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Akha
Chronicles San Chai Mai San Chai Village was a village that I spent a lot of time in
while working on an Akha book. This
village was illustrative of the worst exchanges with the Thai world and low lands as well as
the diminishing edges of mountain culture as though it had overextended
itself. One could only begin to know what pressures were exerted on this
village. Elders and
children alike were forced to suffer. Outside police,
missions and NGO's preyed on the difficult position of this village with no one making any effort to assist it in any true way. Drug addiction,
prostitution and crime was at its worst as a result. Many of the
Akha in this village died, there were many murders and many of its people
ended up in prison. Drugs contributed
significantly to the death and imprisonment factor. The Thai police
were heavily involved, San Chai
was their slave village. While getting their drugs here, the police could
also arrest when needed. I sat in Nimit’s
house when police came and smoked or shot up heroin. Other times police came
and raided the house like commandos. Nimit's
Dark Side One man said
the other day, here in October of ‘98 that Nimit
had planted drugs on a sister because she wouldn’t loan him heroin and
she just got out or is getting out this month for doing six years after he
set the cops on her. You would never
know that to meet Nimit. One would never know the whole story. Yet I
knew his meanness a time or two. I
remember the time I took Meeh Suur,
the girl who had been burned badly to see him. While we were there a pretty girl invited
me outside to talk. While we were gone out under the light, sitting on the
bench talking, Nimit became angry at me with envy I
suppose and told the burned girl many cruel things. So when we were headed
back to her village, she cried and told me this. John Gunther AUA director Chiangmai, don't tell him that asoh
sent me Nimit sent me
to talk to John Gunther. Asked me not to mention his name, maybe he
had pissed some money in the past.
Lots of people had contacted the Akha through Nimit. But he ate the money and the good will when
he could. The savvy could benefit, the foolish could loose. He had a
tremendous heroin habit. San Chai had been a good man, and the village had lots of
good things as well as lots of bad luck.
Nimit could act up like there was no
tomorrow, laugh and make the fool, and then turn and say very deeply felt
kind things or stories of a situation. Missionaries had
come and tried to exploit the village, make inroads, but they never were
able. It was odd, yet
predictable, that a person who had such complex problems, in a village that
had such complex problems, could at the same time have a strong capacity to
hold onto its culture in ways that other villages didn’t do so
well. What ever the components, San Chai Mai, and the people of San Chai
Mai, had a strong foundation. Nimit
and San Chai Nimit searched,
as all of us, for the meaning and substance in life, by his existence, to
live a life of meaning, to be engaged, yet so often missing the mark, that is much the story of Nimit. For Nimit's side
there is the problem of his surrender to drugs, and a
surrender it must be called, repeated surrender, despite the effort of
many friends, pulled his heart and the habits of his heart, far over to one
side. Now in latter
years he had once again dried out, but the habits of his mouth and heart, did
not particularly stop. The most notable
thing was that he did not have a positive reputation, and this didn't leave
much to build on once the drugs were gone, always pulling at him. As well, many
years of feeding the evil side left a very dark patch on his heart even after
the heroin was gone, and one could feel the pull of this. If he would stand up above it was hard to
know. There was often
no bone in his tongue. But Nimit also had a good heart, and he was an excellent
singer, and had deep feeling for his people.
In the west we make people to be either good or bad, so we can judge
and speak of them quickly, with the Akha and Akha language this is not so
much so, and for myself personally I allow people at least 15 sides to their
personality, and frankly don't care how much bad they have in some of them,
because that can be spoken for all of us. It is particularly
important to note that some of us are not nearly as bad as we could be,
merely because we didn't get the opportunity to be as corrupt as we might
have had the heart and will for. This
can not be overlooked. So the magic of
Nimit was this struggle in his life, sometimes
wise, sometimes foolish, but always surprising. People often dissed Nimit, but whatever my
disappointment, Nimit didn’t give up on being
Akha in a very tough world at the edge between the Akha and all that is bad
in Thai society. A hard act to follow. It was in San Chai Mai where I first began to see the serious problems
a village could have, but it was many years after San Chai
Mai that I saw the secret forces that imposed themselves in devious ways from
outside the village, that then explained a lot of what I had seen in San Chai Mai. This had left a profound impression on Nimit. Some people spoke of him as if he was the most
evil man, but I learned later how convenient this was, and how inaccurate. Living In San Chai Sometimes the
Akha can be such a pain, especially in a heroin household, and then they will
do something that really endears themselves to you. One
such case was where all I heard about was money, all Phillip heard about was
money, and then Phillip left. Asoh said that it was “Fucked Up”. And in such a way that maybe he meant it
was sad to see someone doing so much for the Akha by way of filming, go
away. Then the first thing out of his
mouth was that he got up early for the Then
Asoh says to me that they don’t just think
about money, him and Mee Yoh,
but that they have to keep eating. I
thought of all the money they went through for their heroin habit and yet
something rang gentle about his voice.
He never could
explain to me why every time he saw me he asked for money. But as the
years went by, I realized that these drug households, the men, if nothing
else, were quite expert at a constant flow of money, they had to be, while
many households which didn’t have drugs going on, could be pretty broke
sometimes. The drugs were a complex culture, not all bad, that was part of
the support system of a people forced to live on the edge. Although villages and people in them had ways of
sharing, coming from the outside one could feel the Akha were pretty stingy.
But they were stingy with everything, and not just to other people, but to
themselves as well. It was a matter of economic survival in a life situation
that wasn’t forgiving. Sometimes
it rubbed me raw when out of one side they spoke evil of me, that I was
cheap, then the next time I was helping them, and then the next time not and
they were speaking bad again. Hearing the
Akha speak bad of me was very common. Some of it was just meaness. Some of it was envy, pain, failed hope, or
all three. Or they thought I had lots of money. Or that I was helping some
other village but not theirs. Hey, life was very difficult,
I didn’t put it too much to their account when I learned what could
happen to people in these villages. I was having a
rough day. I was paying to stay at Nimits, and also
didn’t have much spare money, and so was basically living on the same
sparse diet as everyone else, and it was really difficult when you eat like
the Akha have to eat, then you get some feeling of what it means to have your
energy limited by your calorie intake. So I was in the back of Nimit’s hut, where we were all talking and suddenly
the Akha wife of Nimit's one son said that I should
go home to see my mother and then come back in one month. It was a kind thing to say, I couldn’t
do it, but it was the kind of thing that was important to Akhas,
family. She was from
nearby in I could give
out $50 of medicine in the village one night, and then the next morning when
I needed a ride to the corner they would charge me for it. I got plenty of
knowledge of them and life living in their villages, but my survival was up
to me, to live long enough to do so.
This experience varied depending on the villages of course. What are
western attitudes and actions, must be set aside in
an Akha village till one KNOWS what is going on and WHY. After I had lived
with the Akha for 15 years, the experiences in the village could be just as
impoverished, but knowing what they were about made all the difference. One
was much less likely to rush to judgment based on appearances. And what one could
look at and have a good laugh with the Akha about was much more. I don't know
that I am so hard on them, the mountain environment
is extremely tough. Household
hospitality among the Akha was very good. I wished that I
had found more people among the Akha who shared my vision for the writing of
the literature. I found it
consistently true, that foreigners categorized the Akha much more harshly than
when faced with a similar behavior in the west. There was very much a double standard
applied to these people. Fish Tank San Chai I hadn’t
been in the Akha village all that long when it was necessary for me to pull
out the tools and fix the fish tank pump of all things. You see, on a rickety metal stool in the
center of the hut sits a fish tank. Brought up by a customer or friend. One
big gold fish is left, the other one dead and quite humorously pitched out
into the yard by Ah Bay, the grand son, with great announcement at its death.
So I ended up fixing
the wires inside the pump, fine copper fillaments
that were impossible to solder because I didn’t have any flux. But winding the wires and stripping off the
varnish I was able to get it going for the moment. The small aquarium was not much bigger than
a car battery, tapes, the glass chipped along one edge, a piece of life here
in this place, an attempt to embrace life, here on the hut floor, the woven
bamboo matt, all the people passed out in post heroin sleep, or sitting about
talking. The hut was the center of a
form of life in the village, always there was someone different coming and
going, or here when you got here. Eventually yah
bah became popular and then the one side of the room, Nimit
with his back against the wall, became an evolving litter of gourds, pvc, plastic water bottles, tubing of any kind, any means
by which to construct a bong, candles burning, melting plastic pipes to weld
them together, some little wood here, some metal there, a rod down through
the middle to clean it out, like they were finely burnishing wood, the job
never done. So there were
only a couple hours a day that were real good to work on the Akha language, that was why I was here. Working on the
alphabet. I had been working on it for a while. So when that part of my day
was over, meaning that it was either dark, or Nimit
was sleeping, or some guest was there, or some big thing going on, then I
joined the rest of them for talk, for listening or for asking Nimit about this and that in Akha language and culture.
Because he could speak English. So I improved my knowledge of Akha culture
and language in this way, hours every day, listening, asking questions and
talking. Sometimes I
went to another village, walked around San Chai Mai
or found something else to do. Once I had even
tried to inspire a hutside garden, it helped a
little, until Meeh Oh died, but the weight on this
place was too heavy for much to grow up. But in the end
days there were not so many people around, the joy rides were over. And then
the house was even gone. This Bump on My Back The Akha often
got these plugged pores, one that was very active, and it kept growing and
growing, filling up with grease. I Just finished
cleaning out one from one man’s cheek the size of a grape and the he
asks me if I can get the one off his back, well, actually two. I cleaned them
out by making a small poke with a lance. I look at the first one, right on the spine
the size of a nut. Not too bad I thought, then his
wife pulled his jacket aside and showed me the one below it that was the size
of a fist. He said he had it for seven years. Suffice it to say, it needed cleaning and was such a
disgusting job that the guy on the camera couldn't cope with it any more and
had to leave. People say pigs are dirty and chickens clean, but the chickens
came and ate that up like it was pate. The Girl From I had no sooner
taken care of the one fellow than a woman came with her daughter to talk to
Phillip. Nimit
translated, and the girl told her story. She was Akha, and only twenty five. Her arm was all swollen from a recent
motorcycle accident which had broken her collar bone as well, and it had not
healed well or completely yet. Her
collar bone hung down. She was dressed in pajamas and her
over all appearance was of a young person who was quite early wearing
out. A sad picture at best. She had come
back after 8 years working in Nimit Nimit smokes
lots of meth.
At least he spends a lot of time doing it. His wife is green and dying. Probably organ failure. Still smoking the ole heroin though. She
doesn’t shoot up too often any more, but she does all the injections
for Nimit. He is very careful, he brings it up, and
Mee Oh does it so well that in all the years he has
only a small small track down his arm, after some
20 years of injecting every day several times. Then I visit
and Nimit says, “I don’t know what
happen, she get sick again.” Nimit’s
Mother Dies Nimit’s mother is dead . Nimit’s wife is next to dead, probably back pain
from liver failure. She lays there piercing herself with a
needle hammer, stick of bamboo with two syringes that are stuck through its
end just far enough to use as a hammer to puncture the skin, then this draws
blood. She got excessive massage Nimit says. But she really is dying. Nimit
isn’t coping with it well, life coming to an end, closing in around
him. A spirit man sits there like a
cross between Fu
Man Chu and the court jester, gotee
hanging down, a sort of howl on his old face. Not a very good description but
represented my discomfort with the situation at the moment, my feeling. I had
lived a lot in this house, sleeping along the wall of the main room with
everyone else. I had grown an affection for these
people, while nearly starving with them, coping with the mud and the rain,
and all that went on. Sometimes cops came in the day, would sit there with Nimit after shooting up, or smoking heroin, or smoking meth, or eating and then would whip out a 9mm automatic
and jack a cartridge through the gun. Everyone sort of froze. Guess I’ll
leave that last piece of pineapple. Nimit, he had this scar on his neck where a cop walked up
behind him and shot him. His brother went to find out who did it and he was
killed. He had a couple brothers left. The goofy one and then the old one
down the hill at the other village.
So when the cop sat there behind him and jacked the gun we sort of all
sucked it up for a moment.
For what ever Nimit’s faults, he gave
me some truth, and part of his life, the good and the bad, his victories and
his tragedy. Other people came to get his help. Sometimes he helped them,
sometimes he screwed them, was hard for me to tell, he had the details, which
explained a lot. But in those days there weren’t roads so much.
Together with Nimit I went to some great villages,
even in
About missionaries. If there was one person who could say it, it was Nimit, that
they weren’t there to teach the Akha about the love of Jesus. They were
there to get what they could for themselves. I
knew Nimit’s mother. Actually she was the
second wife of San Chai. I am not sure if she was Nimit’s mother, I think she was dead. But the
second wife was a tough old woman, came walking through bow legged, stooped
with age, dragging some food from the jungle, always an Akha no matter what,
a tough old and dear woman. When she died it was a really big event and
people came from all over, that was for sure. Nimit’s
Wife Dies Nimit, his wife
died. She was a heroin addict like he
was and in the end he got a second wife, a Thai woman, and moved down to
another shack at the bottom of the village.
His wife couldn't get food or help with the heroin like before,
started injecting into her hands and I knew it was the end for her. She was gone in a few months. I had spent
many a day talking to her and near the end she had grown dark and withered,
unable now to outrun internal problems that were eating her. In the heat, the dust and the poverty it
was hard to see such a thing, as if on an island yet with no water, to pass
away in a kind of deep abandoned loneliness. I could only get to the village
when I had money to rent a motorbike. I went up to
see Nimit after she was dead. He was sad. Probably
within a year or two he would be in the same grave so to speak. But many had thought this of him often,
that he always looked on his last leg, but he pulled through somehow. I had warned Meeh Oh there wasn’t much time left. I hoped she
had heeded that she needed to make her peace with Jesus Christ. I added this onto what I told Nimit as well but I doubted he would do it. I could not change what had been done in
their lives, yet I felt great compassion for them. So much had happened at their village and
at their hand. It disturbed me deeply,
all the situation. I believed in Jesus Christ, but
it was for helping people. Not taking over villages. I wondered why the
missions couldn’t see this. They just used it to take power away from
the village leadership and give it to themselves. In the process no one was
interested what name they gave to greed, as compared to spirit. I had lived in
that village before, San Chai. I had been there in some happy times amid
all the despair. They were going
through the pains of a people in a village not needed so often now by the
Thais, often discarded, after having been much abused. I could not speak or
know what it was to be like them. By
comparison I was utterly rich with privilege.
There was no joking about that and if they had been I they would no
longer be there but in the I remember
going to a dance with
Nimit and he looked so pathetically
shriveled up as a human being, like the Devil had eaten all the man away
leaving the last shred of life only. I
say a darkness because it was so negative in
appearance and that is the best what defines what comes to mind in what I
saw. It was not a nice thing, I felt
sorry for him. He was a worthwhile human
being, he had a lot to contribute but time had not been kind and it was
running short. I had tried to
encourage them to refurbish their village, gardens, ecology, composting,
replanting bamboo, etc. Was hard to do
with the cops coming one day to the village for drugs, and the next day
zinging in to kill or arrest people. A little hard to figure out. Living
there for months I could see the pressure and this was just a nano second in the years of that village. Nimit borrowed
a grinder I never got back, but hey, I sort of knew that when I gave it to
him. Nimit was part
of my process too. I learned about the
Akha from him. We had a lot of good talks.
But people said of Nimit that he was a
person who could talk and make you feel good but his heart was pure
evil. I don't know. I know he did his share of real bad things
to people. Hadn’t we all. But in a way he
represented the tragedies that were occuring among the
Akha. He felt passed over by some of
the people that worked with the Akha.
Yet he knew much of what had gone on, it was up to me to sort it all
out. Nimit was one
of the few people interested in the script I worked on. I had nearly gone to quit when I met him
and with his encouragement continued on and that was the completion of the
beginning of a dream and work on Akha literature. Even if it was strictly to
gain money and an angle, it still was a stage the work progressed through and
that is what helped the script to its point today and at that time no one
else helped or believed except Nimit. Nimit He has a
story. He had a story. Maybe some time I will get to write it all
down. Nimits one
brother was a goofy. He had a really nice son. They all were
involved with drugs it seemed and they all lost their shirts, got shot, went
to jail, lost their motorbikes and trucks and lived in poverty when it was
all done in the stereotypic battle with the country sherriff
as it were. A very corrupt sheriff. Many people
died at Nimit's house as well, by last count Meeh Oh told me more than 24 directly at the hands of
heroin. Opium is child's play compared
to heroin and what can go wrong. Nimit said that
this professor took him to One young man
fell over dead right there on the floor when they were all tokin and smokin and died.
Nobody flinched. Eventually the family
came and got him but no one moved even then. I didn't see it
but my friend did and he said it was quite the thing, real unnerving how detatched they all were. Heroin, besides
it being illegal, dangerous, contaminated and all of that, sure won't help
you get the work done. They did not
much more than sleep all day. I was hoping Nimit would go in for rehabilitation but it became more
and more unlikely, don't know if you can even communicate some things to some
people let alone get them to change their ways. At the same
time I noted that often those with the greatest trouble,
are also the ones who kept the culture the strongest. Surely this could be
said of Nimit. The drugs hounded him, but they were
also what helped him hold his own against those who wanted to squash who Nimit was. I have Nimit to thank for his encouragement keeping the book
project alive even if there were self serving parts, he did agree that it was
an attempt to help all Akhas. Ah Saw’s Son This was the
son who spent three years in Prison for Dad. Now how that
happened was like this. Dad was pretty
well known for heroin, so on the day of the raid, Dad wasn’t home but
the cops found some heroin in the house after a good search and since the son
was the only one in the house, someone was going to do the time and it was
going to be him. His son was born while he was in prison.
I got lots of picks of corrupt cops in Nimit’s
house so it was real hard to guess the justice of all the police raids. The
cops were Nimit’s best customers, and as I
later found out, sometimes they ordered the drugs and you had best deliver. After the son
got out, well, he worked with a drug rehab agency for a while till he got
tired of it, Jenny Grey’s operation.
That was a carnival in itself, one village had her operation, she was
dating a Thai cop it was said, and funny enough there were continuous drug
raids on San Chai right next door. She had big grant bucks, which it was said
got spent mostly flying her family back and forth to Jenny wasn’t
a doctor, but she had this program and the Akha were smacked on heroin and
methadone all at the same time. Then Jenny got
smart and told the women all their husbands had AIDS, so the families split
up, then the men went and got tested and when it turned out they didn’t
have AIDS Jenny agreed to pay them. So
the story goes. What a mess it was. Then Ah
Saw’s son worked his way up to being head man of the village. He was a hard guy to figure, always happy
for the most part but one often wondered about dark goings on in the
background of his face. He was said to
have more than three wives and to be an excellent hand at gambling. Course they said he had killed a lot of
people too. All makes you wonder. His wife, nice
woman, and the kids real good. Then there was
the time that the younger brother went either by himself or with some others
and killed a Thai man and his wife who were building a house in San Chai Gow, not sure how this all
occurred, but they got dead, then younger brother went and got older brother
and older brother came and shot the two dead boys, I mean the couple, and
they were dead or not dead yet, not sure, then hauled and burned their
bodies, and then after that the uncle’s son went to jail, the younger
brother went to prison for the killings, and the older brother got quite sad
having shot these two and the whole mess of it, he wasn’t the same
after that, I could see it. The thing started this way. The younger brother
in a panic stirred up by something, said that two “thieves” were
trying to leave the village and he attacked them. So that way the older
brother and half a dozen guys shot down there in the truck and the situation
was already messed up and the couple got dead the rest of the way. Then they
realized how messed up things had gotten in the dark. But it was too late,
and all they could do was deal with it. It was a tragedy all the way around.
When I had seen the cops come in and shoot a man who was a deaf mute you
could see how stupid things could get going. All the
village telling the cops the man was goofy and deaf, and them chasing him off
in the jungle blasting away trying to catch him, till they shot him and
dragged him out. Then the
daughter of Nimit, his only daughter it would seem,
Ah May, ran away to Chiang Mai at 17, having dropped out of school after they
kicked her out for chasing the boys too much, teacher didn’t have time
for it or something, but she wanted a lift one day and the house she wanted
me to drop her off at turned out to be a place where lots of Akha girls who
were busy selling themselves stayed. That is how I figured that one out. I told her I couldn’t do that and
dropped her off at Nimit’s place,
that is Ah Saw’s other name, the one we know him by most. She
was a little pissed at me but got over it. Nimit had been
married before. He told me that Paul Lewis told his wife to leave him. He was
broke up about that, but Paul Lewis and Bill Young, they did come to his
place, he said they were both CIA, wasn’t hard to figure when one saw
more of that whole picture. Anyway, I met his first wife in Mae Chan. Nimit hada couple kids by her. Blood Butt One and Blood Butt Two Then there is
blood butt one and blood butt two. The first is some
kin to Asaw who went to Then there is the brother’s son,
life squared away for the moment, then off to prison for a while. He was the
husky one. I saw him down at the low village at Mae Salong
years later. Nimit’s name was Asaw in
Akha, or Ah Soh, but he would say to western
people, “Yeah, its ‘asshole’.” Making fun of how they
got confused over the name. The tone
wasn’t the same, they didn’t know that however.
Course, they foreigners would say that this or that was “ok”.
But to the Akha that was the same as saying “Oh SHIT!” because
the letter “k” means shit in Akha. Akha wondered why every time
something good happened the foreigners said it was nothing but a bunch of
shit. Nimit mother dead, wife and son nearly, daughter, one
son in prison, one booh seh,
and nimit had a whore in his house last time I was
there. Nimit, fertilizer, meeh suur Well Meeh Suur and I went up there to talk to Nimit
about fertilizer one time. The stars were out. We left late. We stopped there
near the edge of the hill where all the passion fruit grew on the lattice and
looked out over San Sook, the stars, the mist moving
along on an otherwise clear warm night. Nimit
Kept the Money? Word was anyway
that people gave lots to nimit for the village, for
votes, you name it and he just kept it for himself. Money from Through joseph matin luther yohanz nimit signed the papers according to joseph lets check it out Joseph said that German people gave money
and the Thai ate it and the Akha got none. Nimit,
he got some small part maybe. Joseph married Akha girl in the mountain. Visitors to San Chai There are a
couple regulars who visit San Chai Mai. Foreigners.
One German man has a wife and has built a house next door that is
built like a bunker, with a concrete roof, but then the windows are the
standard wood, so one wonders why the ceiling of cement slab? Very humid as a result. He has only come here once in two months
and the relationship to the village tends to be typically sleazy. They get money out of it and that is about
the limit of the relationship. Then there is
Martin and Goi.
They have a guest house a few metres from
the intersection at Ban Basang with the highway to Maesai and Chiangrai. He is Swedish I believe or German, married
to a Thai, and pleasant in someways. What foreigners know about the area usually
isn’t worth going through to learn or it is grossly inaccurate, based
on perception more than fact. The
foreigners are very quick to have a heavy prejudice about how something is
especially to show that they are the local expert on information and
knowledge. Especially when their sign
says “Information” But some of the information was good and
helpful so one didn’t go to harshly and
learned what they could from every angle. Martin did these bike treks here
and there when the roads were bad in all those years. Then there is Ande from Aids and mosquitos buzzing about? Coming on
Friday or the next few days is another German, also married to an Akha woman
from some village over. He is supposedly interested in helping with some kind
of AIDS and Drug information program, although a user of the stuff himself. Phillip, the photographer, is gone. Back to New He did a lot of
filming of the Akha and was the person who I gave the information about the
sterilizations to. He dug into it and
got a lot of information which he shared with me and then in turn I was able
to clarify some of it for him also. He
also filmed a lot of cultural events as they occured
and related to his basic story about how so many people dealt the Akha out. He ended up
with a lot of tape. Maybe the Akha will see some of it some day. Cause they
are in it. There are many
characters here in the village. At the
time the one of the most grating I thought, be it
justified so much or not, is the old granny in the back room. Good hearted that she is I still call her
“spider woman” because she usually sits in her cove, behind the
netting and in a deep, grating, hollow voice bellows and blithers on about
things as to nobody. The pigs
squealing about at night is more pleasant. But then I found out she was the
second wife of San Chai, barking directions,
keeping the ship on course, very much the Akha way. But I didn’t know
that at the time. It was just noise to me, and I couldn’t speak enough
Akha to know what she was talking about, I am sure had I know it would have
been pretty interesting. That was one of my greatest regrets, when I was
first working with the Akha in those crucial years when the Thais were busy
hammering new roads in, then was when lots of Akhas were being forced to relocate. At Nimit’s house there were great scenes, like a
piglet dangled down through an opening in the porch, a foot in its gut to
cause it’s testicles to protrude and then the old man slits the skin
with a razor and squeezes the testicles out through the small slit and cuts
their cords. Disgusting but sort of
standard in any farmyard, and actually much more exact and surgical than what
I have seen in the west. Then the pig is dropped below in a kind of rude
gratitude and runs off screaming. Then there was
the skinny, dark, funny old fellow with the burgundy sky cap, and the long tassle of hair. San Chai’s other son and his son next, I like. A big fellow, he doesn’t do drugs,
but drinks a little is all. He has two
good looking kids and seems responsible.
The one son of Asoh, is in prison for cutting in on one bull woman’s
business by selling to people just as they came up the driveway. She took him out immediately. Then her daughter was here, A big bruise
and clot of blood still in her leg from a motorcycle wreck and a broken, mishealed collarbone.
Her Thai lay in tow, she looked a wreck. The cops are
frequent visitors, sometimes to do raids, other times to use the candy. Once they came in like gangbusters, zooming
right up to the house in the truck and jumping out in a hurry, racing around
and through the house. Asoh had just left to some political event, where the
politician was buying votes in the traditional way and Asoh
directed traffic and got his cut, filling out 250 some ballots in one day
himself. Other cops come
to get smacked up themselves, usually leaving their guns behind, just in case
there is a run in with other cops. However one cop
came once and as Asoh ate, he was laying down behind Asoh and
pulled out his 9mm and jacked it up while he was sitting directly behind Asoh. I was
wondering what was being gotten across.
It was a shoulder holster under his shirt. Asoh some years
before had been shot in the neck from behind by a cop while waiting to be
picked up after a movie at Doi Mae Salong. His
brother went up there and talked to much about it
and someone killed him a week later.
Maybe they don’t tend to be so wreckless
these days. Another brother was shot
and killed also, some say over guns.
The father, San Chai, was a friend of the
King. He died 15 to 17 years ago. By
the way, last night the King’s mother died, she headed up the Doi Tung project for hilltribe, if one believes it really helped them, I
don’t know. I see a lot of
good intention for the hilltribe by the government
and the Royal Family but individuals and the army all seem to have other
plans. Lots of time the Royal Projects are for a
cover for a big rip off. I recently got
a letter from Dorothy Ulrich who is a missionary who holds to the old school
of authoritarian fundamentalists and anti-communists,
do what you will to the people. San Chai’s wife is still alive at 85. She hobbles over to Asoh’s
hut and smokes her toot and babbles on in her gravelly voice about this and
that, nobody appearing to be listening.
Short and impressively wide but not fat. Probably from hauling too many bamboo
trunks up the hill for the pigs. Mee Yoh, Asoh’s wife, is generally
pleasant. The television
runs here from about eight oclock in the morning
till Phillip Phillip is back
in the Chiangrai area after his trip to the phillipines to check into the prostitution story there. He said the phillipines
around subic was really bad with a lot of out of
work whores and weird western guys who stayed on. Right now he is
still digging into the Paul Lewis sterilizations but the focus is turning more
on the Thais who are also villains in all this, trying to deal the Akha out,
off their land and the whole works. One of the
stories that he has found is how the doctors told a woman her baby was sick
so go home and come back in a few days.
When she came back she was told that the baby died. No records, corpse burned, etc. Quite obviously 91/2 month Akha babies
don’t just up and die, so it can be suspected now that the Thai
hospitals may also be in the baby racket.
Where it could all lead? Who
knows but the more digging the better. There is also
word that the leader in Pah Meeh
village near Maesai is in a position in the
cultural society. This we are going to
check into as this would be a great improvement over other present options. Luka is working
on a school, rehab and ag project. He worked for
Paul Lewis. Dapa. The
children’s book is finished and I am looking for ways to print it in
large quantities. I also want to run
it by the fellow at Pami because it would be good
to know that there is still not any major cultural errors. I also want to go out to Paih ah Paih village, a
traditional Lomi village and see what their village
is like and what they have to say about things these days. Yesterday, the
generosity of San Chai Mai increased. One pleasant fellow came down and gave me a
ride all the way to Pasang. Halfway off the mountain before San Sook, the rain hit us, the mountains mostly engulfed
anyway. Then it was getting soaked all
the way down the mountain. I had no
protection for the computer case but to tuck my rag in the front edge exposed
so no water shot back in, but otherwise we were both drenched. He asked me if I was worried about the
computer and I said just go on. We got
soaked. The computer stayed dry even
though I continued to get soaked till the bus came. Then I made it to Chiangrai
about Nimit Nimit came to my house. Sometimes he needed
some financial help. I watched, but did what I could for him. I met his son in town sometimes too. He
was headman now. Nimit knew lots of expressions. Killing from the backside. How someone did you in. Night Mountain Trip To find Nimit May 97 There were
problems of communication at the school here in Maesai
going on, and some of the older children were making it hard on the smaller
street children who wanted to attend, telling them that basically it was
“their” school and that the younger kids should stay away. This probem was
intensified by the fact that the chief donor handled money in such a way as
to insure that the kids knew there was lots of it, which was not good. (Eventually this brought this particular
school to an end, as it was impossible to function in this fashion.) I was going to
need some help on this, since I could not say what all needed to be explained
in Akha language so I would take the evening off and go into the mountains to
get my friend to come in and help with the translation of it all. Finding Nimit
might be another story. I realized I had better get a move on it
so I went next door to hire a bike.
She said it was too late in the day.
Across the street was closed.
Up the street the American owner who recently moved to Maesai was back in Bangkok, his little motorcycle rent
shop closed because he left his girl friend no keys for some odd reason. I went to Then up to the
right road and the cutoff which took us to the village on the
mountainside. Now we were on the Some of the characters in San Chai
Mai There are lots
of different great characters in San Chai. I start tying together other Akha I know
already who come here to visit. There is Asaw Nimit. He is from a leadership family. Then there is his brother, who is really
funny. The funniest man is the Pima. He has this great laugh. Then there is BB two, wasted away but a
pleasant man, yet two unkept kids and not much life
left. Other characters, but I enjoy Asaw’s brother most. The son married the daughter of the family
with the shop in the village. Then there is the 85 year old wife of San Chai. Ah Sor’s mother. Fog releases mountain island from the
chambers of its heat San Chai Bread The woven
basket rice dish, half gone from use and apparently abandoned to the bugs was
wedged against the bamboo wall next to the fire hearth. As she baked
the sticks of bread she hid most of them in a second basket behind her
because she said she did all the work and all the people came to eat, but
never gave her respect and never fed her when she went to their house. San Chai 2 The thing that
ruins much of the flavor of San Chai is the
television. The Akha don’t know
about the television and most of all cultures will be well finished before
the people figure it out. The
television is the most intrusive, God like divice
ever invented. Devil’s Shit, I
call it. I am trying to
gain a clear idea of what it is that I am going to do. I think that full time work for the Akha is
not possible. In the end I have
nothing for myself and there are many personal affairs that I must take care
of. The next best
thing that I can think of is to work on a book about the region. This will be fun and there is much that I
must do to accomplish that. I am not
completely sure but I think that the Maesai story
will be about all of the region with a second theme
being a close look at the Akha, as from personal preference, all though I
admit that may change with time. What I have
sensed as I work here is that I must reserve something for myself. One of the things that I would like to
continue with is my system for multiple languages. I have noted
that in working with multiple languages, if you work on two languages it
seems to work faster as if you get some kind of mental ping pong going on,
tossing two different words back and forth which have the same meaning but
are in different languages, for instance Akha and Also a book
would allow me to do the writing that I like to do and to get more travel and
specific study done in this region.
There are a lot of places in These days of
late, writing has not been fun for me.
I am planning on pulling out of the village and going back to the In writing one
must have observations, but it is very important to also go after specific information
that can cost light on the situation.
This is the investigative aspect, of finding out what the power
structure is, what the economics of the region is, and so forth. Below is a possible list of areas to check
out: Power Source of money and economics Language Aspects of the Culture Food Clothes Music marriage and dating current problems A lot of
questions are only to take me in the general direction and then I find out
more when I get there. For me I am
interested more for the stories that come to mind, the human interaction, the unspoken, than what is scientific. This requires the
ability to pull back from the situation or move on and check out something
else, which I am not particularly able to do at this time. As well, I
think that I will find a limit of scope for the book, and a practical cut off
point for the first book, such that I will learn how to get books behind me. San Chai, Akha families
coasting down the hill in Akha dreams, in neutral, engines off, silently as
wayfarers to the world below. When I came off
the hill to basang at the maesai
chingrai jct. the cops waved for me to come over
across the highway where they were stopping every freight truck of interest,
and person of interest, but I ignored them and went and got an ice cram. As I waited for
the bus I figured they could get more interested, Thai police always looking
for a way to snag a buck. If the
government made it against the law to litter the police could collect
infinite money. On the way down
from the san Sook jct on
the song tow and akha woman wanted me to marry her friend. She was fluent in Akha,lahu, lisaw, labu and palow, whterver that is and thai, not
bad. I enjoy the akha I meet on the song
tows. as soon
as they know that I understand some akha they become a lot of fun. One Akha girl on the song tow has a seized
elbow from a reversal fracture. San Chai Mai 1 I am living here at San Chai Mai for the time being while I wait for money to
come and then I shall return to the San Chai Mai is one of the oldest villages in The village is
located on a ridge crest. The land is
valuable, rich with opportunity but the people making use of it are poor. Mountain rice is one crop, and then a few
vegetables, pigs, ducks, chickens and things which grow in the jungle. Most huts have small fenced plots for
vegetables, if you can call them that, all of which is ravaged by the pigs
and chickens. Dog carts come
through the village regularly, selling small dogs for 15 to 20 baht a kilo on
the paw. The Akha make short work of a
dog and use every part of it except maybe the last foot of intestine. Starting out by smacking the dog over the
head with a blunt object, they bleed it out with an incision and knife thrust
to the heart from the throat. Then
they throw the dog on the fire, burning off all of the hair and scraping the
hide for anything on it. Then it is
gutted and chopped up. The bile gland
is saved and used in some ceremonies as a seasoning. Sometimes the brains of the dog are mixed
with the brains of a small pig and eaten raw in the same ceremony. The dog
meat is cheaper by half than pork, so that is all the Akha can afford in many
villages. Protein, that is how tough it is here.
Yuk, the Akha’s eat dogs? Well, try being
poor and eating a stone. San Chai has two small shops that sell odds and ends, and
dried fish, oil, canned milk, and all the little goodies people need and
like, the plastic wrappers littering the village. The manufacturer not bearing any
responsibility for the littering in the process of making a profit. There are a
couple bathing points in the village, concrete pads with a water spicket. The women
and men bathe in the open with no thought given to western concepts of nudity
and such. The body doesn’t
appear to be near the item to be hid as it is in the west. In the Akha village and Akha life as a
whole, there doesn’t appear to be much that is in need of hiding. I remember one insident when the Akha children told me that there was
this Burmese boy screwing a Shan girl right along side the trail, about two
feet away in the grass. I asked them
what they did. They said they
watched. I asked what the couple
did. They said they just kept at it. Or take the one
girl who took a baht a piece from the young boys in the village for her
services. A pretty rough and tumble
life but really not much different than the stories that were common in the
west, with much higher levels of denial. And this
reminds me of a point, from what I can tell there are two kinds of people and
two different ways in which those people lie. Non religious people lie at random when it
profits them with no particular pattern or great effort to it. Religious people on the other hand seem to
be motivated to lie to a much greater degree in order to keep up face with
their religious belief. In other words
they don’t just lie off the cuff because it is convenient as the non
religious do. This convenient lying is
always quite transparent and there is never much effort given to conceal
it. If one looks for long there are
all kinds of holes in it and the individual doesn’t seem to follow it
up much in order to cover the first lie.
But the religious, having to keep up an image consistent with a
religious agenda that they have been using to control people for their ends,
must continue to construct intricate lies about what is really going on such
that the entire matter can be perpetuated.
One way to trace the lies, is to discover
their particular agenda and then try to pereceive
what lies need to go along with that. Then there are
the funny truths. I was sitting in
this hut in the evening. A swallow was
roosting in the rafters over head and shit on the back of my shirt as I was
just beginning to eat at the round basket table in front of me. I asked the wife of the household if there
was shit on the back of my shirt. She
looked and said no. Later I discovered
that there was a massive turd there. Most Akha
houses were well constructed of bamboo, being raised above the ground on
posts, there being enough rooom for the pigs and
chickens to house underneath. I had
never noticed lice in the huts, except that some households have a problem
with head lice in the bedding. The kitchen has
a hutch hung above the fire bed. The
fire bed is a framed patch of dirt added on top of the floor. This is suspended as well as the rest of
the house so it is sort of neat. The
smoke from the fire laquers all of the bamboo and
gourd utensils that are stored in the kitchen with a black laquer that is very nice.
All of the grass shingles of the kitchen are also laquered
in such a fashion. Houses have a
room divider for men and women if they are small houses and some have rooms
if they are bigger houses. The house
walls are sometimes made of wood, leaning out, in Shan style, but mostly of
spit or woven bamboo. In the north
like Cheng Tung area, many of the houses are made
of sun baked mud bricks which get so hard in the sun baking process that when
you tweak them with your finger you get a pottery sound from them. Elsewhere in the valley actual brick ovens
are in process baking bricks from bottom clay. This is mostly a bad process as it uses
huge amounts of deforested wood in order to fire even one batch of bricks. The brick mounds appear as trunkated piramids, steam rising
from them out in the valley rice fields. The grass roofs
of the huts leak enough to get the wrong things wet but don’t leak for
long, even in a good raging rain storm.
The beauty of them is that they breathe the air well for such a humid
and foggy mountain position. The upper
walls are usually open, hence the swallows.
Some households have even but up gourds in the roof to attrack swallows to their
house. Certainly the swallows are
nice. Beneath their roosts, woven
bamboo has been laid on the cross members to catch the droppings. Board floors
may be covered with bamboo woven mats which are really nice. Some huts have one section that uses the
earth for a floor and then the bed and eating areas are raised bambooo or wood. These days in
San Chai you can always hear the Thai helicopters,
police or army, patroling back and forth to the
border regions. Now along these
border regions there are a special group of border patrol called Black
Shirts. The story goes that black
shirts can take that lonely job or go to prison for something they have
done. They often have a somewhat
unsavory air to them which would be consistent with this concept. In addition in my experiences with the
younger ones I find that they are forcefully belligerant. Usually when I have met them at their
outposts in the ranges, they are drunk or busy drinking, brandishing weapons
and gernades in a most undisciplined fashion. As well the Akha say that they often rape
the Akha girls at will, their outposts often being near the Akha or Lahu villages in this northern Thai region. The regular army and the border police seem
to more disciplined.
The regular army or the border patrol army seeming to be the most dixciplined. Any blackshirt or police unit of any kind seem to do as they
will with the Akha girls from all that I have heard. Thai officials want
girls when visiting the village seems the standard procedure what I saw. The girls say that it is easier to get it
over with. Nimits
mother daughter wails The dying thing the daughters have to
do. Weird the first time you see it,
affected the second time you would say. So many things like that in an Akha
village, off when you don’t know how and why they fit in. Most people
unfortunately stop there. Life in San Chai Mai Aug.
95 My work to help
the Akha was often deeply frustrating.
Many times I did not know how to proceed or how to move my efforts
forward. This was one such occasion. I wasn’t sure what to do. Money had been sent to me but it got
lost. After it does come I will have
to pay much of it out for rent and food charges here in the village where I
am working. I have been staying at Asoh
Nimits house. As soon as I am
paid off here I want to get back to the Meanwhile I sit around the hut quite
broke. Listening to the rain or going
for short walks. I gave Asoh’s
wife all my household goods when I moved up here. Andy from But now all the
veins in his arms were gone after surgery, for they had collapsed apparently. He knew his time was short but tried to
take good care of himself now. Sometimes I would find him at the back of
the hut near the fire, trying to find a vein in his hand for one more
injection. Later he moved
to Hatyai where he got extremely ill in the
stomach. He wanted to fly home but the
doctor told him he wouldn’t make it and offered him a death shot
instead so he opted for the death injection and it was over. I myself would have opted to go home no
matter what. He was a good guy. Never a bad word for anyone and no
bitterness that you could see. Sold computer, book finished Finally sold the computer, paid off Asoh and moved my writing to maesai. Wanted to go back to US. Which I did. The Children’s Book I have been in
the village for two months almost and have done a huge amount of work on the
Children’s book while here to say nothing of the work that I had
already done on a collective basis over the past four years working up to
this moment. All of this previous work
is what gave me the ability to know how close or far off of target I was on
the new information that was given to me here. The quality of
the information given to me here is better. The rice growing scam, nimit
tells. Grow a special rice or go back to The rice was from Story: Shake down for drugs, driveway to san chai mai, man in bushes According to nimit the
crashed plane near doi tung Burning of 7 villages I saw the
stumps of all the huts. San Chai Gow San Chai Pattana Nimit Looking for him in this hut or that in the
village. He claimed it was his cousin who helped
beat Ah Pah who died from a brain hemorhage. I believe him. Jeff Clair said it was one of the girls
from Afect School's father at San Mah Keeh village who worked at
Sam Yak Police box and knew about the Akha who died, was there when he was
arrested. The Good Ole Men And Women of Nimit's
village Meeh Chooh She had a son out near Pooh Jeeh Fah Mee Oh: dirty shirt: She said that she would wash my shirt. The Akha man dressed in rags,
showed me that his was clean. Afect,
Nimit So I was in the
flat village checking out the second night of music. Som Ah Kohm Akha. Afect. So I loaded up
and went to San Chai to say hello to Nimit. Nimit, we talked, I encouraged him to write
some, to learn to write Akha so he could tell his stories. Wish I had the money to help him do it,
get started. He sat there
squirting water out of a heroin syringe at bugs in the bamboo mat. Then he
would try to burn them out with the heat of a cigarette but I could never see
them. I wonder if it was the meth. Always, as
tonight some wild looking thai pops in. this one had tatoos and a swastica over one
armpit. Yeah, he was in the right
place for the death business. The clinic the Thais had built had not openened yet, I assumed they would need to fix the road
before the staff of any kind would come there. It was only one mile but very eroded and
bumpy and with its steep parts. Many thai medical staff don’t
have cars so they would have to come on bikes and I don’t think it
would happen. I took the
turnoff at the police station that was a shortcut and headed for the highway. Driving a
motorbike at night is the definition of dangerous. Dogs, they are your worst obstacle and you
don’t see them in the road or crossing it in the dark till it is too
late. Then there are the jackass
drivers who all zip out and turn without looking. If you were scared, you were too small for
them to see or care about. If they are scared, they stop first when they see
your size. Then because my
stomach was in the worst way I headed straight home on the last of my gas and
the last of my money. Nimit To me there was
always something sad about him, like HE felt sad about what was being lost
and what was going on. I remember the
time his nephew Ah Cha came to see him from england,
Ah Cha's parents lived in San Chai
Pattana.
Well, one of them ran the video and Nimit
walked through the forest with Ah Cha, singing about the mountains, about
love. Nimit
was a wonderful singer. Nimit told how
so many times the missionaries had tried to take over his village. But it had never happened. The second wife of Ah Doh
who was killed in Bpah Mah
Han lived there, she came back afterwards and married
someone else. She had gotten shot many
times when Ah Doh was killed. She lost the baby. Ah Juuhxv was He hadn't
always been a bad guy. And then his
story was over. They said he took his
younger brother and family out in the hills and killed them all too, I think
he thought there was money to be had.
There is the potential for very bad blood between brothers, like
things gone wrong, done wrong, that an outside person would never break off
like that. Aleh, Nimits
son Ajong. He later became
Pah Luang and in many
ways became corrupt. After the killings
I could see that his heart got very sad, he tried to always talk big and keep
a straight face and the foolish talking increased with time. He took a second wife and his wife became
sad over this, not because of the one or more but because of the
selection. Sometimes he
carried a gun, the house got a little bigger with time, the wall got bigger
and higher, falling down, being rebuilt, like he didn't want a drive by
shooting. Lots of people
hung out at his house, Thai and Akha.
That is where I saw Ado for the first time. He was dead a couple of nights later. Then Ajong
shot himself when the army surrounded the house. Nimit
Jan 2002 Now his son Ah
Jung is dead. I knew him when
he was in his early twenties, a small boy, who was always friendly and his
nice wife. He worked for Jenny Gray in those days and then gave up on it when
he saw what a scam it was. He later became
headman and then things went bad. Nimit
Family Update Of late Nimit's wife is looking worse than bad. Josef says aids, but she has always been
thin for years and I see no sign of illness other than abandonment,
heartbreak, and the birds coming home to roost. Meeh Oh was
always faithful to Nimit as a good friend. The third and
youngest son looks like he has aids though, course that is the same look as meth addicts and he is that too. Nimit himself
is a mosquito of a man and how he lives so long or still lives now I don't
know. Two of his sons
are in prison now
and one son is head man. Ah Jung. A daughter goes
to school, tries to keep a sober face and is greatly saddened by what is
going on. Nimit
New Wife aug 99 Meo Died. The Thai girl
came. Some people said her father was a falang. Sure, some
people spoke ill of her and she was a wreck, smoking meth
all the time but she loved him and she was kind to him when he was half dead
and no one else would touch him. She was young,
his life was old and hard, a pirate in a mountain, a broken pirate. I remember her
going to the wooden cabinet in the corner of the broken wooden cabinet in the
corner of the broken wooden hut and pulling at clothes her face obscured by
hair, crying in long sobs like pain can only be in a young girl's heart, and
it hurt me too, not that he had done anything wrong but just at life with its
sudden hardness, words hung wrong as if they fell on a blade first. She wasn't
Akha. She was Thai. Her face pocked with marks, her arms as well. When she first came he told her to quit
smoking that shit, but she swore she would the day after he quit, two people
in the hard of it. His first wife,
actually his second, was dead now. Died a year ago. She was really sad and faint in the
end. I came by two weeks before she
passed on and spent some time talking to her.
She was staying in the old house by herself, at the square of the
village, and he was down in another hut with this new Thai wife. In some ways
they had played the game together and she had lost first. She certainly couldn't have put it over on
him, her hand deep in the jar for many years. Like all people
he had a good side and his bad side.
Something that impressed me about bad people was that they seemed to
have more passion. And when the good
passed across that stream of energy it got fired out all that much more
forcefully. And so it was
with Nimit.
In all the despair his eyes could still find your idea. And he could accept the hardness, not all
of it his, quite bravely as well. I was waiting
for him one day and along he came in the rain with a bag of passion fruit
slung over his shoulder. Funny how life can't drown us rats, and the rain had
him soked like that, a sad man struggling on, still
understanding how sweet fruit can be.
He wore a purple shirt, black baseball hat, cut offs and the road was
nothing but mud where he came back from Aih Oh Mai
village up above his. Then he sat
down in his busted hut and he ate a meal like a king. Later he kicked
the Thai girl out, I am not sure what she did, or if anything at all, but he
told me she had a problem with the police, or maybe she wanted too many of
his pills when he had them. Squatted there, pipe bongs for smoking all around
him in various stages of use. They say
pills fry the brain, they n ever fried Nimit's
brain, he was always the same Nimit. Asaw. Aug
20. I came.
Everyone was sitting around smoking speed, Asaw
wanted Ah May's Budda locket and sold it. Last time I was
here the oldest brother and Asaw were fighting with
Brother 3. Brother 3 said the oldest
brother said that Asaw's son was not running the
village right because he didn't listen enough to the elders. The old brother insisted that he did not
say he was a bad headman but only that he didn't listen to the elders. The one young
boy in the house was telling how he was doing a radio show for kids to not
use drugs. Always the authorities are happy
to put out that message, putting the burden on the poor. They never spoke about rights, land rights,
human rights, how the police took and exploited. So the young
children thought that only the Akha had the potential to be bad, from the way
things went on, all they heard was people telling them to stop being bad. No
one every praised them for the good they were. All about HOW the facts or myths are
presented to the young. End Have a comment or question? Like
to know more? Send me an email akhalife at gmail.com |