Out of Eden is a website that follows the journey of Paul Salopek. Salopek is following the footsteps of immigrant ancestors, literally. His plan is to “rediscover our world”. There are many different journey’s to follow on the website, I chose to follow Salopek’s journey through Myanmar.

‘Plauge Trails’

This journey started in the height of Covid-19, which was an uncertain time for the entire globe. Salopek had to put a halt to his journey in Myanmar, just like we all had to put a halt to our everyday lives. Salopek explained how he has come in contact with plenty of disease throughout his journey, but nothing that has forced him to completely stop. He settled in a small farm town and waited for this all to pass. ” The ancient humans I follow hunkered for 10,000 years on the vanished land bridge between Siberia and Alaska, waiting for glaciers to melt. If nothing else, long walks teach patience. And that destinations are always uncertain.” (Salopek, 2020).

‘Trailing Ghostly Giants’

On this point of Salopek’s walk, he comes across a home of Asian elephants. I thought this was so amazing to see because, obviously, elephants are not native here. It was very interesting to see how the people were using the elephants to help with their work, and how it was so normal for them. They used the elephants as “living bulldozers”, and the elephants will retire when they turn 55. They were trained to help move and breakdown heavy objects; however, they are expensive to care for, so this process is not used often.

‘Walking Yangon’

This part of the journey included Salopek venturing through Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon. I expected the city to be more developed, since it is the biggest city there. However, it was very impoverished. This part was not easy to watch because the city appears to be a very dangerous area. The citizens were protesting their previous election, so there was a lot of violence in the city. In the video, there is a pretty brutal protest occurring where there are gunshots heard and many citizens injured.

Out of Eden is a spectacular journey that so many of us could learn so much from. Living in America, we become blind to what other nations are still going through, but it is important to recognize these differences and how they shape the globe.

Thank you for reading!

Jillian DeMore

@DemoreJillian