For More Info on the Zaytawun Fund, Contact:
Kate McDonough
443.845.3315
kmcdonough0@gmail.com
UVA Biomedical Engineering '18
Monday, January 1, 2018
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
I'm back in my lonely childhood house, dreaming of a cane ball flying across pavement. I'm bathing in the laughter of brothers and sisters. My stomach is filled with curry and chickpeas. My camera's memory card is maxed with peace signs and toothy grins.
This dream is a serene alternative to the daunting college essay that now burns under my finger tips. Demanding me to explain the heart of my existence (in 650 words or less). Burma.
The life lived. The love found. The family left.
The place where opportunities are endless, where opportunities are gifts.
The place where opportunities are endless, where opportunities are gifts.
This past month, after playing too much soccer, laughing too hard, and not crying enough... I was adopted. I learned more from that family than any textbook.
Kate McDonough
University of Virginia (UVA '18)
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Hidden
I found this excerpt from an essay about my first time in Burma, the first time a whiplash gave me a new perspective of reality:
In a restaurant nestled into the side of a city street, we loafed. The sky swirled warm yellows and oranges as the sun set on the smoggy city. A warm, moist smell of humanity wafted through the air, swirled by the bustling street. We glimpsed foreign, tan, Burmese faces rushing by glimpsing our foreign, white, American faces.
We pointed to the menu and over-pronounced dishes to the waiters. Eventually, they understood. Skewered meat began to pile the table.
As I swallowed course after course, I felt eyes tracing my every mouthful. I turned. There, edging closer, were two giant, eager brown eyes atop a sickly body mangled by hunger. Barely breaking five years old, her focus alternated between my plate and my face. Our eyes met. My heart shattered. Her hollow cheeks were robbed of all liveliness that usually accompanies childhood.
Cold, torn, wrenched. My body contorts from the new empathic blood coursing.
Childhood poverty is the mule bearing the world’s mistakes. As sponges, they absorb the wrongdoings of parents, society, government. They take the hit for unemployment spikes, failings of education, poor healthcare with no defense or retaliation. And then they grow up.
Kate McDonough
University of Virginia (UVA '18)
Sunday, August 18, 2013
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Hello America
I'm back! And missing the students, missing football, and thinking that someone saying, "It's a mistake," is Pu Myat Thwe calling out, "It's Miss Kate!"
Though I am very homesick for Burma, I am thrilled to be back and working to promote the Zaytawun Scholarship Fund.
During my stay, I started supporting two boys' education. One was mentioned in a previous post as Maung Khaing. He was the boy who had been working in the tea shop to support his family. The money I raise for him, will go to support his family so that he may attend the Zaytawun School.
The other funds raised will go to pay for the high school education of a boy named Hein Lei Aung. This boy is incredible. He is hilarious, selfless, and absolutely brilliant. He was at the top of his class when I was teaching at Zaytawun. He can speak English very well (remarkable in a region where i met only two people proficient in the language). He loves to learn. He brought friends every night during the last week (after he had realized that I was not a whitish pink alien who had come to eat small Burmese children) to my hotel to study his English.
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Unfortunately, Hein Lei Aung's family is very poor and cannot afford to put him through the government high school. Because Zaytawun is only a free school for grades 1-8, next year he would have to find a low paying job instead of continuing his education. He had plans to be a fisherman or postcard dealer, despite dreams of becoming a doctor or diplomat).
He would thrive in higher education and we are making sure that he has the opportunity to do so. I even see him accepting a scholarship from an American University one day.
To raise money for the two scholarships for these exceptional boys, I have bought many of the shirts/skirts/pants (that I mentioned in a previous post). I designed them, paid someone to create them, and then had my students design and paint Zaytawun tags that an artist later sewed onto the inside. If you would like to purchase anything, donate to the scholarship or hear more about my or the school's plans, please email me at kmcdonough0@gmail.com. If you are going to Burma also send me a shout out.
Thanks for reading!
Though I am very homesick for Burma, I am thrilled to be back and working to promote the Zaytawun Scholarship Fund.
During my stay, I started supporting two boys' education. One was mentioned in a previous post as Maung Khaing. He was the boy who had been working in the tea shop to support his family. The money I raise for him, will go to support his family so that he may attend the Zaytawun School.
The other funds raised will go to pay for the high school education of a boy named Hein Lei Aung. This boy is incredible. He is hilarious, selfless, and absolutely brilliant. He was at the top of his class when I was teaching at Zaytawun. He can speak English very well (remarkable in a region where i met only two people proficient in the language). He loves to learn. He brought friends every night during the last week (after he had realized that I was not a whitish pink alien who had come to eat small Burmese children) to my hotel to study his English.
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(Me, Pu Myat Thwe, and Hein Lei Aung)
Unfortunately, Hein Lei Aung's family is very poor and cannot afford to put him through the government high school. Because Zaytawun is only a free school for grades 1-8, next year he would have to find a low paying job instead of continuing his education. He had plans to be a fisherman or postcard dealer, despite dreams of becoming a doctor or diplomat).
He would thrive in higher education and we are making sure that he has the opportunity to do so. I even see him accepting a scholarship from an American University one day.
To raise money for the two scholarships for these exceptional boys, I have bought many of the shirts/skirts/pants (that I mentioned in a previous post). I designed them, paid someone to create them, and then had my students design and paint Zaytawun tags that an artist later sewed onto the inside. If you would like to purchase anything, donate to the scholarship or hear more about my or the school's plans, please email me at kmcdonough0@gmail.com. If you are going to Burma also send me a shout out.
Thanks for reading!
Kate McDonough
University of Virginia (UVA '18)
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Hein Lei Aung
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The Triumverate:
Me, Pu Myat Thwe, and HeinLei Aung (the boy who is receiving the Zaytawun Scholarship to go to high school)
Kate McDonough
University of Virginia (UVA '18)
Monday, August 12, 2013
Most incredible day
Today, started more oddly than usual. The teachers were whispering and running around with worried looks all morning. I ignored the unusual activity, howver, as I rarely understand what they say, despite my unending attempt to learn the language.
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Gripping Thandar's hand as if the mass of children and their onlooking parents were about to massacre us both, I watched as my eighth grade class sang (chanted) English songs. When they were finished, three hired dancers, adorned in golden, hand-painted costumes performed a traditional Myanmar dance. After them, more dancers were called in.
At the end of the show, the teachers still weren't finished with my embarrassment. Cheers resounded, as the head monk, U Ar Deik Sa, asked me preform my own dance. What followed was a gesticulating attempt from a girl with the coordination of a three-legged baby giraffe.
I invited U Sai - an English speaking man with a great sense of humor who I have come to admire as my mentor for the past month - up on stage to dance with me. He started in a shameless, alternative square dance, while I attempted a Burmese traditional style.
During the performance, we gathered other teachers from the audience: Daw Ba Ba, Daw Pak Pak, and Daw Aung Gyi (a wonderfully hilarious, 70-year-old woman). Before long, my students joined me and the entire village ran to see what had caused such a loud commotion of music and laughter.
The party ended with my short, roughly translated speech and my promise that, "we will play football after."
After a few hours of playing, it was dinner time for the monastery boys, so the girls and I went out to ice cream at the nearby Thande Hotel. We talked about boys, studying, boys, America, boys, how we would communicate when I left, getting them into an American university, and boys.
Like every other night, they walked me back to my guest house, but this time, they wanted to see the kind of place I lived in. As I opened the door into my icy room, with its blowing air-con, glossy floors, and personal bathroom, their eyes went wide. They ran into the shower, playing with the hot water, shivering in front of the blowing air conditioner, and giggling uncontrollably as they jumped on my elevated mattress. When their investigation ended, we went out onto the roof to take pictures, look at the view below, and talk as they played with my hair. It was strange to think how similar our personalities were, despite living in completely different environments.
Although my heart broke with this first goodbye, it was another incredible day.
At 9 o'clock, a driver, sent by my parent's old tour guide U Zaw Win Cho came to take me to Mt. Popa. Resenting spending one of my final days hiking a far away mountain, away from my students, I slowly followed him out of my class with tears welling.
Thandar, U Zaw, and I hiked the bigger of the mt Popa mountains and then went to lunch at Popa restaurant.
We drove back to school at 4 o'clock and along the way, U Zaw was getting repeated calls from the monks wondering when I would be home (acting more protective than their usual incessant text messages when I take day trips away from the school). When we finally arrived, even though school usually closed at 3:30, the kids were still there. Something was up.
When I asked my friends at the school, they said it was my surprise farewell party!
What do I like even more than huge, unexpected surprises celebrating my leaving a place that I love to call home? Huge surprises where I am at the center of attention, 400 children are staring up blankly at me from a safe distance, and monks are talking about me over loud speakers in a language I don't understand.
The teachers had organized a surprise festival for my farewell (sitting in front of the student body, I was told that the day I resentfully spent at Mt Popa was my very last day to teach, as my last two days in Bagan were holidays for the school...the Burmese are known for their advanced notice).
Gripping Thandar's hand as if the mass of children and their onlooking parents were about to massacre us both, I watched as my eighth grade class sang (chanted) English songs. When they were finished, three hired dancers, adorned in golden, hand-painted costumes performed a traditional Myanmar dance. After them, more dancers were called in.At the end of the show, the teachers still weren't finished with my embarrassment. Cheers resounded, as the head monk, U Ar Deik Sa, asked me preform my own dance. What followed was a gesticulating attempt from a girl with the coordination of a three-legged baby giraffe.
I invited U Sai - an English speaking man with a great sense of humor who I have come to admire as my mentor for the past month - up on stage to dance with me. He started in a shameless, alternative square dance, while I attempted a Burmese traditional style.
During the performance, we gathered other teachers from the audience: Daw Ba Ba, Daw Pak Pak, and Daw Aung Gyi (a wonderfully hilarious, 70-year-old woman). Before long, my students joined me and the entire village ran to see what had caused such a loud commotion of music and laughter.
The party ended with my short, roughly translated speech and my promise that, "we will play football after." After a few hours of playing, it was dinner time for the monastery boys, so the girls and I went out to ice cream at the nearby Thande Hotel. We talked about boys, studying, boys, America, boys, how we would communicate when I left, getting them into an American university, and boys.
Like every other night, they walked me back to my guest house, but this time, they wanted to see the kind of place I lived in. As I opened the door into my icy room, with its blowing air-con, glossy floors, and personal bathroom, their eyes went wide. They ran into the shower, playing with the hot water, shivering in front of the blowing air conditioner, and giggling uncontrollably as they jumped on my elevated mattress. When their investigation ended, we went out onto the roof to take pictures, look at the view below, and talk as they played with my hair. It was strange to think how similar our personalities were, despite living in completely different environments.
Although my heart broke with this first goodbye, it was another incredible day.
Kate McDonough
University of Virginia (UVA '18)
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