It took a week to pack up my things. In the oppressive heat of my rooftop flat in Yangon’s Chinatown, I sorted through six years’ worth of possessions. Once I’d filled half a dozen bin bags with castaway items, I attempted to settle the emotional baggage of my time in Myanmar, meeting friends and colleagues in the tea shops and beer stations that remained open amid the city’s economic death spiral.

It was unclear when I could return to this country, which the military was determined to rule at the cost of renewed isolation, poverty and escalating violence, and so I scrambled to put my house in order. This task seemed necessary, in terms of honouring the personal and professional relationships that had sustained my life in Myanmar, but also hopelessly vain as the country I knew fell apart all around me.

• Tags: Ben Dunant, Issue 23, Myanmar