Oxbow Lakes

We flew into beloved Thailand today, in my case for the fifteenth time.  I say 'beloved'advisedly: if we didn't like it a lot, and have a lot of friends here, we really wouldn't keep coming back.  And here we are.

But the thought for today was sparked by an amazing view of Burma from the aircraft (thank you EVA, brilliant as always) which flew for an hour down the Andaman Sea coast, sometimes on the coast, sometimes just a bit inland.  The landscape here, as in Thailand, is formed by limestone hills with wide areas of plain formed by the deposit of silt from mountains hundreds of miles away in the Himalayas and in China.  The plains are dotted with Oxbow lakes, lakes formed by a meandering river eventually eroding its banks so that the looping meander is cut off as the river cuts a more direct course.  I 'did' these in Geography fifty years ago, but I have never before seen such classic examples as today.  They don't happen in the UK, where our comparatively short rivers tumble swiftly off the hills and batter their short path directly to the sea.

And the landscape of Burma is very natural.  Little by way of roads, towns, industrial developments. From the air, it is apparently virgin jungle with little human impact.

As you do when tired and a bit dehydrated, I let my mind wonder.  I thought back to 'Pop Weg', Mr Victor Steggal to give him his proper name, our Geography teacher at Ashville College in the 1960s.  It was he who first introduced me to Oxbow Lakes.  He also introduced us all to Yerba Mate (we were studying South America for O-level) a truly unpleasant, but very memorable experience.  He was that rare and wonderful thing, a born teacher.  He had the distinction of having been born at one minute past midnight on the 1st January 1900, so aged exactly with the century, until he dropped out in the eighties, and the century carried on.  His white moustache was neatly trisected by two deep amber lines, which spoke volumes about numerous cigarettes consumed, although never in sight of his pupils.  He was the only Master remaining at Ashville who had been evacuated with the school to the Lake District during the war.  He was a bachelor, a Cambridge graduate, when I knew him quite ancient, and astonishingly capable of communicating his interest in and enthusiasm for countries beyond the narrow compass of Yorkshire.

He was 48 when Burma achieved independence from the British Empire.  In our - somewhat precipitate - departure we left a few apparently minor issues incompletely resolved.  I wonder how 'Pop Weg' would feel if he knew that more than sixty years later, and probably thirty years after his death, those unresolved issues are still costing lives.  Burma as a country is no better off - arguably worse - than she was in 1948.  The view from the air says, by contrast, Thailand has done well.  Her countryside has roads, trading estates, new towns, visible evidence of investment and economic growth.  Her people are increasingly prosperous and, although that prosperity is by no means evenly shared, there are today very many Thai people who have the benefit of secure and well-paid employment, a good education, proper healthcare and the freedom to engage in politics.  That last comment will cause some squeals, even from my friends, but please!  Compared with Burma?  Compared with Burma Thailand has moved forward at lightspeed , her people have every right and reason to hope - and a real expectation - that this vital and confident country will find its way to some sort of generally acceptable constitutional settlement.  That may not be close, it may be hard to achieve, but it is certainly achievable.  Our prayer must be that it can be achieved peacefully.  Burma, by contrast again, has gone backwards since 1948.  Her people have every reason to be jealous of the Thai, but they probably don't have the time.

As a Brit, although maybe more as a historian than a geographer, I have to face this question - did we let Burma down?  I am very afraid that we did just that.  I think Mr Steggal might agree. This is not what anyone expected in 1948.