She is a Chin people in Myanmar. Once it was customary for Chin women to have such tattoos. There are various theories as to the origin of the custom, one is that they tattooed their faces to make themselves look unattractive in order to avoid being kidnapped by the king of Burma and taken as his queen. She told me of how she married young and got the tattoos then. She went on to say—with a smile—that she thinks of the tattoos as evidence of love and that she was happy to get them. Deep wrinkles and the markers of her deep affection for her deceased husband are engraved in her face.