By Khin Pwint Oo
Edited by Kyi May Kaung.
Eulogy for
Dr. Myo Nyunt
(1937 – 2024)
I would never be able to excuse myself if I failed to share my memories about a man whose country of birth was forever embedded in his heart until his last breath.
He is none other than Dr. Myo Nyunt, former Senior Lecturer of the Economics Department, the Institute of Economics, Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar), a Government State Scholar who was awarded a Rangoon-Chicago Fellowship in 1960 to continue post-graduate studies in Economics in the US. He completed successfully his Ph.D. dissertation: “Farm size, farm land transfers and ownership changes in Six Wisconsin Dairy counties, 1950-1965” and gained his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, USA in 1966.
https://www.wisc.edu/
This university is noted for its liberal ideas.
We his students remember him fondly as Bo Myo or Saya Myo. Saya means Teacher for a man, and Sayama is the term for a woman.
We add gyi or “Great” for an older, more respected person, as in “Sayagyi U Aye Hlaing.”
I so remember the day I ran into him on the first steps of the stairway leading up to our Economics Department on the 3rd floor.
He was holding a wet folded umbrella in his hand, his longyi (sarong) quite wet.
He smiled at me and did not seem uncomfortable or embarrassed at all.
At that time, I had no idea who he was. Certainly, I did not know he was an economist and a senior lecturer because I was only a fresher at that time in the academic year 1969-70.
Days passed.
I ran into him often in the corridors, in the library, always holding a large stack of books in his arms, always with a cheerful smile on his face.
When I reached my third year at the university we were required to choose an elective major.
I chose Agricultural Economics.
U Myo Nyunt was always close to his students, treating them as family members, sometimes allowing those from far flung places to stay at his home.
He also helped many people.
He was the primary supervisor for my Master’s Thesis, but the time to part with my mentor eventually came when he emigrated in December 1979.
I and my completed thesis were handed over to Daw Kyi May Kaung (then a Senior Lecturer, who later went to the United States on a Fulbright scholarship and received a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning and Political Science from the Ivy League, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
https://www.upenn.edu/
Saya knowingly entrusted me to her, because he knew her to be impartial, and he had also been Sayama’s Economics Tutor when she was also in the 3rd year of college.
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Even in my days as a student majoring in Agricultural Economics I am glad I was able to participate in Saya’s research activities visiting many rural communities with him and our teams in all kinds of weather and all over the country, but mostly in the Dry Zone of Central Burma.
Saya urged me to do research on a village study for my Master’s Thesis.
I went to the 2 villages that Manning Nash, the anthropologist, author of The Golden Road to Modernity, went to. The Golden Road was published in 1965, and you can buy it online.
http://www.amazon.com
My thesis, like Nash’s book was much more descriptive than the modelling approach fashionable at the time--but Sayama Kyi May also liked my finished thesis and stoutly helped me defend it in the first of 2 oral exams.
For the 2nd defence, she advised me to take Nash’s book as my companion, saying she did not need to accompany me, I must learn to defend my own ideas by myself.
Hindsight has shown that these 2 villages, living symbiotically side by side, economically linked with each other, is the best way to be. She says this shows that Burma was meant to be a plural economy, such as that described by J.S.Furnivall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sydenham_Furnivall
Also, she says, “Villages, as you (KPO) and Saya Myo Nyunt thought of it, indeed idealized it, are the building blocks of the socio-economic system and the traditional and time-tested way to go.”
She says, “One of my family friends, Burma’s first Western-trained journalist, who later worked at the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, said he cried when he saw Singapore the first time.”
Sayama says she cried when she saw the product differentiation and abundance of food and other items in a super mart even in the poorest of neighborhoods around the University of Pennsylvania in West Philadelphia, where street crime is prevalent, and people still get shot with AK 47s on the street.
She says, “In America, I now live in a village—an urban village--on the East Coast in a county with the highest percentage of people with higher education in the USA.”
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Saya Myo used to push me to undergo further study abroad and not to be satisfied with my Master’s degree here in Yangon.
Later, he sent me a brochure on a master’s program in Australia.
At first, I hesitated as my father had just passed away and I did not want to leave my mother alone as my siblings were with their own families.
Saya then urged me to think of distance learning.
Finally, I made up my mind to fulfil my indebtedness to him, receiving a Master’s degree in Development Studies from Edith Cowan University, West Australia.
I was proud when told I was the first Burmese scholar pursuing a Master’s degree at ECU and Saya also told me he was the first Burmese scholar, to receive a Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin-Madison.
My mother gave me her consent to go to ECU for my graduation ceremony.
As she could not accompany me there, Saya and Daw Khin Myo Myint and my ECU mentor Dr. Nancy Hudson-Rodd attended my graduation.
I was invited to stay at Saya’s house, but I stayed for a month only, even though I was granted a visa to stay 3 months in Australia.
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On receiving the sad news of Saya’s death, I shared that news with my close friends, including one Economics student of the younger generation.
He sent back an email saying this was truly a great loss for Myanmar’s economics community.
He also wrote that he met Dr Myo Nyunt in the Economics library in Yangon, when he was there for a short visit in 2017.
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I am very fortunate to have met Saya, a person with great heart and someone who never dwelt on the difficulties of life, never complained.
Daw Khin Myo Myint and his sons tell me his ashes will be scattered in the Rangoon River, from Botahtaung Jetty, in accordance with his last wish.
His last Will and Testament stated that his remains be taken back to his country of birth - Burma, which indeed was also his parents’ homeland.
Bo Myo will be missed fondly by all of us, his former students.
As a Buddhist, I do not doubt that he is gone to A Place of Peace and Tranquillity.
In his life he valued Peace the most.
Rest in Peace dear Saya Myo.
Khin Pwint Oo.
Date: 7th December, 2024.
Biography: Khin Pwint Oo
She received Bachelor Degree in Economics, majoring in Agricultural Economics, from the Institute of Economics, Rangoon in 1973 and Masters in Economics, from the same Institute in 1982; and M. Social Science in Development Studies, from Edith Cowan University, W. Australia, in 2004.
She worked in different capacities as a field researcher, working in collaboration with the Institute - where she learned and earned as an academic; as a field project staff, as the United Nation’s National UNV Volunteer in different UN Field Projects and Missions, and on short assignments abroad.
Her experience in the field has led her to Community Development Programs in her home country.
She also undertakes project assignments as a freelance consultant.
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