Monthly Photos　December 2011

Photos taken by ILCAA staff and associates are posted here once a month; most of them are taken during their field research in Asia and Africa.

(The copyright belongs to the photographers.)

La Salette Sisters

At a section of Tatkone ward, 3km from the downtown of Myitkyina, there are about 20 women living who belong to the Sisters of Notre Dame de La Salette. The order they belong to bears the name of a village in the suburbs of Grenoble, France, and is known for the miracle of Mary's apparition at the nearby pasture in 1846. The order has branches in France, USA, Madagascar, Brazil, Poland, Angola, Philippines and Myanmar. The branch of Myanmar is the newest, established in 1990s. Beside their monastic duties, the sisters are keeping support for visually-handicapped people.

The photo was taken in the hall of their convent. I got a chance to visit there because a Jinghpaw friend of mine asked me to give a donation for the convent to a sister who is her childhood friend. At first I thought that they always wear nun's habit because a young sister who came to pick me up wore it. In fact they wear informally when they are in the monastery, and the photo is literally a snapshot of their daily life. When I was taking their photo, two dogs broke into the hall and neither sisters nor dogs are settled in the frame of finder without a mess. Perhaps it is also a part of their daily life.

In the evening they treated me hot pot, which makes us feel an atmosphere of the locality. But the red wine served by them was unanticipatedly a product of Bordeaux, which reminds us of the origin of the convent.

23 DEC 2010
At the convent of La Salette Sisters, Tatkone, Myitkyina, Myanmar
Photograph by Hideo SAWADA

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