The lives of the pregnant women in the village were made very difficult by the long walks to the fields over many hills and kilometers, taking better than an hour, and much hard work when they got there. This was not how Akhas built villages, but the Army had moved them and they now suffered under this fate. They often talked of not knowing where they would have their children but one couldn't be sure that so many gave birth in the field, least not hearing of such an event.

In the early evening the young Akha woman complained of stomach pains, being fully nine months pregnant, and wished to go to the hospital because she had some perception that the pain would some how be less in that new fangled place. The Akha women laughed at her insistance at going to a place where you could not move about and had to give birth to a child like a prisoner, in a bed, on your back. Further they attempted to convince her that where ever she went, it would not be so comfortable, and the simplicity of the hut offered her more.

She insisted to go to the hospital, but only made it half way through the village, in the rain, when her water broke and she knelt in the erosion ruts of the road, red clay covering her boots. The other young women gathered her up, and led her back to the hut where the old women waited knowingly. All the bedding had been cleared aside, a call was put out to the elders and a bottle of potion of herbs was brought from one hut which the young woman drank to speed and ease the delivery of the baby. One old woman coached her to crouch on her haunches, and then go to her hands and knees each time to push. The pain seemed to subside greatly with this. Between pushes she would rest her head and shoulders on the lap of the old woman and the old woman would coo and rub her back and belly downward toward her legs, calling the baby to come out in a soft and reassuring voice. Then she would wipe the sweat from the face of the woman and laugh about this or that, giving light to the situation, until the woman began to push again. Not coming yet, they kept saying. The woman kept changing her position in the hut, making herself as comfortable as possible.

She kept checking with her hand the state of the progress of the baby's head and finally called that the baby was coming out, she leaned on one leg and raised her other knee to look and the baby tumbled out very much like a fish and was crying in moments, a baby boy, all the fingers and toes in all the right places, covered with hair, and thick black hair on its head, a cow's lick just above the right eye.

The head was very elongated at birth, protruding like an egg to one side. One old woman wrapped the cord at two points and cut it quickly with a thin razor sharp piece of bamboo, and the mother stood in the corner waiting for the placenta to drop quickly which it did, with very little blood. The other old woman took the baby in a cloth wrap and a second old woman began quickly working the protrusion of his head with her hands, like clay, shaping it fully into normal shape in a few minutes.

All laughed about at the quickness of the matter and told the new mother how to wrap a sash around her low belly which she would wear for weeks to hold her stomach up until all took back to normal positions. The baby was immediately fed a piece of egg, specially boiled by the godmother, and then the mother ate the other egg. Old men came and prepared a meal for the mother and father to eat. Once the baby was born the woman's mother could come, not before, and the mother's father would not be able to see the new child until the navel was healed.

The new mother took some few minutes to begin breast feeding the baby, the old women showing what and how to do, as she made herself comfortable. Here there were no scolding sanitary nurses but just kind voices of elders, no shining costly stainless steel as at some baby factory, just soft sounds, rain, bamboo, and the coals of the fire. The mother quickly took a new look to her face, the father held their first born son, and everyone soon tried to get some sleep. Dawn came soon enough.

With dawn, the real masters of the village came, not one by one, but in a long parade, the children. Face after beaming face came in to see the child, not quickly leaving, but giving great music as they stood around, laughing and talking with glea, commenting on all the hair, the nose, the eyes, the hands and feet, giving their consent to adding another child to their midsts. All day long they came, dozens of them, repeatedly.

For if there was one thing that Akha villages lived for, it was the children. They did not live to send them away, or to out live or out enjoy them. Life was considered to pass in stages, watching your own children be born and then your grand children, moving on and on. The children were taken with great care by all, they basically ran the village, as compared to other places, seldom reprimanded, it more appeared that the adults were their servants. It was the Non-Akhas who came to give them ways to stop the children, to sterilize them, to take their children away. Always these others were saying the Akha had too many children, as though bad, that they would like to take some of the children away to do with as they chose, yet always they admitted how beautiful the Akha children were. And take them away they did, Thais and Foreigners alike. Somehow, what had been produced so beautifully was not good enough.

Always the center of the village was occupied and dominated by the roaming children, not the objects of a "nuclear" family, but the possesions of the whole village, not so much different than the seeds on the ear of corn. Although the Akha lived by the guides of a culture that had many ins and out, few seemed to apply to the children. The only time the children were chased off the village square was when a body was brought through, particularly the body of a child whom had died. Otherwise, the village square, and every other inch of the village belonged to them, coming and going, playing with bugs and birds, squabbling, playing a game of throwing sandles at a arch made from more sandles, trying to knock the arch down, fishing, going for fruit in the jungle, painting their lips red with the bodies of ants they mashed. Endlessly they paraded the huts going from this one or that, carrying the latest news or development and then moving on, or back to see again the last new baby born.

Ah Poeuh Ah Peeh, the great grandfather and grandmother of the Akhas brought down to them all their traditions of farming and law, which the children noted through the years as their families grew up and farmed and married together. Never would one meet a group of more beautiful energetic children, children of the Gods.