Through Their Eyes: Abigail's Burma Journey

Through Their Eyes: Abigail's Burma Journey  
Editor: David Mills

Camden, ME - We want to share with you all our first "Through Their Eyes" segment. Through Their Eyes is a segment where we can share amazing journeys of those that travel to places like Burma. It is our hope our readers will learn from those that have traveled to places around the world.

Today, we want to share with you an 8th graders journey to Burma.

My name is Abigail Matlack and I am an 8th grader at the Ashwood Waldorf School. Every year each 8th grader has to pick a big project to do throughout the year. My project was raising money for a monastery school in Burma and bringing supplies and volunteering there. I found out about this school through my Aunt who had worked there before. She was also my mentor and came with my mom and me on our trip. I raised $3500 by making little bracelets, picture frames, having a huge yard sale, holding a big workout class and I was given many donations. We started our trip in Bangkok, Thailand and stayed there for 3 nights. Then from there we took a small plane to Yangon, the capital of Burma. When we first arrived we were greeted by our translator, Mr. King, who works for Myanmar Children’s Foundation.  We had been asked out to dinner by a Burmese family who are quite wealthy and offered to donate many of the supplies we were planning on buying. This was amazing because then we could use more of the money we raised to buy lentils and duck eggs for the children to add more protein to their diet. The next two days were used to buy supplies around Yangon city. That was a crazy experience because most of the shops that we had to go to

were in underground malls and super crowded. We had to buy everything in big bulk so luckily we could keep everything at Mr. Kings home which was only 20 minutes away. The whole time we were in Burma we only saw about 10 other foreigners so everywhere we went everyone would stare at us.  The day we were going to the monastery school we rented a big van so we could fit all of our supplies. It was a tight squeeze but we managed. The ride was about 5 hours long. The drive there was really eye opening. You got to see how people actually lived in Burma. Most of the houses were little huts made of bamboo. They had thatched roofs and they were about the size of our kitchen. We passed tons of rice fields and a couple of buses jam packed with people. When we finally got to the school we unloaded everything and visited all the class rooms. There were about 180 students, 80 of them stayed at the school and the others were day students. I don’t think the kids had ever seen a white person under 18 so they were pretty shy at first but also really interested. After they got out of school we played a little soccer. They are crazy good! I could barely keep up. That night we handed out tooth brushes, towels, combs, and toothpaste. They were all very appreciative and you could really see the happiness on their face. Such little things make such a huge difference to them. The next Aunt Laurie and my mom started the medical exams on the children and teachers. I would play with them and teach them English while they waited. In the afternoon we would play games outside and they would do my hair and put thanaka (what they use as makeup and sunscreen) on me. That would pretty much be our routine for the day. Every night we would hand out more supplies and play different games with them. 

One night we had a lottery with different presents we brought them from home. Another night we played a bunch of games and different things like that. One day the girls and I used the makeup I brought and did makeovers on each other. They had never seen that kind of stuff before and we had so much fun! Even though we didn't speak the same language it really didn't matter, we still had a ton of fun! One day a couple of boys taught me how to count to 100 in Burmese. I think that was really good for them because I had been teaching them so much so it was good for them to be able to teach me something. On our 4th day we took a horse cart to a river and from there took a long tail boat for about an hour to some rice fields which we had to walk through. Finally we came to another school which is funded by the same foundation. We brought supplies to this school as well. Aunt Laurie gave the sick children exams and medicine. After that we played duck duck goose but it quickly turned into duck duck chicken because I didn't think they had ever heard of a goose. We also set up a volley ball net and played badminton and Frisbee for a while. They showed us some dances they were working on and sang some songs for us. They could sing the ABC’s backwards faster than I've ever heard. Then we had to head back to the first school and get packed up. Saying goodbye to the children was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I made so many new friends and they felt like my second family. I started crying in the morning and didn’t stop for about 2 hours. A lot of the girls were crying and even some of the boys. I had the most amazing time there and really hope to go back someday.

We want to thank Ms. Matlack for sharing her journey to Burma with us.