As you can tell from my previous post, we have a lot of Burmese in Fort Wayne. One of the largest populations in the U.S.
Many of them gather every Sunday at the park near our house, Foster Park, and it is such a vivid display of the dynamics of immigration. The older men and women crouch on the ground,  the other adult women tend the portable grills and unpack coolers and fill plates – all in their long skirts and t-shirts. The young men play volleyball for hours and hours, and the children play.  I would say there were at least 200 gathered today – and never, in eight years of living here, have I seen the local press take any interest in this fascinating gathering – which, coupled with the usual gathering, at the same time, one pavilion over, of many local Hispanics, make for a vivid picture of life in this town. An absorbing, thought-provoking picture. But not good enough for the papers, it seems.

Anyway, the voices I hear as I walk among and around them paint an aural portrait of the way we have all come to this country – the older people speak in the home country tongue, as do any of the rest (aka those boys)  when it is convenient or necessary, and in the middle of the sidewalk, the girls – not in long skirts, but in jeans and capris and spaghetti strap tops, chatter on, unaccented but for “MIdwestern Teen”  – and the she was like oh my God and I was like I don’t believe it and then we you know we just got outta there.
Gain. Loss. All of the Above?