Vegetable vend

A pair of vegetable sellers (father and son) with a day’s harvest from their relative’s 50-acre plot of land in Hmawbi (a far-out Yangon suburb). They ride the “circle train” into downtown with their vegetable cargo (the train circumnavigating Yangon and presently under negotiation to be privatized). The pair make the trip about once every four days to sell throughout downtown. They sell all year round, with the patriarch handling the fruits (bananas and pomelos today) and his camera-shy progeny carrying the vegetables (bitter gourd, string beans, mushrooms, cucumber, and something green and stringy).  They have routine customers, usually restaurants, with whom they often trade vegetables to for a combination of prepared food and cash income (the scarcity of small change and low-denomination bills makes such in-kind transactions between people who have a long-standing business relationship commonplace).

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