A Picture with a Thousand Words

As I perfused through a collection of pictures from last year on CNN, I ran into a photo that spoke to me more than any picture I have seen in my time of existence on this earth.  It is a picture of migrants collecting rainwater in Myanmar.  People say a picture speaks a thousand words and this picture spoke to me a thousand words.  These migrants came from Bangladesh and Rohingya and they hoped to settle somewhere in Southeast Asia; they went by sea hoping to find a new home in a new environment and to seek a better life.

This story is no news to the Vietnamese culture.  The people in Vietnam fled their country in 1975 right after the communist took over South Vietnam and many chose to travel by sea to the new land, hoping to find a new life there. Many of them landed on an environment that welcomed them while many were not fortunate and they died either by natural causes such as starvation, ship sinking, thirst and many were robbed and killed by pirates in the body of water surrounding Vietnam.  Similarly, the picture of the migrants in Myanmar is definitely familiar to many immigrants who had to go through the travel on the sea to get to a new land.  In the picture, the men were collecting water from the rain. They are standing in a shack and they are holding metal plates and water bottles to get water from the open air.  The men are dark skinned, lank, look malnourished and with the physical condition they are in, they would eat and drink anything they have their eyes on.

The picture reminded me how grateful for me to live in a country where I have clean water and  not have to live in an environment where I am dependent on rain water. The worst thing that can happen to California is the drought and despite the warnings of the shortage of water, many people I know-- and guilty of myself-- to not give much attention to the problem.  Us Americans have big land mass and there will never be a point where we have to drink rain water. There are Californians who collect water in rain barrels but the purpose of it is not to drink, the barrels are used to water plants with the intention to reduce the drought.  Sometimes we forget how blessed we are to have all the necessary in life and a picture can remind us how fortunate for us to live in a place where we do not have to worry about the necessary in life.

Pictures: http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/03/world/gallery/year-in-pictures-2015/

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