Letters from Burma by Aung San Suu Kyi.

Repairing the Roof

There is a Burmese saying to the effect that if the roof is not sound the whole house becomes vulnerable to leaks. That is to say, if soundness is lacking at the top there are bound to be problems all along the line until the very bottom.

It has certainly been my personal experience over a number of monsoon seasons that a leaking roof renders other improvements to a house futile. During the six months of rain, every spare basin, bucket, saucepan and plastic container in my house has to be commandeered to catch the rivulets that flow in merrily. When there is an especially heavy downpour the containers have to emptied frequently and the myriad small leaks that appear quite suddenly (and disappear just as suddenly) at unexpected places have to be mopped up.

Keeping the inside of the house dry becomes a constant juggle with a variety of vessels and rags. I tried to stop the incessant drips with intricate arrangements of plastic sheets, waterproof tape, putty and other gummy substances. But all these maneuvers succeeded merely in stemming the torrent temporarily and over the years paint, plaster and woodwork in the path of the worst leaks steadily deteriorated.

So making the roof rainproof was at the top of the priority list of essential repairs that we decided has to be undertaken during this dry season. Only when the roof was sound would it become worthwhile to put new paint on walls that have been neglected for several decades and, in general, to make the house cleaner and brighter.

There were some who had the, in my view, horrifying idea of replacing the original tile roof with a corrugated iron one but I held out firmly for rescuing the old tiles and supplementing those that had been damaged beyond redemption with other ones. As soon as the tiles were brought down from the roof the advocates of corrugated iron were totally won over. Each tile was solid and beautifully crafted and baked into it were the name of the company that had produced it, the date (1936, presumably the year the house was built) and a number.

The tiles fit so well into each other that in one part of the roof where the supporting woodwork had rotted away a sheet of tiles as firmly linked together as the best Lego model had managed to keep in place. And once they had been washed clean the tiles glowed a soft red and looked as good as new. I must confess some of us waxed quite lyrical over the beauty and durability of the tiles.

Of course, there were a number that were broken or too badly chipped to be reused so we had to buy replacements from shops that specialized in selling parts of old buildings that had been pulled down. The tiles that we managed to get were slightly different from our original ones, but were equally well crafted and almost as solid and on each of them was the date: 1865. We viewed them with awe and could not help remarking that we human beings, often so proud of our powers and achievements, are not even as durable as a simple brick tile.

For all the metaphors about human clay, in substance we are probably closer to wood. Many of the wooden supports in the roof had not been able to withstand the onslaught of the seasons, despite the fact that only teak had been used. Considering present day prices there was no question of putting in new teak supports. Even old teak was prohibitively expensive so we decided on old /pyinkadoe/ (iron wood), which came, like the 19th century tiles, from buildings that had been pulled down in recent years. The builders thought that with proper maintenance the supports fashioned from old wood should be good for another 60 years.

Repairing the roof involves reorganizing the whole house. I had to keep moving around from room to room as the builders kept removing the tiles. The very day after the first lot of tiles had been removed it rained. Not only buckets and basins and pots and pans were brought into operation on this occasion, there were even a few glass tumblers catching solitary drips. The most abiding impression of the episode was the camaraderie and laughter with which everybody rallied around, viewing the somewhat unseasonable rain not so much as a setback but as a comic interlude. Into each life some rain must fall and how good when its fall contributes to a better atmosphere. For me there was a special bonus: I had moved, together with some bulky furniture, into the hottest room in the house but thanks to the rain it was pleasantly cool most of the time I had to camp there.

While the repairs on the house were going on life was doubly hectic as I had to cope not only with my routine political work but also with packing and unpacking, tidying and rearranging furniture. It occurred to me more than once how important was the contribution of the wives of my male colleagues. By looking after all household matters and supplying endless encouragement to their menfolk these indomitable women, to whom the international media pays scant attention, play an essential role in or endeavors to repair the roof or our nation.