BEHIND THE SCENES IN HSIPAW

If you saw my essay for The Christian Science Monitor a couple weeks ago, you know about my serendipitous encounter with a Burmese bookshop owner in Myanmar's Shan State. But what I didn't share in the article—both to protect the bookseller's identity and for lack of space—is this man's fearless crusade for education in the impoverished countryside.

When we asked if there was anything we could do to assist him, he immediately set to action. With the equivalent of $50, we walked to the market and selected hundreds of school notebooks, pencils, erasers, and pens. It wasn't the first time he had gotten foreigners involved in delivering school supplies, and for this the government had forbidden him to travel outside of town. "But I know how to avoid the checkpoints," he said with a grin.

The next morning we met him and a friend and, with the enormous stacks of notebooks balanced precipitously on their motorbikes, set off around the countryside. We sped along the main road lined with prehistoric-looking shade trees—planted by the former prince of Shan State, he merrily called out—before bouncing our way through the rice paddies to one-room schoolhouses.

Eight elementary schools, two rainstorms, and one flat tire later, we had dispensed of all our supplies. Over curries and flatbread—which our new friend insisted on buying—he rhapsodized over War and Peace. "The way that Natasha and Nicholas grow from children into adults, oh, it is a very good book! My granddaughter is in the seventh grade, and she can't even recite her ABCs. How is she going to read Tolstoy with this kind of education?"