the flight he asked me how I liked the flight and how I felt about it. I thought that was kind of odd and didn’t know what he was talking about. Apparently my parents had briefed him on me and my troubles with flying, and so he had made a special effort to distract me. (We had been in a plane crash when I was 5 years old.)
In Guatemala, we rented a car and drove up the mountain to Lake Atitlan. Volcanoes surrounded the city and the lake itself was a collapsed volcanic cone. On the way up the mountain, we saw people lying by the side of the road. We didn’t know if they were dead, passed out or taking a nap. It was very odd. We later found out that the previous day was payday and they had done their celebrating and not quite made it home. Apparently it was a familiar site in the countryside. We also went to Chichicastenango and to Antigua. This was major earthquake country. Antigua was the original capital of Guatemala but in 1776 there was such a bad earthquake they moved the capital to where it is today – Guatemala City. Antigua was surrounded by three volcanoes.
There was a new part of Antigua and an old part. The old part was all ruins. It was an eerie place. It was once a major city that tumbled down and was left there like a memorial. We stopped at a small restaurant and ate our meal in the yard. There was a group of musicians that wandered from table to table. We could see laundry hanging at the end of the lawn.
From there, we continued to El Salvador. One night in San Salvador we were staying in a high-rise hotel and I was sleeping on a cot. The building started to sway and my cot started moving across the room. All I could do was laugh at the crazy “ride”, as earthquakes were so common at home in Mexico City. In retrospect I guess we were lucky the building didn’t come down…
(excerpt from Expat Alien, My Global Adventures)
I continue to work on my mother’s letters. In one of them she describes a meal they had at a Chinese restaurant in Rangoon (1953).
The dinner was held at one of the Chinese restaurants, and consisted of about a dozen courses of perfectly delicious food. The one good thing about Chinese food is that it is served steaming hot, so that one may be sure that most germs have been thoroughly cooked. There was shrimp and vegetables, duck served with head and tail on and covered with big mushrooms and nuts in gravy, then a whole baby pig with head and tail of which we ate only the skin which was very crisp and chewy at that course, a whole fish with delicious sauce with vegetables, then the pig came back all cut up, soup with abalone, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, etc. served in a big gourd, fried rice, dishes of Chinese vegetables, tea with real flowers in it and cookies, then lychees for the final course served in ice water. I probably have forgotten some courses, for it is very hard to remember back. I liked most of dishes, and at least tasted all except a noodle dish (which I forgot to mention above). I’m not fond of Chinese or Burmese noodles! The fish and soup were my favorite dishes – always are of Chinese food.
March first. Winter is almost over?? So I never knew this but today is National Pig Day in the USA. Apparently National Pig Day is “to accord the pig its rightful, though generally unrecognized, place” as one of the most intelligent domesticated animals. Of course anybody who has seen the movie Babe already knows that about pigs… Happy Pig Day!
My Burma memories in photos
I am re-posting from Eclectic Global Nomad
I was wandering around the National Gallery of Art the other day and stumbled across the exhibit “Captain Linnaeus Tripe: Photographer of India and Burma, 1852-1860.” Since I was born in Burma was immediately interested. I walked right in without reading any of the preamble and just started looking around. Many of the photographs were from Amarapura, the capital from 1842 to 1859 under King Tharrawaddy which is now part of Mandalay.
After the Anglo-Burmese war of 1852, the British annexed a part of Burma. This was the second of three wars. The third war in 1885 resulted in the British taking over the entire country. In 1855 Lord Dalhausie, the governor general of India, went on a political visit to Burma.
– See more at: http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/burma-memories-photos/2014/10/14#sthash.1VzbRUPr.dpuf
The Burmese Coconut Tree
A friend of mine is married to a chef. He was recently invited to do a cooking presentation in Rangoon, Burma (Myanmar). I would love to know what he is preparing for them. Perhaps it includes coconut.
The Origin of the Coconut
Many hundreds of years ago a raft with three people on it reached a city on the Burmese coast. The three strangers were taken before the king. In answer to the king’s questions, the strangers said that they had been set adrift on a raft on the orders of the king of their own country across the sea, because they were found guilty of certain crimes. One of the strangers was a thief, another a witch, and the third a mischief-maker who harmed people by his tittle-tattle.
The king gave a house and one thousand silver coins to the thief, and allowed him to settle in Burma. “He was a thief only because he was poor,” explained the king, “and now that he is no longer poor, he will make a good subject.” To the witch also the king gave a house and a thousand silver coins and allowed her to settle in Burma. “She bewitched people merely out of jealousy,” explained the king, “and she was jealous of others only because she was poor and unhappy. Now that she is rich, she will no longer be jealous of other people’s happiness.” But the king ordered the mischief-maker to be executed at once. “For,” said the king, “once a mischief-maker, always a mischief-maker.” So the mischief-maker was taken to the place of execution, and his head was cut off.
The next day one of the king’s officers passed by the place, and to his surprise he found the head of the mischief-maker rolling about on the ground. He was the more surprised when the head of the mischief-maker opened its mouth and said repeatedly, “Tell your king to come and kneel to me here. Otherwise I will come and knock off his head.” The officer ran back to the palace and reported the matter. But nobody believed him and the king was angry, thinking that the officer was trying to make fun of him. “Your Majesty can send another person along with me,” suggested the officer, “and he will surely bear me out.” So another officer was sent along with the first officer to the place of execution.
When they reached there, however, the head lay still and remained silent. The second officer made his repot, and the king in anger ordered the first officer to be excutied at once as a teller of lies. So the unfortunate officer was taken to the place of execution, and his head was cut off in the presence of his fellow officers. When the execution was over, the head of the mischief-maker opened its mouth and said, “Ha,ha, I can still make mischief by my tittle-tattle, although I am dead.” The officers, realizing that a gross injustice has been done to the dead officer, reported what they had seen and heard and the king was full of grief an remorse.
The king, realizing that the head of the mischief-maker would make further mischief by his tittle-tattle if it was to remain unburied, ordered that a deep pit be dug and the head buried inside it. His orders were obeyed and the head was duly buried. But the next morning, a strange tree was seen growing from the place where the head had been buried. The strange tree had even stranger fruit, for the latter resembled the head of the mischief-maker. The tree is the coconut tree. It was originally call ‘gon-bin’, which in Burmese means ‘Mischief-maker tree’, but during the course of centuries, the pronunciation of the name has deteriorated, and it is now called ‘on-bin’ or ‘coconut tree’. And, if you shake a coconut and then put it against your ear, you will hear a gurgling noise for, you see, although now a fruit, the head of the mischief-maker still wants to make tittle-tattle.
Maung Htin Aung was born on 18 May 1909. He was the great grandson of a military officer who fought in the first war against the British in 1826. There were two more wars against the British and eventually Burma was completely overtaken in 1885.
Maung Htin Aung was part of an aristocratic family and received a Bachelor of Laws from Cambridge Univiersity, a Bachelor of Civil Law from Oxford University, a Master of Laws from the University of London and doctorates in Anthropology and Literature from Trinity College, Dublin.
He wrote books on Burmese history and culture. The above is an excerpt from his book Selections from Burmese Folk-Tales published in 1952 by Oxford University Press.
A later edition: Burmese Folk Tales is available at Amazon.com
Burmese Coconut Rice
Serves 8
Ingredients
5 cups rice
3 coconuts
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp sugar
1/3 tsp salt
2 onions
Grate the flesh of 3 coconuts. Pour some hot water and squeeze the milk through thin muslin. Repeat till all the milk is extracted. Wash rice thoroughly. Put rice into pot. Add this milk until it stands ¾ inch above the rice. Peel, quarter and wash the onions. Add to the rice, oil, sugar, salt and onions. Stir till well mixed. Cook till the milk is evaporated and the rice tender.