by Ginny Aiken
“You want go today?” the man says.
“I think not. Let’s go to the Mogok Valley. That’s what we came to see in Myanmar.”
We get into the van provided for us, and our driver greets us with a slight nod. He too is packing . . . something. The bulge at his waist looks much too much like those of his cohorts. Miss Mona and I hold hands to pray.
The drive from Mandalay to Mogok has to be the loneliest in the world. For a while, the one-and-a-half-lane road runs by the Irrawaddy River.
The views are unbelievably beautiful. Pagodas and shrines that look like inverted cones dot the green, green landscape. Every so often along the road, you see a man or a woman loaded down with parcels. The river itself is wide and runs gently between the grassy banks.
At one point, we spot a battered, rusty ferry, loaded to the gills with bag upon bag of freight piled up to the ceiling of the lower level. On the next level up, folks are crammed around tables and benches. Metal barrels wreathed in puffs of smoke have been co-opted for cooking, and a woman behind a counter covered with what looks like Myanmar-style fast food serves the travelers. While we watch, a teenager dumps out one of the cooking barrels overboard—trash removal’s no big deal on the Irrawaddy.
“Oh, dear,” Miss Mona says a little later. “This doesn’t look good.”
“This” is what can only be called a military checkpoint. And considering the country is run by a military dictatorship, we shouldn’t be surprised. Still, something about AK47s just doesn’t conjure up warm fuzzies.
Miss Mona and I cling to each other again, our voices quiet in prayer. When we chime in our amens, I glance at the S.T.U.D.’s stud. Max looks ready to jump out of his skin, so I turn back to the Lord.
“Father God? It’s me again, okay? I’m still asking you to keep us all safe, Miss Mona, Max, Allison, Hannah and her camera, and the rest of our crew. We’re real strangers in a really strange land, and you’re our only protection—those guns our ‘escorts’ are wearing are just as scary as the ones the uniformed military guys have. Thanks for all the protection you’ve blessed us with already, and I can’t wait to see what you’ll do next. I love you, Father.”
Miss Mona whispers, “Amen.”
I catch a glimpse of Max’s expression. Sure enough, he’s thinking about my “weird” way of talking faith. It might seem weird to him, but it works for me. I know my Lord hears me. The Bible says he listens, and that’s good enough for me.
When I look out the window, I see our “escorts” coming back to the van. Lucky for us, they must have said the right thing or had the right kind of papers or the right color money, because in minutes we’re on our way again.
Max relaxes. “Bet our trip would’ve ended back there if these guys hadn’t been with us.”
“There’s no getting around this place without them,” I say. “That’s what happens in the communist world.”
“Oh, look, Andie!” Miss Mona says. “Isn’t this all so sweet?” If I didn’t know better, I would think we’d just boarded a time-travel machine. Very simple, rustic farms dot the flat land every so often. Less frequently, we pass small villages. The locals’ favorite form of transportation seems to be foot traffic, but the really wealthy ones ride bicycles and oxcarts. Cars? Maybe two or three.
After a couple of other checkpoint moments, the road begins to twist and turn, taking us into the mountains that had seemed so far away when we saw them from outside the hotel. We pass timber plantations and more quaint hill villages, these springing from the jungle vegetation that seems thicker than when we started. Later still, we see scattered mining operations, and that gets my juices going. It’s the first sign that we’re coming into gem country.
I can’t stop myself. “It’s happening!”
Miss Mona leans closer to the window. “Oh, Andie. I do wish your auntie was with us. She’d just love this.”
“She would, but can you imagine how much trouble she’d get into? Just think what she might have done if she’d seen those AK47s.”
“She’d likely ask the military men to show her how to use the dreadful things. Remember, she wanted to muck out that stall.”
“Who can forget? And you know? If she had asked for automatic weapon lessons, we’d all be guests of the Mandalay city jail . . . for-eh-ver!”
Max sleeps.
By now we’ve passed through five—count ’em, five— checkpoints. I hope there’s not a whole lot more of this dusty, rutted road to go. I press up against my window too, and watch, stomach in throat, as we wind through a narrow mountain road with sheer drop-offs on one side, and Gulliver-sized flowers on the other.
Then, all of a sudden, we round a bend on the road, and voilá! We might just as easily have arrived at Dollywood. Just ahead of us, a totally out-of-place, twenty-foot-high sign looms over the road. Our translator turns around in his front passenger-side seat.
“Look. It say ‘Welcome to Rubyland.’”
All the comforts of home. Not.
1000
“This is where we’re staying?” Miss Mona asks.
I look at the plain-Jane building, our hotel. It’s nothing like the beautiful Mandalay Hill Hotel. There’s no glam in Mogok. “That’s what our keepers say. Come on. I’m sure it’s clean. And you did want an adventure.”
She sighs. “I did, didn’t I? I guess it looks like an adventure. Now you tell me. Why does everybody and their brother always bring up how clean a dump is to try and redeem it in all its dumpiness?”
Oh-kay. “Just think all you’ll have to tell Aunt Weeby when we get back.”
“I’d better take pictures.”
“You better not think of going back empty-handed.”
“I miss her.”
I never thought I’d say this in Myanmar. “Me too.”
“But she really couldn’t have handled this, honey, not with that foot busted into bitty pieces the way it is. Oh, and all that hardware they stuck in there. Poor thing . . .”
“Don’t feel guilty, Miss Mona. Aunt Weeby’s probably taking your business apart and rebuilding it from scratch. By the time you get home, you might not own a TV network anymore. Who knows what that wacky brain of hers might come up with?”
“I’d best be calling her, don’t you think?” Miss Mona runs a hand over her sleek silver hair. “Well, Andie, you’re right, of course. Let’s get to getting here. We need to bring in our luggage, unpack the essentials, and then . . . then we need to go get us some rubies!”
I glance at my watch. “It’s four thirty already. That crazy dirt road trip took six hours. I don’t know that there’s going to be much happening at the—oh, I’m gonna butcher this name—Panchan-htar-pwe outdoor market by now. I think we’ll have to wait until tomorrow for rubies.”
“Bless you! Now there’s a name for you. The who market?”
When I shrug, since I have no idea what the correct pronunciation of that mouthful of letters might be, she chuckles, then continues. “I’m sure we can find us something to eat at that Paunchy-something-or-other market. Don’t you want to try some native food?”
Do I look like I want the runs?
“Only,” I say, “if it’s so fresh it wants to get up and leave, they’ve fully cooked it, and the cooking utensils are clean so we don’t come down with bubonic plague, bird flu, or any of Job’s disgusting ailments. You do know we can only drink bottled water, right? If we forget, we’ll have to break out the Imodium. Oh, and we can’t get on the wrong side of gun-toting locals, if you get my drift. The hotel’s dining room looks super-fine to me.”
“That’s all good with me, honey. Let’s finish up here.”
We unpack, and in the end, meet the others in the hotel’s modest but—you got it—clean dining room. The S.T.U.D. crowd sits at two long tables, where we’re served about a dozen Asian mystery-meat-and-veggie delicacies, all with a side of rice. Our armed nannies sit at a smaller table to our right, and while we laugh our way through the meal, they keep their deadpan face
s on, say very little, and shovel down their mountains of chow.
It actually tastes pretty good. But between bites, I pray the tons of MSG I’m sure lurks in the mystery mix doesn’t sideline us all with permanent migraines.
I don’t know about anyone else, but two hours later, I zonk out the minute my head hits the pillow and don’t wake up until the sun streams in through our window.
A quick bath followed by a simple breakfast has us on the road to a ruby mine by nine o’clock. When we reach our destination, what I see makes me wince. Yes, I’ve been to other mine sites in third world countries before, but the crude and primitive conditions never fail to move me.
“This place is rougher than those Hollywood actor types’ unshaved chins,” Miss Mona says. “Is this typical?”
“Pretty much. But this one’s . . . oh, maybe a little worse. You’d think as long as they’ve been mining here, and with the price of Burmese rubies what it is, their operations would be more upscale.”
Beneath canvases stretched between four sturdy sticks, a hole pierces the dun-colored, dusty ground and descends at an angle. In the shade cast by the canvases, I count a crew of about a dozen miners standing around, dressed in shabby, dirt-stained clothes.
I slant a look at Miss Mona, whose expression screams worry. I say, “Hey! Here’s the Mogok Welcome Wagon come out to greet us.”
Miss Mona smiles. “At least they don’t have guns. From what I can see, that is.”
“They look poor,” Max says. “It’s got to be a tough life.”
Ding, ding, ding! Give the fellow in the blue shirt a cigar.
“It’s one of the poorest countries in the world, Max. These people are caught up in the fist of a communist government— no human rights or civil liberties, you know—and there’s not much commerce. It’s worse than just poverty you see here.”
I stare past the dirt-dusted mine, the tattered miners, and the dingy canvas cover. A short distance beyond, more of that Zambian-emerald rich green landscape reaches all the way out to meet the Ceylon-sapphire blue sky. The sober contrast hits me hard.
Father God . . . how can you stand to see your children in these crummy circumstances? I’ll tell you, it’s breaking my heart. Remind me how tough it is for them any time I haggle on a price too close to where it could hurt them and their families. I want to be fair, to honor you, and I want to get Miss Mona a good deal. Show me how to do that, ’cause I sure don’t see how. Okay? Thanks.
As soon as we park, the men break out in smiles and conversation.
“Oh, listen to them, Andie,” Miss Mona says. “Isn’t their singsong chitchat charming? I wonder what they’re saying.”
“I’m not so sure I want to know. I half think they’re greeting us and half think they’re laughing at the crazy Americans and all their gadgets. Just wait till Hannah sets up her camera and the rest of her stuff.”
When the Scandinavian blonde does just that, the miners gawk—bet they haven’t seen a girl who looks like her, and worse, who does that kind of work. Their jibber-jabber kicks it up a notch. And while some might think it’s a thrill and a half to watch them get a good giggle at our expense, my patience is now as thin as model Kate Moss. I’ve come to Mogok for one thing.
I rub my hands and open the van door. “Let’s go mine some rubies.”
“You don’t plan to go down that rat hole, do you?” Max asks.
Here we go again. “If they give me half a chance, I’m there.”
“Do you have a death wish?”
I step out of the vehicle, and the heat from the hard dirt road burns through the soles of my running shoes, sears my legs under lightweight cotton pants, and roasts my short-sleeved arms. “Just a ton of appreciation for the beauty God created under dirt and weeds.”
Max follows me as I approach the mine entrance. “You’re really willing to go into an unsafe dirt tunnel.”
Enough, already. “Aren’t you?”
Horror fills his face. “Any footballs or golf balls down there?”
All righty, then. “Tell me one thing. What kind of qualifications did you feed Miss Mona to make her think you’d make a decent jewelry and gemstone show host?”
He crosses his arms. “My years of experience on TV did the talking for me.”
“Reading the weather in Who-Knows-Where, Missouri, right?” When he smiles that knee-melter grin of his, I steel myself against its impact. Well, I try.
Aren’t I too young for hot flashes, Lord?
“Okay, fine.” I swipe the damp back of my hand across my sweat-beaded forehead. “Had it been me, I’d’ve jumped at the chance to peddle stuff too. But didn’t you think you might be on shaky turf selling stuff you know nothing about?”
“The network sells more than baubles.”
“Baubles!” Now you did it, bud. “I show our customers only museum-quality pieces.”
“Hey! You just said if you’d been in my shoes, you would have jumped at the chance to peddle stuff too. So what’s the deal with giving me such a hard time for doing just that? Besides, I figure it’s only a matter of time before Miss Mona promotes me to hosting the sports shows.”
He looks good enough and might know enough to try to edge out our sports guru. But . . .
“Good luck prying Tanya, a former college basketball star and international model, off the sports host desk. But let me share a secret. No sane body messes with Tanya. She’s six foot three, and moves at the speed of rumors in a girls’ college dorm.”
“All right, Andie.” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “Can we get beyond the Max-doesn’t-know-anything kick?”
“When you get to the other side of doesn’t-know-anything.”
“It’s already reached the boring and annoying point, so I suggest, for Miss Mona’s sake, that you get a life. I’m here, I’m learning, and you’re acting like—”
He stops.
I glare.
He adds, “Let’s just say you’re not helping.”
The thought that he might be right zips through my brain at the speed of the Roadrunner, but the gemologist in me does a Wylie Coyote and crashes a boulder on top of it.
Maybe Scarlett O’Hara had that thinking about life thing right. I’ll think about it tomorrow.
One of the men steps away from the rest and comes up to us. He pulls on a tuft of his dirt-dusted onyx-black hair. “Red.” He nods. “You Miss Andie.” His accent does some weird things to my name. “I mine manager. I help you here.”
Hey, Mom. Thanks for the red-hair genes—not. “Sounds good.” I point to the dark hole in the ground. “How soon can you get me inside the mine?”
His eyebrows shoot tuftward. “You no go there. You woman.”
At my side, Max the Magnificent chortles.
I jerk to my full height. “I’m a woman, a capable, curious woman, and I’ve gone into more mines over the last seven years than you want to count. I so want to go into your mine. And I want to bring a camera with me. It’s what I came to film, what I was invited to show the world.”
He shrugs and goes back to the gathered miners.
“That’s going to go over real well with our three armed shadows,” Max mutters.
“Until they chase me out with one of their guns, I’m doing what I came to do. Are you with me?”
He shakes his head, shoves his hands in his pockets. “I’ll watch.”
I head for the mine manager, a million questions zooming in my head. “Can I ask you something?”
He nods. Dust motes drop from his tufts. Bad hair day, or what?
I turn to where our crew is waiting. “Hannah! Let’s get this on film.”
The fascinated manager can’t take his eyes off the camera and its pretty operator. But I have work to do. I nod to Hannah, and the film rolls.
I clear my throat to get his attention. “About how much good rough comes out of the mine every day?”
He narrows his eyes and scratches his head. More dancing dust. “Good rough?”
/> “Yes. Ruby rocks—good for cutting.”
“Ah . . .” He holds out a hand, cups it, and draws a circle about the size of a dime.
“That little?”
“Every day? Little, yes, little.”
I gesture toward the other miners. “All of them work in this mine?”
He points to the mouth of the mine. “They here.”
To the camera, I say, “Ladies and gentlemen, the small amount these men are bringing up out of the mine explains the skyrocketing cost of Burmese rubies, the finest of the red corundum.” I face the manager again. “How many hours do the men work?”
Hannah gets amazing footage while we talk about the non-glam stuff. I can see this special’s going to kick up a crazy craving for Burma rubies. But where am I going to get enough of the über-rare stones?
Once I tell Hannah to quit rolling and she goes to pack up the van, I ask Tufty—I’ll never be able to remember his name— where I should go to find great rubies in decent quantities.
He smiles and looks at the mine. “You go buying office, not market. Market little ruby, no clean.” He clams up and his expression becomes kind of sad.
My curiosity flames out of control, but this is one of those times when biting your tongue’s the only way to go. The mine manager takes time with his thoughts, and I give it to him. Finally, he looks at me again. “Yes. I tell you. Sometime small parcel is stole. Sometime so-so parcel is stole. One time, big parcel was stole. Beautiful rubies. Big, good red.” He shrugs. “Much ruby stole.”
“Oh, that’s bad! And no one has found any of them?”
He shakes his head. “No. Last stole two year ago.”
“Any idea who might have done it?”
A thin shoulder rises. “Don’t know. Anyone can do.”
“That’s true.” What a shame—and such a loss. “There’s a lot of evil in a lot of men.”
“Evil . . . bad, yes? Much, much bad. Many bad men.”
A few more minutes of sad laments go by, and then Max and Miss Mona wave me over. It’s time to go. I’m ready for one of those buying offices. I want to be amazed by rubies. I head to the van. “Hey, Miss Mona! What do you think? Should we go buy us some rubies?”
