Interviewing a Fortune Teller "It's not a gift but a learned skill"

​Last week, each language class was assigned one member from the community to interview as part of Peace Corps’ Participatory Analysis for Community Action (PACA) Field Guide Practice. The PACA Field Guide is a tool for Peace Corps Volunteers to identify members of their community and discover more about these members way of life to properly integrate into their community. The community members chosen ranged in occupations such as teacher, principal, youth development worker, shop owner, to more ludicrous occupations such as nat mediums and fortunetellers. My language group was assigned to U Han Zaw a local, well known, and respected fortuneteller. Our PACA objective was to identify U Han Zaw’s role in the community as a fortuneteller. We began by asking how he came into this profession. We were surprised to hear that he did not grow up hearing or seeing fortunetelling in his community and that he read a newspaper article about fortunetelling in his mid-20s and that his genuine interest led him to this career. In this regard, U Han Zaw sees his practice of fortunetelling “not a gift, but a learned skill.” He developed his profession by studying books on fortunetelling and is very much self-taught. He uses a numeric system based on his clients’ names and birthdate to reveal intimate details about their past, present, and future. He also allows his clients to ask open-ended questions as well.

U Han Zaw begins each day generally very free and with no appointments. Most of his clients stop by unannounced or make appointments the morning of. His clients’ age range from 20-50 years old and represent all genders, socio-economic backgrounds, and religions. Some days he has no clients and other days he has 6 clients all before lunch. His typical session lasts 45 minutes and U Han Zaw does not require payment for his services. He leaves it up to the discretion of his clients what they wish to pay him. (Although U Han Zaw told us most are generally happy with their fortune and show their appreciation will generous payment). U Han Zaw also feels a sense of responsibility to give back to his community. He is a school volunteer and he also donates a significant portion of his earnings to local monasteries and pagodas. The typical client comes in asking about love, infidelity, and the success/failure of prospective business endeavors. U Han Zaw believes those that follow his advice are prosperous in their endeavors and those who go against his advice are unhappy. Thus most people do follow his advice and he has been able to gain a lot of credibility and respect from his community.

The most interesting part about this interview was how U Han Zaw never brought up how he deals with skepticism. Therefore the general census my group felt from this interview, is that perhaps the indirect culture of Myanmar discourages open skepticism and criticism of others. Hence U Han Zaw would never know whether he had skeptics of his work. Whichever side of the fence you side with( whether you believe in this line of work or not), it was incredibly interesting to see how respected U Han Zaw felt in his own community. Whether this respect was earned through the fortunetelling itself or his prominence giving back to his community, I’ll let you decide.