Kokang

This last week I have been in the Kokang region of northern Shan state, which boarders China. It was so very very remote and wild and mountainous and beautiful… and Chinese. Although part of Myanmar, most people spoke Chinese and it was not possible to spend Myanmar Kyat. Only Chinese Yuan.

We visited a school which the army recently built. The children in the area, mostly ethnic Palau (one of Myanmar’s 130+ ethnic minority groups), are now able to go to school for the first time. As such all the children in the photos below are in the kindergarten class learning Burmese, Maths and English. There is no mother tongue learning system so their language of instruction (Myanmar/ Burmese) is also a foreign language for all of the children, who only speak Palau. I am sure this makes learning difficult.

The children were gorgeous, especially the girls in their traditional outfits and silver earrings. They were quite shy and definitely not used to pasty white people pointing cameras at them! Most communities in the area lack easy access to water, which is why many of the children and their clothes were very dirty.