A memoir of the Karen (Kayin) Transgender Woman of Burma

My love and joys are arbitrating! Why does this happen? I could not understand. Maybe I understood but it is quite difficult to admit such inconvenient understanding. But after all I realised, things will go as such for many days, maybe months or even years! But what I need to do it just to survive whatever it is. I should be prepared and I did prepare. I even knew what could happen. So.... that's the answer. I am YA.

:P I did not think that that day would come again. But it did. I was so happy. I chose it and I knew what I was doing. Even if I had carried out a wrong agenda, then, I suppose it would be nice to do so. Well, a wonderful day is really in my hands. Everything has positive and negative, black and white. I just need to adapt it and hope I will be coping with it.

ေခြးႏွစ္မွာေမြးတဲ့ယာ မယားငယ္ဇာတာပါလာသလား။ မခံခ်င္စြာ ယာ့့မ်က္ႏွာ ဟန္ေဆာင္မႈေတြနဲ ့ျပဳံေနပါလား။ ဘာသာမတူတဲ့သူ႔ခ်စ္သူအေၾကာင္း ဟန္ေဆာင္အျပဳံးနဲ ယာနားေထာင္။ တီခ်မ္းကိုယာေက်းဇူးတင္ ဘာလီေခၚသြားတာကုိပင္။ ဘာလီက စာအုပ္ေတြ အင္မတန္အက်ဳိးျပဳၾကသည္ပင္။ ဘိုလိုမတတ္သူကေလးယာ့အရီြွးၾကား ပက္လက္ေလး။ MSM အေၾကာင္းကိုသူနားလည္ ရင္ဖြင့္ခ်က္ေတြယာၾကားတယ္။ ယာ့ဖုန္းနဲ ့ဆက္ေျပာတဲ့သူ ့ခ်စ္သူကိုျဖတ္စကား ေက်နပ္စြာ ျဖတ္သြားယာ့ရဲ့နား။ ဟန္ေဆာင္ေကာင္းတဲ့ငါ့သူငယ္ ေမမ်ိဳး ယူရီနဲ့ေတြ ့ရာဝယ္။ ယာ့ကို မလြတ္တမ္းဖက္ထား သူ ့ေရွ ့ေထာင္ထား Black Label အလား သီခ်င္းတစ္ပုဒ္ကို သူၾကားလိုက္ ဟန္ေဆာင္မဲ့စြာငိုခ်တာ။ အိမ္ျပန္ေရာက္ေတာ့ ငါ့အနား သူလာေျပာတာထိုင္းစကား မပီမသထိုင္းစကား က်မမိယာနားလည္တာ။ ရင္မွာမြမ္းက်ပ္ အနမ္းမ်ား။ ေခြးခင္ေနျပီတဲ့သူ ့အေျပာ မိယာျပန္ေျပာလိုက္တယ္။ က်မအခန္းက်ဥ္းေတာ့ေခြးဘယ္လိုေမြးမွာလဲလို ့ဆိုျပီး တဘက္ကိုလွည့္အိပ္လိုက္တယ္။ ဘာဆင္ဆာမွမရွိ။ အရွိကိုအရွိအတိုင္းတင္ျပသည္။ အကုန္ ဟာစလာဘီျဖစ္ကုန္ျပီ Glossary ေခြးခင္ဆိုသည္မွာ ထိုင္းလို ပီပီသသ ေခြခန္င္ (Kway Khang) ျဖစ္သည္ means I am horny.

I met him two weeks ago unexpectedly, fell in him unexpectedly, had been sometimes with him unexpectedly and broke up, of course, unexpectedly. Having known this unexpected day is coming but it is just a matter of when. I did not realise it would be that so soon. But that day was swift to come. I was again crying unexpectedly which should not be the case. But I did it happily. My friend told me to cry as much as I want and be the same person always as I used to be. He was crying too. Shall I say it was from the bottom of his heart? Whatever it was, I did enjoy his accompany. I did talk to him. He made me happy and took care of my feelings. Something I did not expect revealed soon. It all happened unexpectedly!

ေသာၾကာညရဲ့ငါ့ခံစားခ်က္ သူငယ္အေပၚကို ေစတနာဖက္ စဖက္ကက္တီကို ငံျပာရည္ထည့္စားရင္း ျပဳံးေနတဲ့သူ႔မ်က္ႏွာ ငါရင္ကိုဒီလိုေတြခုန္ေစတာ။ ဇြန္းခရင္းကိုဘယ္ညာမွားကိုင္ကာ Lasagne ကေပါ့လိုက္တာတဲ့။ အငံစားရင္ေသြးတိုးတက္မယ္လို ့ ဟန္႔တားမိတဲ့က်မမိယာ သူ႔စကားတစ္ခြန္းေၾကာင့္ပါးစပ္ပိတ္လိုက္ရတာ။ ဒါေတြစားလို ့ဒီလို အဆီပိတ္ေနတာတဲ့ အရွက္မရွိလူသူေရွ႔မွာ က်မပါးကိုခ်စ္စႏိုးသူလိမ္လိုက္ တာ ဟိုဘက္ဝိုင္းကမ်က္လုံးျပဴးသြား State Department ကအရာရွိမ်ား ပန္းေရာင္သန္းတဲ့ယ့ာမ်က္ႏွာ Lassi ခြက္ကိုငံု႔ေသာက္လိုက္မိတာ။ အေယာင္ေယာင္အမွားမွားထပ္ျဖစ္သြာ း Lime Cheese Cake တစ္တုံးထပ္ေပးပါတဲ့။

Everything is upside down! Please keep my mouth shut. Let it not open easily. Let my feelings run inside me. Let me never explode. Let my heart die of mercy. Let my thoughts be tough. Let my life die for peace. This burden is so heavy for me. Lord, help me carry it. Please be with me that I may be able to overcome this situation. Father let peace, joy and happiness dwell in my heart if feasible.

May you all be happy when I am in sorrow People will know know my heart is crying because of a cheerful, jokey face I have in disguise I can make other people laugh but not myself Am I a clown?

ခ်စ္တဲ့သူကိုဖုန္းဆက္မယ္ သူနဲ ့အတူတူ ေကာ္ဖီသြားေသာက္မယ္ ကန္ေဘာင္မွာေလညွင္းခံမယ္ အျမဲတမ္း အစီစဥ္ေကာင္းတဲ့ငါ ဒီတစ္ခါေတာ့ျဖစ္မလာပါလား။ သူေျပာတဲ့အရမ္းမခ်စ္တတ္ဘူးဆိုတာ သိပ္မွန္ေနပါလား။ ေသြးေအးသတၱဝါတဲ့။ ခံစားခ်က္မဲ့တဲ့သူေပါ့။ အဲ့ဒီလူကိုမွ ခ်စ္မိတာငါ့အျပစ္ေပါ့။ ငါ့စာပို ့ေပးပါ့မယ္။ နင္ခ်စ္တဲ့သူဆီကုိ။ ဒါငါ့အထင္ေလ။ သူ႔ကိုနင္ခ်စ္ေနတာလို ့။ နင္သူ႔ကို မခ်စ္ပါဘူး။ တကယ္ေတာ့ နင့္ရင္ထဲမွာ အတၱေတြပဲရွိတယ္ဆိုတာနင့္ကိုနင္သိရဲ့လား။ ငါနင့္ကို အစကတည္းက မခ်စ္ဘဲေနခဲ့ရမွာ။ ဒီကေန႔ကစျပီး ေသြးေအးသတၱဝါတစ္ေကာင္ျဖစ္ေအာင္ငါလည္း က်င့္ၾကံရေတာ့မွာေပါ့ေနာ္။ နင့္ကိုသိပ္ခ်စ္တယ္အိုပါး။ ဆက္ျပီးေတာ့လည္းခ်စ္ေနမယ္။ ဘယ္လို အေျခအေနမ်ိဳးမွာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ ငါမိုက္မဲစြာနဲ႔ နင့္ကိုခ်စ္ေနမယ္။

Last week, I was on a field trip for 3 days. Usually, when I came back, my three dogs greeted me and they caressed my legs and waved their tails to express that they are expecting my return. But this time, when I was home, I saw none of them. Where have they been, I wonder? I asked my neighbour and she told me that the dogs were taken by municipality office. And that was arranged by my house owner! I was surprised. What’s wrong with my dogs and my house owners? Perhaps, we live in a row of rooms which the local people called apartment. My neighbour then told me that a new family arrived next to my room and they have two children not older than five. They don’t like the dogs. They are afraid that the fleas and ticks of the dogs will endanger their children. Well, it is true. My dogs are not that clean because they are street dogs. I said my dogs but am I taking care of them fully? I had them shot vaccinations and gave them food and clean them. That’...

ေအး ယုေရ က်မနားလည္တယ္...ခံစားလို႕လည္းရတယ္.... ဘသူလဲဆိုတာလဲသိတယ္..... က်မတူေလးေနမေကာင္းတုန္းက က်မအေဖက ကေလး အသဲအသန္ျဖစ္ေနတာေတာင္... ဘာလို႕ျခင္ကိုက္ခံရတာလဲ... အစားေတြစံုေအာင္ဘာလို႕စားသလဲ စသျဖင့္ေလရွည္ေတာ္မူတယ္ေလ... သူ႕ဘက္ကၾကည့္ေတာ့ ကရုဏာေဒါေသာေပါ့... က်မကေတာ့ ကေလးဒေလာက္ျဖစ္တာေတာင္ အျပစ္တင္ရေကာင္းလားဆိုျပီး က်မနဲ႕က်မအေဖ ေဆးရံုၾကီးမွာ ကတ္ၾကတာ ဆရာ၀န္ေတြေတာင္ ၀င္ဆြဲရတယ္ ရွင္ေျပာသလို ေစတနာကေ၀ဒနာေပါ့ေအ..... က်မအျဖစ္လဲလူစံုတုန္းေျပာခ်င္တာေလးရွိတယ္... က်မပြင့္လင္းစြာေျပာတာပါ... က်မကစိတ္ရွင္းတယ္ ရင္ထဲမွာရွိတဲ့အတိုင္း ဘြင္းဘြင္းေျပာတတ္တယ္.. က်မတို႕လို ေဂးေတြဘ၀မွာ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ရင္ေသြးဆိုတာရွ္ိလာမွာမဟုတ္ဘူး... အ၆မပီပီ မိခင္စိတ္ကလဲရွိျပန္ေတာ့ သူမ်ားကေလးေတြကိုပဲမပိုင္၀က္ေမြး ၾကင္နာရတယ္.. က်မကလက္ေတြ႕ဆန္ပါတယ္.. က်မတူေလး တူမေလးေတြကို ပဲခ်စ္တယ္.. က်မဘ၀မွာ သူတို႕ေလးေတြကက်မသားသမီးပဲ... သူတို႕ၾကီးလာလို႕ သူတို႕ဦးေလးဟာ ေဂးတေယာက္မို႕ ရွက္ျပီး အသိအမွတ္မျပုရင္လဲက်မကံပဲ... ဒါေပမယ့္က်မပိုင္ဆိုင္သမွ်စည္းစိမ္ေတြက သူတို႕အတြက္ပဲ... ဆိုလိုတာက သူတို႕ေတြက က်မဘ၀မွာအေရးအၾကီးဆံုးပဲ... သူတို႕ေတြနဲ႔ယွဥ္ရင္ ဘာမွက်မအတြက္အေရးမၾကီးဘူ...

၁။ ေဆးရံုမွာ လူနာလာေမးတဲ့ သငယ္ခ်င္းက သူ၀ယ္လာတဲ့ဟာ သူအကုန္စားသြားတယ္ ဒါတင္မက အခန္းထဲမွာ လူနာစားဖို ့ထားေပးထားတဲ့ ဟာေတြကို လည္းစားသြားတယ္ ။ ဒါတင္မက လူနာ စိတ္ဆင္းရဲ ေအာင္လည္း လုပ္တယ္ ။ ဥပမာ ... လူနာက ေဆးလိပ္ေသာက္ခ်င္လို ့အိမ္ကေန ေဆးလိပ္မွာ သည္ေပါ့ ။ လူနာကလည္း သိသမွ သိပ္သိ ေဆးရံုမွာ ဘယ့္နွယ့္ ေဆးလိပ္ေသာက္လို ့ရမွာတံုး ။ ဒါကို သူတို ့ေတြလာေတာ့ ေအာ္ ေမ့ခဲ့တယ္ဆို ျပီးျပီေပါ့ .. ဒီလို မဟုတ္ဘဲ မ်က္နွာ က သူ ့လုပ္စာ ၂၅ နွစ္ေလာက္ အလကား ထိုင္စားမိတဲ့အတိုင္း ထားျပီး နင့္ေဆးလိပ္ကို ငါသိမ္းထားတယ္ ေစာက္စကားမမ်ားနဲ ့ ဘာျဖစ္တယ္ ညာျဖစ္တယ္ နဲ ့လူကို လာဆူတယ္ေလ ။ က်မ က တစ္သက္လံုး အေမကေတာင္ အဲလို မေျပာဖူးဘူး ။ ကိုယ့္အေျကာင္းကိုယ္သိတယ္ တစ္ကယ္လို ့ေဆးလိပ္ပါလာရင္ေတာင္ လံုး ၀ေသာက္မွာ မဟုတ္ဘူး ။ အဲလို မ်ိဳး ေလးေတြေပါ့ စိတ္ကို ေတာ္ေတာ္ အေႏွာက္အယွက္ ျဖစ္ေစတယ္။ မေန ့ကဆိုလဲ ည ၁၀ နာရီေက်ာ္ေနျပီ လူနာက နားခ်င္ေနျပီ သူတို ့ေတြက မျပန္ေသးဘဲနဲ ့ဆူညံပြက္ေလာ ရိုက္ေနျကတာ အခန္းထဲမွာ ။ ဘယ့္နွယ့္ေတာ္ ဘယ္လို လူေတြလဲ မသိဘူး ။ က်မ ေမြး ေန ့လုပ္ေနတာဆိုေတာ့ ကိတ္စမရွိပါဘူး ခုဟာက လမ္းေတာင္သိပ္မေလွ်ာက္နိုင္ ဘဲ ေဆးရံုမွာ ေခြေနတဲ့လူ နာလာေမး...

The followings are contributions from my colleagues and friends for my assignment with Gonzaga University called “Reflected Self Best Exercise”. I thank all my friends and colleagues for their help. 1) PHYUSIN NGWETHAW (MS), Programme Analyst European Commission Humanitarian Office – ECHO, Field Office Yangon, MYANMAR SYSTEMATIC ORGANISATION SKILL One of the ways that he adds values and makes important contribution is organization and coordination skill. I think of the time that when I was working with ICRC, David was in charge of Chancellery department. He was responsible for the transmitting all the messages to the persons concerned in different department. In addition, he was taking charge of keeping achieves of all the important documents in and out of the office. All has to be kept hard copies as well as soft copies. Information systems are really cumbersome as ICRC has to take care of confidential information. He can make this system functional am...

Name: Saw Godwiller Date of Birth: 29 July 1916 (Saturday) Place of Birth: Sinbingyi Village, Thandaung Township, Kayin State Father's Name: Thara Mya Mai Mother's Name Thabwarmu Eh Hser 1916 - 1924 - Stay in the hills 1925 - 1935 - Came down to Taungngu and attended Bunker Memorial Middle School and transferred to St. Luk's High School" and matriculated there. 1935 - 1937 - Went down to Yangon to find work.  Appointed as clerk at " E.M. de Souzat Company" with a salary of 40 Kyats per month.  Did not get equal treatment and left on 26 April 1937. 1937 -  - 28 April 1937 went to Maymyo with brother-in-law Dr. S M Dwe and enlisted in the Burma Army (2nd Burma Rifles, Mandalay) on 30 April 1937. 1940 - 1941 - Selected to attend "Kitchener College" at Nowgong, Central India.  Obtained position (55) out of 600 students but as Burma was separated from India in 1937, was no more eligible to attend Military Academy at Dehra Dun. 1942 - 1943 - Came back to ...

Trying to forget somebody you are always remembering is not an easy task. But personally, it is a must. I have been trying so many times but still yet to be successful. It just creates so many things for me to think without sleeping. Insomnia is a reward in addition to being unable to forget that particular one. It hurts! Trying to neglect someone you want to be caring for all the time is like squeezing your delicate heart without mercy by yourself. Rememberance is the Goddess who is powerful to conquer the soldiers of negligence from destroying the city of memory. I am trying to forget but these all are coming back to me. Please, let me forget you!!!!!!!!!