Pre-election

February 2009
The election the SPDC has scheduled for spring 2010 hangs over this town like a doomsday. What is the SPDC's plan, because surely they have one. They know right now what the outcome will be, if only we did. I can guess. So can the townspeople. Homm wants to have a baby, but she and her husband are waiting until the 2010 election is in the past, just in case it brings war to Loi Kaw Wan, they'll have one less life to protect if they wait to have the baby. We're working to save money to buy Homm a Burmese passport. It will cost about $1,000. It's $1,000 if she mails her ID card into the government and they mail the passport back, about $650 if she travels to Rangoon and applies in person, plus $350 in bribes to get there safely. I don't want her to go to Rangoon. She lives here under an assumed name, but it's still risky to travel. What if there are spies who know her? What if it's enough to be Shan to get into trouble on the route she takes? We have to get her that passport before the election, just in case. Maybe anticipating the fallout of the election is the reason the Commander wants the hospital expansion to be so big. A lot of new people may be moving to Loi Kaw Wan. Maybe it's for them that he wants it big, but maybe he wants MMC to pay for an operations office for his army. We don't know and I'd have to visit with him every day for months before he'd tell me, and we only get one invitation a year to visit him.