Servants

Dedication, personified.

Both of them spent more than a decade in post-war Burma before being expelled by the junta, bringing them to the rest of South East Asia and eventually to Singapore. They arrived in Burma as young, newly schooled novices and left wiser but kinder. Burma would always be spoken of fondly, even as their memory starts to fail. There will always be a place in their hearts for this special land, where the ravages of time cannot reach. Collectively, they speak a total of 9 languages and dialects, including Teochew, Burmese and Mandarin. Its hard to imagine that one of them used to have a penchant for Burmese cigars or that the other used to be a dashing young infantry officer in the French army. Their work brought them deep into the mystical Chin hills, which was also rebel country; where dodging bullets was a regular occurrence and where even government troops fear to tread. They didn't have a choice back then or maybe they did. They were instructed to go. And they obeyed. Even though they feared and doubted.