“Even though it’s been fifty years, her image is still embedded in my memory. She stands on the porch stoop, the early morning sun reflecting off her welcoming smile. Her lit cheroot cigar is as natural in her hand as a sixth finger. Her satiny longyi skirt drapes softly to the ground. Her expression invites connection, though no words are uttered.

She lives on the plateau of Bagan, home to thousands of Buddhist temples, where the vivid oranges and reds of the sunrises and sunsets reflecting off the stupas are legendary.

The year was 1974, my first sojourn into Burma.

My partner (and later-to-be first husband) and I had been traveling for nine months through Eastern and Western Europe, the Mediterranean, Asia, and Southeast Asia.

Our visas only allowed travel outside of Rangoon to either Mandalay or Bagan. We eagerly decided to see Bagan, having heard of the 10,000 pagodas and religious sites. The next day, we boarded a Burma Airways turboprop plane with trepidation. All went well. We soon touched down in Bagan, which sits on a bend of the Irrawaddy River in the central plains of Burma. An oxen-drawn cart took us along a dirt-covered road to a thatched roof hut that would be our lodging for the next three nights. We were literally surrounded by hundreds upon hundreds of brick-red and honey-colored cone-shaped pagodas.

Our days in this majestic and isolated setting were magical and peaceful. Rising early with the sun, we wandered aimlessly through fields of pagodas. We had them all to ourselves while birds swirled around the rooftops and howling mongrels looked for food. Walking to the river, we watched fishermen throwing their nets out for the day’s harvest and laden ox carts pulling loads across the Irrawaddy. We found a small eatery for breakfast meals of fried rice topped with fried egg.

It was here that I saw the woman on the stoop—where we looked into each other’s eyes with curiosity. We didn’t speak. We didn’t turn away. We held each other’s attention. To this day, I think of her and wish I had learned her story.

The aura of Bagan and that fleeting connection with the woman on the stoop have sat deep within my heart all these years. I know in my soul that it was the catalyst leading me to founding my nonprofit, Educational Empowerment (EE), thirty-eight years later to support women in Burma.”

This book, Intrepid Paths Burma, is my tribute to Burmese women and girls—their incredible strength, resilience, perseverance, and potential.

The book’s embedded narrative memoir allowed me to protect the identities of my protagonists, to incorporate short fiction stories that would readily capture readers’ attention, and to provide the backstory of my involvement with Burma and its people.

In writing these stories, based on lives of women and girls in Burma known to me, I carry their faces in my mind—these women who entrusted me with their secrets. I feel a responsibility to accurately convey the restrictions under which they live—legal, political, cultural, economic, prejudicial, fear, and lack of access to basic rights. It’s within these parameters that these women constantly demonstrate their strength.