Burmese trail muggers

From a camera trappers perspective Burmese villagers fall into three categories.

Dream walkers don't notice or don't care about the camera -- they just want to get home with their loads of bamboo or firewood. 

Poachers steal the camera because they don't want to be caught poaching.

And Burmese trail muggers strike poses hoping they'll be discovered by Hollywood.  

It wasn't pleased to see me

It was only last week -- we were driving back to camp through the western hills of Burma when I spotted a kid on the road carrying a big cat.

It didn't look exactly like a house cat, so I asked the driver to stop -- "Yeppa, yeppa" and jumped out with my camera.

The boy was clutching a jungle cat (Felis chaus), one of Asia's most widespread small cats (Egypt to SE Asia and SW China).

It wasn't pleased to see me and meowed constantly, but it didn't attempt to escape.

Normally I would have asked more questions, but I was part of a group, and the group had a busy agenda.

My guess is that the cat's mother was caught for the pot, and the boy raised the kitten.

Only a hand-reared jungle cat would be so tame.

A shy pie -- dog, that is

A shy pie, or pariah dog-- loved by his family.

If you are trying to read this dog's body language, allow me to help.

He was a shy pie or pariah dog, and he didn't want his picture taken.

I suppose I didn't look right, smell right, or act right.

This was the best I could do.

We had stopped on a country road to buy dried fish (camera trap bait), and as the lady weighed out 3 D-cells worth of fish I noticed the pie dog.

He was clearly trying to be discrete.

So I sidled around the family members and he lowered his head.

Good enough, I thought -- I'll just squat down for a shot at his level.

He wanted no part of this weird looking old dude.

Village dogs may keep their distance from strangers, but they are not afraid to look at you.

This dog acted like I was going to catch and eat him. 

Frank Kingdon Ward, the famous botanical explorer wrote of a caravan of yoked Chinese dogs --"prick-eared curs of no breeding" on their way to market in the headwaters of the Irrawaddy.

That is far from here, and he had nothing to fear.

And there may be more to his story, but as far as I could tell, he was just a shy pie.

Reference

Kingdon Ward, Frank. 1990. Himalayan Enchantment, an anthology. (Chosen and edited with an introduction by John Whitehead). Serindia Publications, London. 

The remnants remain

The bridge of Chitgon Chaung, probably pre-1940s
still stands beside its working neighbor. 

"As for timings, I can't predict to within half an hour either way exactly when a train will be crossing the Namkwin bridge. Red and Dennis will have to use their initiative . . . Pat and Bunny will do their stuff not less than thirty seconds after hearing the Namkwin explosion."

The China-Burma India Theater -- World War II.

Bridge demolition was the work of Force 136 -- ten saboteurs of the Indian Army charged with breaking the supply lines on the Myitkyina Railway.

A C47 transport plane droned east from "somewhere in India" to the Kaukwe Valley where three fires framed the landing zone in the darkness below.

"Well, boys, this is it!, We're almost over the target, Get yourselves ready."

From the Dakota they bailed out into darkness, landed safely, and buried their parachutes in the jungle.

Then they made for the rendezvous point 4 miles away.

And in due course they blasted the bridges.

John Beamish, an Anglo-Burman told the story in Burma Drop -- and a good read it is.

I pulled my worm-eaten copy off the shelf the other day.

Having just paid respects to the Bailey bridges of WW2, I needed to refresh my memory.

The Burma Campaign was among other things a war of bridge building and bridge destruction.

In the chaos of the evacuation of Burma the British demolished bridges to stall the advancing Japanese.

The Japanese repaired the bridges, and then destroyed them during their own desperate retreat 2 years later.

From Sir Donald's Bailey Bridge. 

The Bailey Bridge was a convenient solution to trashed bridges.

The genuine article on the Gwa Road heading east into the Rakhine Yoma. 

Donald Baliey (1901-1985) was a civil engineer and a hobbyist model bridge builder who designed a portable truss bridge in his spare time.

It had the versatility of a toy erector set, and Bailey's superiors knew a good thing when they saw it.

Bailey bridges still span some of the streams and rivers -- chaungs in Burmese -- that cross the narrow coastal plain between the Bay of Bengal and the Rakhine Yoma.

The X-shaped trussed sections supported tanks.

There are old bridges of at least two styles, but you can single out Bailey bridges by the emblematic square plates crossing the X-shaped trusses.

Transoms

The transoms -- linked sections of beams that support the plank road (stringers and chesses) -- stand out with their circular perforations and welded plates.

Topside bracing frame.

Bracing frames connect double-trussed panels of larger bridges.

They are still there, gleaming in the midday sun and rusting in the monsoon rain.

References

Beamish, John. 1958.  Burma Drop. Elek Books, London

Crossing paths

May 8, 2004, Saturday morning

Location: the tail of the Himalayas (just a place you pass over while watching the inflight movie)

The trail straddled a ridge covered with pines and rhododendrons. In burned clearings were thickets of Himalayan blackberries and brackens. To the south a vast canyon, in the distance slash and burn.

A light-footed stranger came down the trail.

He was armed -- spear, long bow, a bamboo quiver of arrows, and a dah (machete). No shoes. He wore an oversized suit jacket.

There were no villages nearby.

I had to talk with him. Shein translated to Homang, Homang translated to the stranger.

His name was Boomenai, and he was 76 years old. He had two wives and ten children. Two are still living.

He was on his way to Kanpetlet, a two-day march from his village. He had slept in the forest, and roasted a bird for dinner last night.

I would like to know him better, but have to be satisfied with his picture.

Anyone who carries a spear, hunts with a bow, and sleeps in his suit jacket is my kind of guy.

Vile epithets and the dangers of learning foreign language

"The men of mixed blood jabbered in French, Cree, and Chipewyan mainly, but when they wanted to swear, they felt the inadequacy of these mellifluous or lisping tongues, and fell back on virile Saxon, whose tang, projectivity, and vile epithet evidently supplied a long felt want in the Great Lone Land of the Dog and Canoe."
The Arctic Prairies, 1911, Ernest Thompson Seton

The need to use virile Saxon comes at a young age. We were highly amused when a friend's son, wrought with angst over a childhood vexation told his parents he wished he could swear. He made it quite clear that his limited English was simply unequal to the task of expressing his frustration. I always thought that Zachary might have already known of a few tangy words, and was discretely asking permission to use them.

My first awareness of virile Saxon came when I was in Kindergarten. My grandfather and father had a fascinating language of their own. They used special words whenever they worked together. I thought I was entitled to use "the man's language". I never knew my mother was capable of such swift and decisive movement until the morning I exclaimed, "You dumb bastard!" It was probably one of the rare instances of single trial learning in my youth.

Somewhere I heard that biologists, the earthiest variety of scientist-- are more prone to use expletives than say, physicists or geologists. Among biologists, they say zoologists use racier language than botanists.

I am not sure any of this is true, but I always assumed that Steinbeck sanitized his portrayal of Ed Ricketts as Doc in Cannery Row. If Ricketts was as "concupiscent as a rabbit" he must have seasoned his speech.

Now the flashbacks:

ca 1979: Yenching Palace (a Chinese restaurant), Connecticut Avenue, Washington DC
We are zoo staffers prepared to celebrate the kind of personnel change that makes you sing, "Ding dong the witch is dead". The management knows us and seats us on one side of the room among a few other diners. We order steamed dumplings and beer while our mentor, who opts for Wild Turkey begins his catharsis -- a one-man passion play of sweeping erudation, surreal outbursts, and brooding pathos -- richly seasoned with expletives. An hour passes before we order food. Three hours later we are burned out, and it's time to go. That's when we notice that all the other customers are dining at the farthest corner of the room.

And now the faux pas of learning a language.

August, 1965: a hut on the banks of Rio Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico
I am learning vernacular Spanish from the natives (mainly a working guy named Ruben), and am much taken with slang words, like cabron (billy goat). We refer to each other as cabrones. I know it means more than billy goat, but I'm clueless to its nuanced and vile usage. Reno, and Dave and I are dining at the home of a humble family of campesinos, when Ruben announces that I have taught myself Spanish. This is a cue to perform. I do my little routine (all in present tense) and then lightly refer to Ruben as "un cabron". I am on a roll, and fail to notice the family's mortified body language. Ruben apologizes and explains that I don't know what I am saying.
"No, no, no, no no!" I insist. "Es verdad. Ruben esta un cabron muy grande."
When I realize how furiously Ruben is backpeddling, the damage has been done, and the rest of the meal is as solemn as a wake. I now know that cabron is not a word of mixed company.

1980s: an airport following the annual conference of the American Society of Mammalogists
Recognizing two gals from the meetings, I buy them coffee as we wait for our flights.They are grad students from Louisiana State University, with field experience in Brazil. "What about language problems?", I ask. They tell of a fellow student studying bats who approached a young woman at an airport to practice his Portuguese. (Yeah, right). The turning point was when he told her, "There's a fly in your hair." The lady politely replied he was mistaken, and the conversation quickly fizzled. Later he learned there are two words for hair: pele (fur) and cabelo (hair). The young man understandably used the word for fur and pelt -- pele. It was just bad luck. It also means pubic hair.

December 1, 1982: Delhi Airport, Security Check line (RNAC flight to Kathmandu)
I strike up a conversation with a couple of young Indian architects boarding the same flight. At the body frisking stop, one of them has an altercation with the security officer. "What happened?", I ask afterwards. "He is a silly old bum." He explains that the customs inspector was obviously from Haryana, so he addressed him in Haryani as "friend". The customs inspector correctly identified the architect from the Punjab, and assumed the architect was being a smart ass by using the Punjabi word that sounds the same. "What does that word mean?" I innocently ask. "It means the '(mammary) glands of a prostitute'!"

January, 1990. Casino Hotel, Trichur, Kerala
"Can you tell me what he's saying?" the redhead (my wife) asks with an embarrassed look. Our Keralite friend smiles and patiently repeats "How was the bed wetching?" (His accent is Malayalam, not the Hindi we hear mimicked so often.) I translate. "He wants to know, 'How was the bird watching?'" Later she tells me she thought he was asking, "How was the bed wetting" I admit it sounded a lot like that.

April, 1998. Chatthin Wildlife Sactuary, Burma
The premonsoon heat is terrible, and the redhead is not having fun. When the boyish Aung Moe delivers the cool drinks and notices her forlorn look, he timidly asks. "Scuse me, are you boring"?