I have been photographing this girls family since late 2013 when they first game to the dump (my second set of trips to Mae Sot). Woo-Wee-Kai has always watched me carefully. In the 2013 photo she was a new arrival. I made the second 5x7 camera image of the entire family in 2016. In the 2019 version photograph she just came back to the dump from Burma the night before. Father and daughter slept overnight in the filthy shelter shown in the photograph, the place was filled with flies. I made a video at the same time, please see the link. In the video I speak my limited Burmese to the father, he tells me his daughters name.
Woo Wee Kai is such a wonderful little girl. I have never seen her complain or cry, she just queitly accepts the life fate has given her with strength and an inner and outer beauty. She also has a great curiousity and interest in the pictures when I make them, loving to be photographed and helping me to make her photo in the best way possible. In the 2016 5x7 view camera photo below she moved into her position and posed by her self, without me asking her to do anything, she is a natural. I worry about her future, what will happen to her in the next 10 years, what life will she have. Will she be able to go to school past 14 years of age? Will she marry?Will she have children of her own? Will she continue to live in the dump working the garbage? Go back to Burma? Will I be photographing her children in a few years?
Please go to the linked video made this year before I took photo #4, see her sweet smile when I say her name. We need to make the world a better place, a place where little girls like Woo Wee Kai have a real home, a real chance at an education and a better life.
https://gerryyaum.blogspot.com/2019/06/video-woo-wee-kai-with-her-father-in.html
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| 2013 |
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| 2016 |
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| 2019 |
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| 2019 |
