Dear Friends:

The Maesai War has simmered down to just about nothing. The Shan and the Burmese traded one hill top back and forth near Bala Akha, along the border. That was about the height of it. The Thais moved a lot of trucks, men, mortars, artillery and armour into Chiangrai province and trampled into a lot of Akha villages.

Other than that, life got a little harder for the Akha, the farming interrupted. But possibly now the bridge will open again, the China Thailand road more important than the Burmese all combined, and things will return to normal?

Repairs on the truck are ongoing, as the village circuit gets anchored down. Despite the recombination of a number of villages into one central village, there are still more than 250 villages on my route now, and there are anywhere from 30 to 50 villages and village fragments still not accounted for.

So I will continue to add those.

In a few days I should be commencing with the final dig on the fish well and will let you know when that is done. This is a large well that will have the capacity to feed water to up to twenty tank sets as well as vegetable water for the host village.

Other than that, the printing press is the only infrastructure project that we have left, still hung up at $900.

The focus on the village circuit is first aid medicine, networking between the villages and books in Akha language including the Akha Village Journal.

Matthew
Maesai, Thailand