Water Festival

Once upon a time I used to be frugal with water in Myanmar … and then water festival happened.

Water festival is an annual event here in Myanmar as it marks the beginning of the Buddhist New Year and it is a big. huge. ridiculous. deal. here! It runs for 4-5 days and every store in town is closed! The only places open are the pagodas and temples. The only thing I can remotely compare water festival to is to Mardi Gras, except it is all about water and instead of lent they go to the pagoda to pray and confess their sins.

I’m glad I got to experience water festival but I don’t ever want to experience it again. Alisha came to visit during water festival and it definitely made her visit one to remember.

Before I tell you more about water festival I must let you in on something: Myanmar is hydro powered, meaning that they depend on water and rain to supply power to the entire country. April, when water festival occurs, is during the hot dry season when water is already super low. By low I mean some days we just don’t have water running in the bathrooms. Period. The country should be conserving the little water they have but instead they party all week long dumping water everywhere and on every one.

The weekend before water festival, huge, and I mean huge, stages are built all over town. Then local people build mini stages and other people bring big barrels onto the streets to fill up with water too. I am honestly surprised because everything takes forever here but getting ready for water festival??? Built & Done incredibly fast!

After the stages are built they then hook up power washers, fire hoses, regular hoses, buckets and whatever else they can think of to spray water on people.

Where do they get the water? Every source you can think of! The big stages had massive hoses hooked up to the lakes in town and the smaller, more local stages, use water from their own buildings.

I didn’t mind getting sprayed by water from the lake until I saw a man peeing in it not too far from where the pumps were. #gross !

So how does the festival work?

There are several ways to experience it but the main way is for you and a group of people to load up into the back of a truck with a large bucket or tub for water. You drive around town and basically throw water on every person you see. You also do a ‘drive through’ of the stages and get sprayed with water. The stages usually have live bands playing and everyone around the stage is basically ‘raving’. It was crazy you guys!

Alisha was visiting during water festival and Zama and some local friends were nice enough to take us around. It was fun and it was really crazy at the same time. The fire hoses and power washers were actually pretty painful so when we would see them coming we would hide under our towels. 

We also experienced water festival by just walking outside. If we stepped out our door the people immediately saw us white people and really doused us good. When we walked around everything had to be double and tripled bagged so it wouldn’t get wet and ruined.

We did stand from our porch and throw water down on people. We live on the 11^th floor so I’m sure it was painful to get water on you but it was pretty darn funny for us =). 

On a serious note the country really does use the one week to party like crazy. In Yangon alone 16 people died that week and over 300+ were injured. Not only are they celebrating and partying for the New Year but they are praying that Buddha will send rain. To me it is a reflection of their spiritual state without Christ. It’s sad and the people of Myanmar sure do need the gospel!

Here we are - pre-water festivities. We had no idea what was about to occur. 

See the rope? It's attached for the festival so you can hang on for dear life and not fall off. 

So there you have it friends, a recap of water festival. Alisha was a trooper for visiting and going through water festival with us!

Would you participate in something like this?