Market Day
In August 2014 I was able to spend 10 days in Myanmar traveling between the cities of Yangon, Bagan, and Nyaungshwe (Inle Lake). The country of Myanmar has seen many struggles, since 1948 the country has tried to establish a modern political democracy and to unite its people under it’s rule; they have not been successful on either count. The capital was relocated and most major cities have had the names changed; Once Rangoon the capital is now named Yangon. Through all of these changes and strife a friendly innocence can be found in the people. As I took a train 700 kilometers across the country people would smile and wave or run to my coach window to touch my hand.
In this country I found for the first time in my travels that all people around our planet do all the same things, just in vastly different ways. As I walked around an island market on Inle Lake I saw this woman smiling, smoking, and tending to her business; with each sale she balanced a weight against the purchase on her nearby scale. These markets around the lake move daily and are only accessible by boat; at the end of business all of these merchants must pack their boats with their inventory and move to begin again the next morning. Having come back to the America two weeks ago this image speaks to me again of how we are all simply roommates on this remarkable Earth.