Remembering a friend in Bagan

Shane Rabideau visited Myanmar to take a personal pilgrimage to meditation sites within the lineage of the S.N. Goenka tradition. He shares this story of a recent correspondence.

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I am in touch with a man who I met in Bagan on my first trip to Myanmar in 2018. I purchased a sand painting from him and also took his picture. He gave me his email so that I could send him the picture. I never heard from him after sending the photo, but he recently reached out to me last month, basically asking for help. He and his family were hurting and they had a one year old son. We literally spent maybe 20 minutes in Bagan together, but there was no way I couldn’t help. I sent over $80 to his family, and he says they can now buy curry, instead of just eating rice. I really wish I could do more for him and his family, and so many other people over there. It’s a little tricky because I want to make sure money is going to the right places and its being used wisely, etc. Here is what he sent me today:

Dear my friend,

How are you and your family? I hope your well and doing fine. In myanmr, we have 3th wave Covid in very bad. In here no enough oxygen and no enough medicine staff.Many people are dying every minutes. One day over 600 people in a month.Even the whole family dead due to the 3th wave covid. The people of myanmar family, are facing difficult situation between Coup and Covid.Just left you know our situation. In this situation militray terrorist coups are shutting down the oxygen center.Myanmar civilians, they can't even refill from factory and can't even buy from forigen contries due to militray juntas rules.The militray raids the oxygen plants and also gas factories. Militray juntas's a send letter to private compaines to stop providing oxygen to individuals and people until they got their quota for goverment and military.