Maesai Thailand Update, The Akha Heritage Foundation.

Dear Friends:

Well, it sure has been an exciting week.

My friend Karen came from the states to see the project. We were able to get the Truck out of hock and start getting out to the villages and taking a look at what was going on.

I haven't been in the villages much for two months, so my heart leaped a little with this.

As mentioned, one of the local ner do wells, an American, with nothing better to do, put sugar in the truck when it was parked out in front here.

So we got a new engine now, still not enough power (as in hummer) but we are rolling.

So that is fantastic, just absolutely fantastic, but not just that, but because it just so happened that when it rains it pours.

The ovens are turning out bread and have gotten two batches out to the village children so far as I work out recipe sizes, etc. One firing of the ovens makes over 200 loaves and I run two firings in two hours for a single shift. So now I got to get a roof rack to haul these bundles of loaves of bread to the kids. Thai army take away rice land, well, we got news for you.

The Bakery Video is at http://www.akha.org/akha_video.htm 2.4 meg I think.

And to make matters nearly unbareably joyous, the printing press is coming this week, to its waiting berth, here at the building. Well a few people still haven't paid their pledges on this baby yet, but that's ok, I can wait, and since the other fellow said he could too. (so come on now, lets not make this guy wait forever) But the press is still coming.

But as if that was not enough, great joy, heaped on hope, and then another load of joy dumped on top, well along came fantastic news that the fish project pump and well work will soon be done also, so that the test tanks can go into full cycle. They got filled up with water by last years rain, have had catfish in them since, and then a nice bloom of water hyacinth has kept the fish cool. We wondered how long the catfish could survive without changing the water, we found out, nearly a year. But of course with the pump and fresh water coming in we will be able to boost the count quite a bit.

So there ya got heart stopping hope and joy folks, Fish, Bread and Books, rolling to the villages anytime now.

This year will be our no holds barred year, full on service to all 282 Akha Villages in Thailand along with all the village fragments and displaced Akha in the urban setting. We got into 250 Akha villages last year.

Karen was really cool, she brought vitamins for the villages, went we me to Huuh Mah Akha to see how they were doing.

Been a real nasty case of scabies in all the villages of late.

By the way, in a continued focus of this project I am working to put together a formidable effort to stop infant death in the villages. Seeking one pediatrician with third world and infant experience, with emergency care would be good and with tropical disease experience would be good too.

This is really the greatest gap here in available services. There are few doctors or clinics or hospitals with good infant care capabilities. So even if I do find a sick infant in time, getting them to the hospital guarantees a big bill, but not always their life.

By the way, any of you who would like to help us and the Akha by joining in our Anti Drug War effort and our Anti Militarization of Akha environment and border villages, please contact us to help support poverty alleviation, not guns.

We figure there is going to be enough war here this spring as it is.

Now the final good news is that with the completion of all the infrastructure projects, the smallest donation now goes directly into fish, flour, paper, meds, vitamins, for all our projects.

Lots of bang for the buck folks.

Ok,

Happy Chinese New Year

Matthew McDaniel
From the Big Bubble Bread and Wide Eye Pie Publishing Company Maesai

Yeah, we make some kick butt apple pie too!