Another family – Min Ma Naing

Wars scatter families in different ways _ some dead apart and some alive apart. In Myanmar’s Northern Shan State, people suffer from the civil wars for more than five decades. As the consequences of long-time war, absence of safety, collapse of business and lack of opportunities forced the families from Nothern Shan States to send their children away from war. Zabu Oak Shaung nunnery becomes the home for the hundreds of girls from war-torn Shan State.
“We don’t care wether they are from Shan ethnic or Burmese,because we all suffered from the same problem,war” Ma Pyinyar Saryi said. Majority of the nuns sheltering there are Ta’ang, Shan and Pa Oh ethnic people from Northern Shan State. Some of the nuns are sent to the nun- nery since their childhood,since the age of four or five and some have been living there for mre than 15 years .Ma Ku Maryee said,”I cried every day when I first came here but later I stopped crying. Nothing can change though I cry, right? But now they are a part of my families and I cried because I missed my friends here when I went back to my family in Namhsan last summer”