I have known U K Ba Thaung or Kenneth to his friends for more than 20 years. He was born in 1931 and has led an extraordinary life. When I interviewed him for my Myanmar Oral History podcast series ( https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/myanmar-oral-history-project-life-stories/id1319152310) he was already in his late 80s and, as you can read from his birth year, he turns 90 this year. And, as you will hear, his voice is still strong and full of life.
I interviewed Kenneth twice to ensure I captured at least many of the key events in his long life. The first deals more with those events including Kenneth’s time in prison, whereas the second deals more with his relationship with General Ne Win, the first dictator of Burma (now called Myanmar) who ruled the country from 1962 to 1988. Ne Win was an extremely superstitious man and Kenneth recounts a number of stories detailing that superstition; from having a whale bone or sinew inserted into his penis to ensure he was always able to “perform”, to introducing 45- and 90-kyat notes to the currency because he believed nine was a lucky number and the numerals in each added up to nine, to overnight changing the country from one where people drove on the left to one where one drove on the right.
Peter Church blog 