Dear Friends:

We have a small drawn out war here in Maesai, Thailand. Maesai was hit with numerous mortars and the border closed and the Thais shelled several Burmese outposts.

I have a short video for you but both Akha.org and Akha.com are down for the moment.

Burmese feuding with the Shans has made spillover likely along long stretches of the Thai border, mostly occupied with the Akha villages I work with, so the villages have lots of army in them, trucks, tanks, mortars dug in and armoured personell carriers.

This is adding stress on the already impoverished Akha, as well, many can not go to the fields. Of course it is the uncertainty about how much this may escalate that is bothering most of the villages.

People are concerned that it might be used as just one more reason to press for village relocation, etc.

I was down in Lampang seeing villages there when Maesai flared up, but am in and out of town now.

I am nearly complete with the building of the village circuits, with over 250 villages on the route now and will be breaking this up into route segments so that I get to all the villages.

But I am needing much more of your support for fuel, first aid meds, and wells.

I do quite a lot here on nothing much, of hundreds of people who get this newsletter less than 12 donate regularly.

That adds up to $200 per month that I can sort of depend on.

Not much. For everything that has to get done.

The press was coming to the building, then the owner got busy and changed his mind, so we still need to just get that paid off and moved. Nearly $900 remaining on that.

The fish well is down to the water level and soon as I get a break I will take five days and finish it. The pumps are purchased for the well. It is quite wide, nearly twenty feet, and will go down sixty five feet time we are done. It will supply water for the fish tanks, up to twenty sets, and will also supply water for the host village vegetable gardens since they own no other land except what is next to their huts.

If you can help with this work with the Akha, please donate. If you have doubts, then please come over and ride along and see what this is all about.

The travel in the 4 wheel drive is NOT for the faint of heart.

Which reminds me, I am hoping, in some kind of wild and foolish imagination, that some day, I can get a used hummer here which has the width and stoutness required for this village circuit, the ground clearance for the roads and the power for the grades.

Funny how any one town in the US, of the same size as the Akha population, some 70,000 here in Thailand, but scattered over a vast area, well, any one town of that size will have millions of dollars invested in public service vehicles but many people would begrudge me a vehicle that could get the job done here, just one.

Funny how people see the poor.

Matthew
Maesai, Chiangrai, Thailand