Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin

Finding George Orwell in Burma By Emma Larkin

The author spent several months in Burma researching a book about George Orwell.

The tall Rangoon shop house Page 138

Residents of these tall Rangoon shop-houses had invented an ingenious method for circumventing the staircase. A string tied to each balcony hung down to the ground floor. At the end of each string was a piece of ballast—a bulldog clip, a small bucket, a doorknob—to keep it weighted down, and when I walked down the side streets on a breezy day they clinked together like wind chimes. I watched a deliveryman clip folded newspapers to the end of certain strings. If no one was home, the papers would dangle there waiting to be pulled up later. A vendor tied two plastic bags of noodles to a string for customers waiting above, and a teenage girl sent a lottery ticket flying up to her mother. Once, when I had left a friend’s sixth-floor apartment, I realized only after I had climbed down the stairs and stepped into the light drizzle outside that I had left my umbrella behind. As I looked up towards her balcony, I saw that she had already tied the umbrella to her string and was lowering it down to me.

Rainstorm page 140

Just as we set out, a rainstorm came crashing down over the city. People ran for cover, holding up their longyi, ducking into doorways and beneath bus shelters. Stray dogs scurried under parked cars. The rain was astoundingly heavy, and as we sped through the deluge I watched the gutters along the side of the roads regurgitate a fetid cocktail of sewage and mud. By the time we reached the bridge to cross over the choppy waters of the Pegu River the storm was over, stopping just as suddenly as it had begun. It felt as if a gigantic bucket of water had just been emptied over the city.

The curving streets and sleepy lanes of Syriam—today called Thanlyin—were gleaming wet. Pools of water sagged in the tarpaulin awnings over shops. The broad branches of the acacia trees that grew on every corner dripped with water, and the red-dirt streets had become flowing rivulets. A bleating goat stood stranded upon pile of bricks in the middle of a swirling stream. Trishaw drivers removed the plastic sheets from their vehicles and wiped down their handlebars. Tea-shop boys dried off tables and stools that had been placed along the pavements. Beyond the roads was a watery vista of flooded paddy, shining silver-grey.

The market page 32

The street in front of the market was chaotic with traffic. Over the sound of blaring vehicle horns, conductors shouted out their destinations as passengers squeezed on to the overcrowded buses. A traffic policeman dressed in smart blue trousers and wearing a dented white helmet blew his whistle and waved his hands, frantically trying to control the bicycles, mopeds and buse3s that thundered past him. On top of a pick-up truck I saw a group of monks sitting in a messy pile of brick-coloured robes and shaved heads. They waved at me, yelling out joyous hellos and grinning widely through betel-stained lips. A steady stream of women walked out of the market carrying baskets laden with produce. One woman had a sack of vegetables in each hand a bundle of runner beans balanced rakishly on her head. The Tea Shop page 18

Tea is an integral part of Burmese cultural life, and Mandalay is renowned for having some of the best tea shops in the country. They are mostly open-air affairs of low wooden tables and tiny stools that spill out onto the pavements beneath high awnings or umbrellas. Each tea shop has its own specialty. Everyone admires the mutton curry puffs at the Minthiha Tea Shop chain in Mandalay, for instance, and I favoured a corner tea shop near my hotel where the baked-to-order naan bread and split-pea dip became my breakfast staple. There is a pleasing rhythm to the life of the Mandalay tea shops, and whole days can be lost inside them. In the morning, bicycles and motorbikes crowd around them in congested rows as customers down their first cup of the day before going to work. At lunchtime, the peak of the day’s heat, the tea shops are lazy and quiet; the young waiting boys doze on the tables while flies hover above them in sultry slow motion. In the late afternoon and early evenings the pace picks up as the boys become busy with orders for tea and snacks, and the shops are again noisy with chatter.

The Shadow of the Sun By Ryszard Kapuscinski

The author spent many years in Africa as a reporter for a Polish newspaper.

Malaria page 88

One of the symptoms of the illness consuming me is a constant, exhausting fever. It flares up in the evening, and then I have the odd sensation that it is my bones that are radiating this high temperature. As if someone had replaced the bone marrow with high-resistance metal coils and hooked them up to an electric current. The coils become white-hot, and the entire skeleton, engulfed in an invisible, internal fire, burns.

The Night Drive To Kampala, Uganda page 50

Every now and then an oasis of light appeared in the undifferentiated blackness—a roadside shack lit up colorfully as though at a fair, glittering from afar; an Indian shop, a duka. Above the mounds of biscuits, tea bags, cigarettes, and matches, over the cans of sardines and the sticks of butter, we could make out, illuminated by a fluorescent lamp, the head of the proprietor, who sat motionless, waiting with patience and hope for late clients. The glow of these shops, which seemed to appear and disappear as if at our command, lit for us, like solitary lampposts on an empty street, the whole road to Kampala.

Commercial Neighborhood of Dar Es Salaam page 38

Beyond the bridge, on the other side of the lagoon, significantly farther from the sea, lies a paved-over, crowded, busy, mercantile neighborhood. Its inhabitants are Indians, Pakistanis, natives of Goa, arrivals from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, all of them collectively called Asians here. Although there are several men of great wealth among them, the majority are middle class, living without any excess. They are traders. They buy, sell, act on as middlemen, speculate. They are always counting something, counting endlessly, shaking their heads, quarreling. Dozens, hundreds of shops, wide open, their goods spilling out onto the sidewalks, onto the streets. Fabrics, furniture, lamps, pots and pans, mirrors, knickknacks, toys, rice, syrups, spices—everything. In front of a shop sits a Hindu, one foot resting on the seat of his chair, his fingers digging at his toes.