"Informants everywhere." said Ko Min.
So we looked for a noisy bar to talk with eachother. Mandalay is the second largest city in Myanmar, and we must have walked halfway across town searching for the right place. He finally chose a small and dirty Shan-style beer station with peeling blue walls; on the door to the kitchen a poster for "Spirulina Beer - The beer that reverses ageing" curled in the humidity.

As the traffic - a mixture of horsecarts, motorbikes, trishaws, World War II buses, and brand new Landcruisers buzzed by outside, I spoke in hushed tones with Nic and a few others about the national political situation. In a country where openly talking about politics can land you in prison, this was a dangerous conversation. The Nobel Peace Prize winning elected leader Aung San Su Kyi had recently been taken into what her kidnappers called “protective custody” by the ruling military regime, the SPDC (State Peace and Development Council).
and I tried to get some information about the group suspected of organizing her capture - the regime’s powerful and feared secret police - Defence Services Intelligence – from Ko Min.

Ko Min: “They always come at late time - like one or two in the morning. They like to kick in your door. Its not cool.”
C: “Who?”
Ko Min: “5-0 dude, 5-0.”
C: “What? 5-0? Police. You mean the DSI agents?”
Ko Min: “Yeah. 5-0. Big Brother. You know : ‘the man’. They come at night so –“
C: “Wait, wait, wait - “

I was surprised. Not by the tactics of the DSI agents – Myanmar children flinched when you said DSI for a good reason, and kicking in doors was one of the nicest things I had heard about them.

No, his words surprised me. To hear a guy who looked like he should be fighting for space around a UN rice shipment talk like that... This guy wasn’t the kind of person you would expect to say “5-0”, or “the man” – he was in traditonal Burmese dress – a Kachin print longyi, a chinese collared white shirt and a shoulder-bag typical of some of the local hill-tribes - he didn’t look east LA.

I looked at him again, confused. He smiled at me, his teeth stained deep red from chewing Konya, an addictive local herbal stimulant, and thanaka - a sandalwood paste worn by men and women - smeared lightly on his cheeks.

This wasn’t the man, and it wasn’t the type of place either – I was sitting an isolated totalitarian country, in South East Asia that had been almost completely closed to outside contact since before The Last Poets' first record. The British left here over 50 years ago and English is not a national language. And as far as I knew, 50 cent never toured Myanmar. I had to know where this man learning his vocab - and why?

Ko Min: “Street-smarts, man. The wall have ear-"
Me: “The walls have ears.”
Ko Min: “Yeah. The DSI guys – they doesn’t understand if you speak American slang, you know, jive.
Me: “Jive?”
Ko Min: “The DSI guys don’t speak good English – but if you speak jive, they don’t understand anything. Nothing.”
Me: “So… it is like its own language. Secret. Like you are speaking code. And it is a code that tourists can understand.
Ko Min: "Yes, informants, man, DSI, man, they doesn't understand jive, man"

He said "man" slowly, emphatically, without the N, and always making a chopping motion.

Me: "So, do you listen to hip-hop?”
Ko Min: “No. Metal. Man.”