Myanmar child nuns dream of conflict-free lives

Yangon: Teenager Dhama Theingi dreams of becoming an engineer and playing football, but for now she must rise for dawn prayers before pounding Yangon's streets to collect alms as one of Myanmar's growing number of child nuns seeking refuge from conflict.

With shorn heads and swathed in pink robes, the girls of Mingalar Thaikti nunnery sit cross-legged on wooden floorboards as they begin to pray, bleary-eyed and stifling yawns.

Darkness still blankets the impoverished Yangon suburb as their Buddhist chants compete with the whines and snarls of street dogs.

All of the nunnery's 66 girls -- aged between four and 18 -- are from the Palaung ethnic group and were born in an area of eastern Shan state plagued by conflict between local rebel groups and the military.

"There was a lot of fighting," Dhama Theingi, 18, told AFP, explaining why her parents sent her hundreds of kilometres (miles) from home nine years ago.

"It wasn't easy to study and the schools were far away."

The Buddhist-majority country's borderlands have been plagued by conflict since independence, as ethnic insurgencies battle the state over autonomy and natural resources.

Civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi has pledged to make peace, but fighting grinds on.

"Armed conflict and poverty mean numbers of students just keep going up," says Sein Maw, Yangon director of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture.

He said there are nearly 18,000 child nuns and novice monks attending monastic schools in the commercial capital.

Monastic life is often harder for girls than boys.

Myanmar's strict Buddhist hierarchy combined with a conservative and patriarchal society means monks are offered far more respect than nuns, who generally receive smaller donations.