I am a realist I'm also a realist not an
urban is not an industrialist but a
rural East a ruler list is someone who
advocates for the rural people and for
the rural villages well I'd like to call
myself a rural East I was not born or
raised in a rural village I grew up in a
city down the south of my country the
Philippines called Davao City so this is
the city where I grew up so as you can
see I have nice memories growing up in
the city
you know our jitneys are small world war
two jeepneys called our local bus our
cars and bright billboards this was all
in the eighties and as you can imagine
as you can see it was very hard for me
to imagine what a rural village was
growing up in the city not until when I
was eleven that I discovered this little
book called doctor to the barrios by dr.
Juan Flavia
I was scheming to the early pages of
this book and Wow
it was my first introduction of what a
real village was so this book is a
collection of stories by a medical
doctor trained educated in the city who
chose to serve live and work with the
rural village with the rural people so
the disc lever doctor would devise ways
of communicating ideas about modern
medicine they would create like teaching
about birth control or sanitation or
nutrition so these stories gave me those
ideas of a
which was looking back to that day when
I was 11 I realized that what made me so
interested with rural villages in rural
people is because of the contrast that I
have seen the contrast like I I see more
cars and buses than trees and soil in
the villages the contrasts of green
contrasts of green versus gray in the CP
the contrast of individualism in the
city no people are very busy in the city
but in the rural villages collectivism
and the contrasts of grey and green in
the city on that day when I was 11 I
chose rurality I became a rural East so
my big question is is it possible to
embrace reality as a future of Myanmar
in other words can we choose to be rural
as we look forward in the future no
realization or reality is about
developing rural communities from the
rural point of view not from the
urbanization point of view most of the
time we think of rural villages as
transition in time meaning if we just
allow time to move forward
rural villages will always become really
bouncing cities but several authors now
and studies have found realization as a
different view realization is also about
bringing the rural character into our
cities to make them more livable more
resilient and even more sustainable than
the cities we have now so I offer three
things suggestions ideas how we can
become a rural East in the city how we
come in how we can embrace morality even
as we live in cities like Yangon first
rural villages in the city more than
half the population of Myanmar lives in
the rural villages right forty percent
of our economic output comes from
agriculture the livelihoods of all of
our farmers and fishers here any I'm
gonna like taking walks and I would
explore the streets and nooks and
crannies of the city and what I found
are pockets of communities like this you
know people who come together celebrate
their they celebrate festival together
enjoy food traditional food you can see
the contrast of while high-rise
buildings are high you can see I can
feel the village life that I can get the
same feeling whenever I'm in the village
so I think we should come promote this
rural villages in the city ii embrace
nature i must confess i am a tree hugger
and one of the reasons that i love
working for the rural villages in rural
people is i get to see more trees i get
to you know be connected with nature and
one of the things that makes communities
rural is because of their strong
connection to nature isn't it farmers
have to work with soil in the rain in
order to grow crops fishers has to work
with the river tides has to has to
understand the oceans in order to catch
fish so to be a rural is in the city we
have to embrace nature in 2019 there's a
study from a university and Denmark that
says that people who grew up in places
with least access to green spaces have
as much as 55 percent increased risk of
developing psychiatric disorders like
anxiety depression substance abuse later
in life so having more green spaces in
yangon entries
makes us less crazy it's good for our
mental health so let us have more green
spaces in the city let's ask our
government to build more parks let's
grow our garden in the veranda in the
rooftops this makes our city greener as
young gone the high-rises in Yangon go
higher and higher the tree should also
grow higher and higher as young gone
becomes greener the more rural it
becomes third adopt a rural food system
current studies have indicated that 80%
as much as 80% of our food comes from
rural villages from family farms so what
the quality of our life in the city
depends on the production and
productivity of our rural villages I've
been living in Myanmar working here for
five years now and I have enjoyed the
diversity of traditional food here like
in the morning I would eat mohinga after
my morning run no nutritious I can get
from mohinga or the the mache
the noodles from Shan or SEPA simple
vegetable dish from north from cucina or
my tone meat stood meat from my tone
from qin state this diversity is such an
adventure for my Filipino tastebuds the
more we grow these traditional crops the
more farmers grow a different variety of
crops and vegetables so we as we consume
more of this traditional food we are
also helping their livelihoods and most
of the time these traditional crops are
also more adapted to the climate more
resilient and even healthier for
instance takes the take the Myanmar
chicken romaine my chicken they're small
now maybe less meat more bones they take
longer to grow but they
need antibiotics they don't need
hormones they're healthier so the next
time you buy our food be re-released by
from the local farmers market support
traditional food support your
traditional crops because that's how we
become a rural East in the city so to
embrace reality build rural communities
let us embrace nature adopt a more rural
food system so in closing I have all my
entire life I have still kept that book
when I was 11
it's been sitting in my bookshelf in the
office for I don't know how many years
now
but while that book remained closed in
that bookshelf my heart and my mind
remained very open to the rural people
into the rural village let us be rural
by choice thank you
you