Moment to Moment

Robert’s house was barely that. Wooden slats. Corrugated iron. There were two rooms and one was the neighbours’. Rice with a small helping of chicken. As is Burmese custom, I ate while my host watched.

‘Taunggyi’ means ‘huge mountain’, a translation that my winding ascent into the city the night before was testament to. It was just a pit-stop, the last before Mandalay and Mandalay was the last before home. It had been a long trip and I was getting impatient. This place wasn’t what I came to see. I was at the top of a mountain, but as I walked through the city’s snaking alleys, there wasn’t a view in sight.

Robert found me. There was a “hello,” and there he was, standing on the sidewalk with an ice cream cooler strapped to his chest, a stranger with a smile. It was a warm day, but as he began to speak in his fluent, practiced english, he didn’t ask if an ice cream was what I needed. Business could wait.

As we sat cross-legged on the wooden slats beneath the corrugated iron, Robert told me he had seen the world. He had studied abroad, in California and Australia, and had the degrees to prove it. He was an engineer by trade, selling ice creams for loose change.

I finished my meal and Robert quickly took my bowl. Robert was pleased to be my host and I was honoured by his hospitality, but the large smile that had greeted me was gone. inside the room that contained all he had, he seemed impatient. There was something he wanted to show me.

The road began to slope downward. “There was a cemetery here,” Robert said, pointing to an electricity station. “It was moved.” Here the road was unsealed and the houses that lined it made Robert’s place look like a palace. The locals paused to watch us pass, our shoes crunching gravel, then turned back to their business. Robert stopped. He was quiet now. He didn’t say why we were here. All that seemed to matter was that we were. He turned back.

We neared Robert’s house, but Robert wasn’t taking us there. We veered left, away from the city again. The houses were smaller here, the streets narrower. Ahead, between concrete, I glimpsed gold. The painted spire of a pagoda. Robert was smiling now. As we rounded the bend, walking beneath the pagoda’s golden arch, the vast Shan Plateau opened before us. Open sky. Open plains. Far beyond, Inle Lake, Myanmar’s sparkling jewel, glimmered through the haze. We were on the huge mountain and here was the view.