Dear Friends:

Here is an update of events and activities here.

We have been having difficulty with phone lines, so our update has been delayed these past few weeks along with a lot of other email communications.

On the endangered language work we are close to having a location for printing Akha books, will immediately inform you as soon as that happens.

We are in the middle of monsoons here so roads are extremely dangerous, but continued modifications to the truck and addition of road building tools has helped the situation, though the tires are worn out.

A friend of mine who is a doctor has come to help with the first aid work and we have been making intensive circuits of the villages, despite bad roads and some creeks we have not been able to get across.

We have mentioned for some time that there was a particular group of trouble makers from Taiwan attempting to split Mae Chan Luang village, where we built the gathering place and we are quite happy to comment that the entire activity has been put to a halt and the group has been forbidden to return to the village. Since they came from working with another village further down the hill, and fought with the head office over the decision to back the head man of Mae Chan Luang village, the electric power was also cut to their village.

Hopefully they have gotten the point they are not welcome.

The meeting center which they built without the village headman's permission was also torn down.

The village has returned to rather normal operation, farming.

The head office also immediately gave an adjacent village permission to clear aditional land for fifteen new huts since the existing village was so steep. So much so I almost lost my truck in the village.

We are very close to being ready for our first big batch of fish fingerlings for the large fish tanks as well. Still trying to solve final water problems related to that.

Two gansters who sometimes operated in and around Akha villages found the end of the train, reducing strain on Akha communties. The first was shot by machine gun fire through a hut wall while watching a TV and beating his girl friend.

A few days later the second mean marauder finally found an old Akha man's hut to sleep in for the night and settled down around 4 am for sweet dreams. The old man got up and left. About ten minutes later, while the ganster was "sawing logs", two men went under the hut in the dark and blasted up through the bottom of the sleeping area with machine guns. There was great struggling above and then a sigh and silence. Where upon, with the joint forces of their buddies, ten in number all told, they burst into the hut, hit the light switch and in unison fired endlessly at the hapless ganster till there was nearly nothing left. Then they sat down. But he had been such a mean and evil man that they would stand up, walk over and shove him as if he might still be alive and then blasted him again with machine gun fire just to be sure. After some thirty minutes of this hail of gunfire, us all sitting church mice silent in the other huts, they shouted with great joy at the purging of this scum off the face of the earth and marched out of the village into the jungle blasting their machine guns into the air.

The next day relatives of the gangster came and found a hole to throw his blasted corpse into. Wasn't much left. Made Bonnie and Clyde look like a one shot hunting accident.

Akha villages a little safer. As they say, its the end game that counts.

Matthew

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Here are some notes from the Doctor who is assisting on first aid rounds in the villages.

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Hello:

I am a doctor come to visit the Akha project here and assist with first aid and evaluation of the medical needs of the Akha people and this project.

It was the morning of July 26 when I arrived in Maesai and met Matthew. I was quite happy that I didn't have any trouble finding him. I put my luggage in his truck and we went for breakfast for a quick run down on the situation.

Shortly we were off to the machinist's shop to help make some last minute modifications to the cement mixer trailer that is now complete and will be used in assisting with the making of wells. It was not exactly my kind of job and it took all day to finish all the work, welding, redesigning, mounting final items and getting the hitch completed on the truck.

The next morning we started up the mountain to the Akha villages which I was quite anxious to do since I had followed reports for three years.

After doing service in rough terrain in places like the Gobi in Mongolia and the tribal areas of south India I thought that they were bad travel areas. But when I compare them with the terrain that one must pass over to reach the Akha in the mountains here the Gobi experience was like super highways.

We have gone to scores of villages now.

Health wise the Akha may be some of the most deprived people on earth and when they are near a health facility they still can not afford it. They suffer from a variety of health problems like PEM (protein energy malnutrition) systemic and local infections, iron deficiency anemia, the names of the ailments are endless and the time very short. I was not able to do as much as I would have liked due to a lack of equipment, medicines and first aid supplies. Most of the ailments are simple enough but the frequency is high. Greatest need is for lots of simple first aid care.

It was very frustrating.

On the way to two villages we climbed very high through the jungle on a treacherously narrow road that was very slick with mud and rain and headed for the most distant village first. But the river had washed out the road ramp, and though the water was not deep we could not get down the embankment without cutting it away first for the truck and there was not time for that because the darkness was so close. So we headed back in the fog to the other village we had passed by. It was very lucky for soon as we got there a young girl came with many people to the truck with her thumb just then badly cut while gathering large bamboo shoots. We could see immediately that the bone was chopped into and so we cleaned the wound, wrapped it and took her and her brother to the hospital down the mountain. By this time the slick mountain road was completely turned to slime and the fog was so thick we could only see about five meters. Upon reaching the hospital late at night the nurses attended her with some indifference, laughing much. The nurse handled the wound roughly and kept sticking her gloved finger into the large hole in the thumb as if she was looking for something. After considerable handling of the wound and use of a very large needle to inject anaesthetic a doctor came and stitched the finger together. The girl and her brother spent the night in the hospital and were given a large bill. I wondered how they could pay that amount.

In this last week of staying with the Akha people in their villages I ate and slept in their huts and wondered how they could get any protein or vitamins from their diet as expenditure of energy is so great walking one and two hours just to reach their fields where they work all day.

All of their activities require greater protein and minerals so that their children are not born weak. But they do not have this needed diet.

This project set up to assist the Akha has to be one of the least financed but most ambitious projects I have ever worked on.

The truck we travel in is much destroyed, welded and rewelded, the rock and mud roads cracking it and tearing up tires. The roads are so steep that one is either bouncing violently trying to get up them or sliding back down them dangerously.

Tiny amounts of funds are made to go the farthest possible with purchases of first aid supplies and fuel.

I have not had a day that I did not travel since I got here, sometimes getting back into the nearest town at 2 am.

T. Mallick
Maesai, Chiangrai, Thailand