KAWHMU, Myanmar ¨C In 2021, when Myanmar¡¯s generals staged a coup, she was 11 years old. With the nation¡¯s economy shattered, there was no choice but to stop school and start working.
So the girl, Moe Moe San, found an occupation of sorts: she began detangling human hair, sold by the ponytail or from brushes by women as desperate for pennies as her family is. For eight hours a day over the past five years, she has smoothed hair into bundles for wig-makers, earning a daily wage of about $2.50. Elsewhere in this township that was once the constituency of Aung San Suu Kyi, the civilian leader overthrown by Myanmar¡¯s military junta, people have sold their kidneys.
Survival in this Southeast Asian nation, fractured by civil war and the site of unlikely elections that started on Sunday, sometimes comes down to salable body parts.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.