Travel notes, Loikaw village, 12 January 2017

Arrived yesterday in Loikaw, looking for women giraffe
Today I’m worried about going to some kind of zoo
The guide, a 21-year-old boy reassures me, but we’ll have to leave the car and take a long walk
I reply that there are no problems, 40-50 minutes walk under the sun immersed in nature
We arrive a little hot to the first village: small wooden huts, a school from which come the songs of children, women who break the stones that will be used to build the roads, men who build reservoirs for the collection of rainwater
Here the water does not arrive and the work to bring the electricity is ongoing
We stop to rest a bit in a small shop where husband, wife and three children welcome us with a smile and offer us a glass of water.
I take a few pictures, the youngest child cries in fear
We’re about to leave when, out of the corner of my eye, I see the door of a tiny wooden shack opening
Two purple and pink dusty slippers come out. Two shins with wrinkled skin attached to bones adorned with rings under the knees
Suddenly there appears a folded frail body, head and face wrapped in a colored cloth
With difficulty he sits on a chair, opens the door completely and the face appears wrinkled and withered but tremendously tender of the village’s oldest woman
She is the mother of the head of the family, 93 years and over 20 rings around her neck. Now she’s ready to be photographed.
An infinite tenderness. Shooting with difficulty for the emotion. An experience that is worth the whole trip. I finish photographing, I’m happy. Thank you, I’m about to leave when you nod and ask me to see the photo. She likes them, she smiles at me, I won the most important contest.