Our guide called Dala a Slum. I wasn’t sure what to expect. But you can see a few representative photos attached. As we rode along in our bicycle sidecars, it was very pleasant. The temperature seemed a bit cooler as there was standing water all around the area. We didn’t experience any mosquitoes, which surprised me with all the standing water. Everything was quite green and there were lots of trees. The air had a bit of a pungent odor but we passed people cooking food all along the roads, and the smells were not unpleasant. We stopped many times along the road to see things or to talk to people or to see what they were cooking or what they were carrying. I really enjoyed myself. Towards the end of our trip, I told our guide that we lived in the country, at the end of a dirt driveway, and that this area appealed to me much more than most of what we saw in Yangon. I told him not to take it wrong, but I asked why he felt like this was a slum. He smiled slightly at me. He said that right now, it was at the tail end of the rainy season. He said everything was green right now and they had plenty of water and plants were growing well and so on. He said that in the summer, it would be a very different story. He said that Dala has no water system, no sewer system, and no electricity – and that’s why it’s a slum.

These are just a few of my photos taken to try and give you a general glimpse of Dala. Some were taken from my moving bicycle sidecar, so they aren’t very good photographs, but they should give you a picture of the place.

1. You can see the concrete road, the houses behind the road, lots of trees and green foliage, and a few food sellers right along the road.

2. This shows some typical housing and some of the variation. The houses on the right are very simple and basic while the blue one on the left was quite a bit nicer. The walkways to the houses are because there is standing water underneath them.

3. This is another typical house but you can better see the standing water. Many houses, like this one, are made mostly of locally gathered materials like tree limbs and bamboo and palm fronds.

4. This photo is this local area’s “fresh water pond”. The community elects a manager who is in charge of the pond. The pond is fenced and locked. It is only opened for one or two hours a day at which time everyone must scoop and carry home all their fresh water.

5. The last photo was taken from the pond looking back towards the community. You can see a long line of people carrying water on the road on the left. Those houses are about 200 yards away and are the nearest houses to the pond. Many people in this community live 500 yards or more away from the pond. They all carry water home from the pond with a stick and two five-gallon buckets on either end of the stick every single day to be able to have fresh water.

If you are interested, I found a youtube video of someone making a very similar trip to us. The video address is below but I think you will have to cut and paste it. OR Google: ‘Dala Burma’ and you can find it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVIZ1nUQmxA