Photos: Burma’s Buddhist Home for Aged People, a “Happy Place”

Ira de Reuver is a freelance photographer from the Netherlands, and a regular contributor to photo-stock agencies and magazines. She shares photos from her trip to Myanmar (Burma).

For 11 years Ira de Reuver has been roaming around Asia, and recently shot photos from the Buddhist Home for Aged People in Mandalay, Myanmar (Burma). She writes:

“It is the custom there that elderly people live with their family. If they don’t have any family left, they are considered and called orphans. This elderly home, The Buddhist Home for Aged People is for orphans. Beautiful people, all; there is only one nurse taking care of more than 80 people, so they take care of each other. They live on donations from Buddhist people. And it is a happy place! Unlike so many elderly homes in the West.”

Ira first visited the Buddhist Home for Aged People ten years ago and, as she puts it, “fell in love” with the people living there. See some of her photos of them here, after the jump.

The Buddhist Home for Aged People was founded in 1915 and is located in Mingun, a beautiful, peaceful ancient city located along the Ayerwaddy river, one hour by boat from Mandalay. Whenever Ira returned to the area, she visited the Home. A few years ago new accommodations were built thanks to a generous donation from one of its residents.

In the Burmese Buddhist tradition elderly people are usually taken care of by family, they don’t live in retirement homes like we do in the West. But the residents of the Buddhist Home for Aged People don’t have any family members, so they are considered orphans, needing to be taken care of by the community.