Aung Myae Oo School’s children’s safe souls

Photographic exhibition – January 2017

Going through the courtyard and the din at the Aung Myae Oo school, situated in a small Burmese village, you can’t be emotionless, you’re overwhelmed by an explosion of Life and the shock wave crumbles also the more solid hearts.

Eyes and mouths are cracks more or less curved, small openings through you can inspect Universes, in which short pasts, strong feelings, devastating experiences vibrate. The children conscience hasn’t still properly inventoried or placed them, but they’re fluidly melded in a magmatic amalgam painted of all rainbow colours.

Drama, lightness, addictions and resignation, small happiness tatters, their only denominator is the childish fluid volatility, because, in these children, so intense moods alternate, follow on another, chase each other breathless on the wave of a ball pass, of a face captured on a miserable invaluable pendant, of the twirl of an helix or of comforting refreshment of an orange popsicle.

Joys and sorrows don’t become encrusted at the soul because they’re not yet fossilized by the masterful awareness… this is the key to hope.

This and much more is what you breath scrolling through Federica Vairani’s photographs or going through Aung Myae Oo Scholl courtyard whose mission is to educate to the Culture and to the Moral, to the sense of responsibility for the Country, the Religion, the Culture itself in order to save the Souls of its Children.

(Introductory text by Maria Vittoria Congiu)

Aung Myae Oo school is in Sagaing,, the former royal capital, not far from Mandalay, Myanmar. The school was founded in 2003 by the Venerable Vilasa, a Buddhist monk. The school was founded in 2003 by the Venerable Vilasa, a Buddhist monk. Vilasa decided to fund the school when he became aware that the poor children need education.

The teachers are young people who have recently finish the studies and who want to give to other children their same opportunity. State schoolteachers, instead, teaches in evening classes. There currently are 50 teachers and around 3000 children. More than 1700 are female. Every evening, the guys come back to their families, to the monastery or to the cloister, whereas the orphans stay in the school and sleep in the classes.

“I arrive by chance at Aung Myae Oo school in February. It’s the break time and a lot of children are playing in a dusty and wide yard. Some children are skipping rope. Three or four football matches are underway at the same time. Somebody’s just chatting, watching and maybe eating an orange ice pop which is perfectly paired with the colors around. Couples of other children are having fun by playing with little helixes that they throw from one to another. One of them involves me in this game and then, with my camera bouncing on my leg, I get 30 years younger and, laughing and sweating, I immerse myself in the game” (Federica Vairani)