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.)

Serendipity－Good fortune to you！

Cremations in villages of Southern Thailand have an old saying: during bone picking: it is fortunate to find coins that were placed in the coffin. Everyone is intent on looking for coins, setting bones aside.
When I attended at the cremation of a woman who had helped me for almost 30 years, I was recording a video of the bone-picking process. At the end, as I felt around in the ashes at my feet to pick up even a piece of her remains, my hand touched a big molten lump—nearly ten coins fused together. Everyone said that she wanted to give it to me. The lump of coins is still carefully stored in a drawer in my chest of drawer, where I keep important things.

November 26th, 2017
Satun, Thailand
Photograph by Ryoko NISHII