KAWHMU, Myanmar – In 2021, when Myanmar’s generals staged a coup, she was 11 years old. With the nation’s economy shattered, there was no choice but to stop school and start working.

So the girl, Moe Moe San, found an occupation of sorts: she began detangling human hair, sold by the ponytail or from brushes by women as desperate for pennies as her family is. For eight hours a day over the past five years, she has smoothed hair into bundles for wig makers, earning a daily wage of about $2.50 (S$3.20). Elsewhere in this township that was once the constituency of Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, the civilian leader overthrown by Myanmar’s military junta, people have sold their kidneys.