Under the Dragon by Rory Maclean Page A

‘it’s high time for tea.’
    The dusty taxi whisked us away from the airport and onto broad Prome Road. There did seem to be baskets everywhere: atop women’s heads and on bicycle handlebars, used as cradles and colanders, fashioned into furniture and braided around saplings as protection from goats. We saw vast bamboo shoppers and dainty palm-leaf whisks, plaited hats and a wheelbarrow with woven sides. A multi-storey basket loomed out of the polluted haze. The undulating lines of bamboo scaffolding created the illusion of movement. A glittering, sequined sign acclaimed the glory of the Sedona Hotel, the biggest of the new tourist developments overlooking Inya Lake. At the foot of the woven hoarding a girl knocked chunks of grey mortar off old bricks before stacking them in a platter basket.
    Katrin leaned forward, her shirt sticking to the baking back seat, and handed Than a photograph we had taken at the museum store-room. ‘Hello,’ he chirped. ‘I know this type.’
    ‘It was found towards the end of the last century, somewhere in Burma.’
    ‘The design is damn familiar.’
    It was a response, though not an idiom, that we would hear often over the next four weeks.
    ‘Then you can place it?’
    ‘Not me, gentle good woman. But calm your worries. I know a chap who can.’
    Ten minutes later the taxi swept into the Kyimyindine township and, avoiding the potholes, stopped in front of the School for the Blind. ‘Here,’ Than stated with authority, ‘baskets are made.’ But once we were inside the cool building he began to apologise. The school was closed. The pupils had been sent away until the monsoon. The basketry tutor had gone to the monastery for a week’s retreat.
    ‘That is unfortunate but not a problem,’ said Than as we drove away along Kaba Aye Pagoda Road. ‘I had the forethinking to make a contingent plan.’
    ‘Maybe we should go to the hotel first, Colonel?’ I suggested. ‘Our flight was quite tiring.’
    ‘My dear, there’s a rush on,’ he insisted. ‘Time is precious and your visa only lasts for one month. You’ll understand the need to chop-chop when you reach my golden age.’
    Our second stop was the Mayangon Orphanage School. Children waved at us through the barred windows as we turned into the drive. ‘Baskets are made here as well,’ Than declared with undiminished confidence. ‘And I am certain that their caff can rustle up a sterling pot of tea.’ But the school director was out too. The inconveniences seemed not to bother Than, for much the same reason that Burmese travellers never ask for arrival times. ‘Anticipation tempts fate,’ he counselled.
    When Katrin went off to inspect the deserted workshop Than nodded after her and said, ‘A fair filly my dear, but, alas, you have no children?’
    ‘Not yet,’ I told him.
    ‘Forgive me for asking, but is your elegant and petite wife unbearable?’
    ‘Not in the least, Colonel.’
    ‘I am fond of children, not only human beings but also animals, all over the world, which has become not very wide nowadays, and I would make a kindly uncle.’ He touched my arm. ‘You should drink malted milk, my dear. It is good for all ailments from my own experience.’
    In the workshop the smiling caretaker told Katrin of a Baptist mission near the airport. ‘Good show,’ enthused Than, though he was disappointed to miss tea. ‘Now we are making a fine progression.’ We turned the car around and headed back north.
    Thirty minutes later Saw Taung stared beyond the Colonels’ left shoulder and said, ‘Baskets? Of course we do baskets.’ We had found the Self-Supporting Karen Mission at the end of a leafy lane of woven-walled houses and open drains. ‘Our work is the finest in Rangoon.’
    We stumbled through the pitch-black rooms, our blind guide having no need of electric light, and I wondered how we would show him the photograph.
    ‘It is the handles and bases which go first,’ explained Saw Taung, leading us into a