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Akha
Chronicles The The Flat
village is a village that was relocated from several different beautiful
mountain locations by the army. The
owner of the land thought he would get rich off a bunch of impoverished Akha,
which did not happen. He got very
little. The Flat
village is a village that I had significant involvement with from the
beginning of their relocation and through out many hard times which they
experienced. The Flat
village illustrates what the cost is to the lives of people when governments,
army, forestry and other selfish interests take action to shorten the lives
of other peoples than themselves. The Working for
food security, medical problems, problems of relocation, places they got
relocated from, fish project, weaving project. How they ended up here, when I found them.
Babies. Nutrition. The upper mission. I finally
figured out who the headman was. I
don’t think that he was appointed when they first moved down off the
mountain. He had a distinctive look, not a particularly good look but
distinctive. He had a number of
children and both of his older daughters had a thyroid problem. The younger one who was sixteen got
pregnant and that made it worse according to my doctor friend. The baby didn’t live but a few
months. I hardly knew it was gone
except by the absence. I asked the
girl and she said it just got sick and died.
She took it to Maechan but it died
anyway. Almost like this sort of thing
was expected it seemed. That was the
second child that died in the village that I knew of. Every family had differences. The headman’s family took eating real
seriously, no one said to much and hands flew in a
flurry of moving rice, herbs being dipped in chili sauce and eating mustard
greens. I think the Akha nation was
built on mustard greens. On this night I
dropped off a few of my new alphabet books in the village and the
headman’s three older kids got a quick introduction. Then accross the
road to another family. This was a
particularly odd night as Booh Saw’s family
was expecting a police raid. No one in
her family had ID cards. They had been
raided twice and expected it again tonight.
The hut was dark and the dog barked a lot. I could see why they kept it. I had to watch that it didn’t nip me
but other than that it was harmless to me but I think an intruder might have
another problem. I found Booh Saw sewing parts for a jacket in another hut, her
older brother and younger sister and mother and mother and law dispersed with
the small children to other huts. All
in the life of being Akha one would suppose. Actually
migration for these kinds of people was quite common and it wasn’t
their problem that the world had gone to the nation state idea. But for some reason there had never been
too many shooting battles for the Akha so they did not get the generous
handouts of refugee camps and such that were offered to other groups, much
with US cooperation. The only thing
they got from the The village had
dirt streets, a few flourescent street lights, a
community meeting place with covered roof and breezy open sides. Sometimes I gave alphabet lessons on the
large chalkboard. Fortunately I
didn’t have to get past the locked door of a church to use it. They had two wells in the village. I had told them that shortly I would case the
well in the middle of the village and put in a pump, for which they were glad
but as I waited a few days for the money they kept asking me what month I
would do it, two or three away, like that. This particular well was about six meters
down and it needed to go to at least ten so that there would be plent of water in the hot season as well. After the concrete rings were in it would
be filled around the outside with gravel and once the top was on and the hand
pump mounted it would be skirted with a concret
slab and a place for a water trough and washing. Not a lot to it, they would help with the
work, but it would still probably run about ten thousand baht if not
more. At present it was not used, had
filled with debri and was fenced by slats of
bamboo. There was one
family in the village that had a choice big piece of land and they were not
Akha. I don’t know how it
worked. They grew a lot of plants in a
large enclosure. But something was not
all that well, because they ran a little store at first and no one would buy
so now its bamboo shutters were closed. I repeatedly
told the villagers to quit working with paraquat, a
chemical supplied by Zeneca corporation out of The village grew a lot of corn around
them, baby corn. Some of it they owned
themselves under some sort of share cropper agreement and other they worked
for the Thai neighbors. The women came
home with red hands. That was caused
by handling the red dyed insecticide treated corn seeds as they planted
them. They soaked them in water from
the night before to get them to sprout faster. Once again the agent had no relationship to
any hazard they knew of and was only laughable to mention it to them when
they were barely getting by at all. I wondered if
this sort of thing had any relationship to the infant deaths in the village? Booti’s family was all married except her. She was the youngest. Her mother was in her seventies and this
was the last of better than ten kids. Her
grandkids were all sort of loud and the boy especially obnoxious. But a nice family over all, very
appreciative of visits and her Booti’s mother
was a real patriarch, great to sit and listen to. This night the small woman from next door
was in the hut. Her daughter wanted to
get an education but was in There had been
a marriage lately. I knew the groom by
face but wasn’t sure who the bride was. Flat village I looked at the
little girl. Blood covered her all
around the nose and mouth. she cried on in a
weeping kind of way. She had a bed
sore on the back of her head and her lower pelvis, she was emaciated, she was maybe five and had been sick some time. Flies crawled on her face. I cleaned her face gently and put vicks on it to keep the flies away. The blankets smelled bad. No one appeared to care. The dogs came and went. I didn’t think she would make
it. She needed to be in a hospital or
care until she got strong and better. Flat village 2
(97) The problems here are abcesses,
eye infections, injury infections, lots of skin fungus. There needs to be a good quick solution
for fungus. Then there are lots of bad teath. Scalp infections. Cut fingers. Dry eyes. Painful stomach like typhoid, milk of
magnesia doesn’t do much. But skin fungus is the largest
problem. Pharmacy solutions are very
expensive, $6 per person. What to do? Booh Saw is 20 years old. Pulled a widow’s teeth. Husband went to do opium in Three children, two died. A baby boy left. Sick at the While I had
been in the flat village they found out I was sick and were
very nice to me. Then I went to Booti’s
house and a man was laying on rice sacks on the floor next to the fire and Booti’s mother had a stick braced on his back in
her left hand and with her right foot she would dip it into water and the
stamp twice on a very hot metal hoe head she took out of the fire and then it
would hiss like the devil and she would push her steaming heal into the guys
lower back and hips. She did this like
a methodic dance. At seventy plus one tough old foot, one tough old lady. Remember, three
disks make their sound and then one drum, that is
the cadence. They have a cadence to their life. Some of the problems In Village Stem From: 1. Increased consumption 2. Loss of land 3. Activity such as selling and using
drugs 4. Decreasing nutrition 5. lack of medicine 6. prostitution, aids 7.
lack of sanittation 8.
Problems imposed by a new economy but lack of access to that new
economy Nov 97 The baby died.
A girl of three months. The men made the white death clothes. The man took
the clothes off roughly like he was plucking a chicken or was very disturbed
about the whole thing. Then he
redressed her in her burial whites of coarse clothe and wrapped her up and
placed her on a wooden wrack on the ground to which they added all the things
that were hers plus a full woman’s outfit of jacket and dress, ones
that she would never wear. I set back a
little to watch it, but now it was just work to them I thought. The mother and the younger sister of the father
cried on the women’s side of the hut.
Much of the village gathered at the house. They had told
me that the girl was sick three days so I went to get medicine. But when I got back the baby was already
dead. In reality it had been twelve days and hadn’t eaten for
five. They meant it had been sick
“like that” for three days.
They took her to the hospital at the last but she died there in their
arms, the doctor not wanting to come and look at her first. This infant
death thing is a problem. Now that I knew better the symptoms of distress I
would be on it more closely. A lot of the infants die in the first
months. Pneumonia was
the worst killer it seemed. That and
the “runs”. bladder stone boy They thought he was peeing wrong for three
years and always beat him with a switch till they saw the size of the bladder
stone and then the grandmother wept Booti Woman at village with hole in leg The doctor dug
it all out and packed it, seemed to work but was a big hole you could have
put your finger in. Packed it with gauze. These were abcesses
or boils, not sure if that was the same or not, but a certain kind of
infection that went into the leg, arm, neck, sometimes face, and often arm
pit. Usually it got in a house and
sort of stayed there, moving from person to person, particularly if they
didn't make a point of cleaning up the place.
Often the Akha had no perception that the puss was really lethal. They knew it, but behaved as if they
didn't. Poverty. Coal mine flat village boohseh
knows he has fotos and a
piece of the coal which I had tested. Loh Pah
Flees after Loh Guuh is
killed Loh Pah agreed to find pills for an old Thai man, never asked
who he was or where he lived or why he wanted pills and of course it was a
set up. Loh Pah asked Loh Guuh to get involved and while Loh
Guuh was doing lookout near the village a police
officer walked up behind him and shot him in the back of the head. Loh Pah then ran away to Loh Mah Cheh Akha where he hid for
a number of months. Ah Doh
flat village opium, he gets busted for smoking, later he got on meth, a one way trip Maw Lay characteristics of the
flat village Bah Jeeh
flat village Boeuh Maw flat village Ah Baw
Booh Sehh Booh saw meeh nmm Nyeeh pah, her son, two
daughters, Ah Tsauh the small boy Booh Uuh, and the lisaw man who is now dead, Maw Lay ICU Loh Pah, had welts on his
back, got caught, went to prison nightime intruder, police raids, booh
Saw Upper village, three suicides
and a well stories in the flat
village neighboring mission add ons, broad casts long house well repair and pump upper
village Booh Saw in flat village, the police come and arrest
her mom, then let her go, she got very fearful from that two dead babies in the
village The Nyeeh
Pah, Abaw Dteeh's wife, died, I bought him medicine mission people visit many
times going after the kids emmanuel christian fellowship amid poverty booti's sotry of 40,000 baht
owed over corn picking booh saw's tooth flew out party in the village and
all the trash building the well Zenaca manufacturers of gramoxone
- paraquat hernia boy gall bladder stone boy,
law joh one girl went to bangkok, booh nmm two girls caught at checkpoint,
booh uuh and booh saw the younger booh saw's brother could sing well. At first he did
not like me how I caught the thai boys fooh man choo other elders paraquat baby corn thai visitors to huts at night chickens around the hut,
lice booh saw's white dog cost of lots the boy runs and kicks the
kid down from behind in a flying kick The Crooked Hut What a Day Dear Friends: To Unsubscribe
or to subscribe just send an email to me. I apologize that this email became a
little long but this is the fabric of what goes on here and on this one
occasion I have taken the time to describe the events of mostly just one day. Once again it has been a very busy
week. Some people can not remember
what they ate for breakfast. It is beginning to be that I can not remeber what I did and where I was the day before. We are wrapping up the last few stories
and cultural information for the Children’s Book and I hope to begin
typing all the new parts in by the end of next week. Have been out to many villages in before, sometimes taking the headman from
one village to go see the next village. The rains have
come so this usually involves getting pretty wet a time or two before we get
back to the barn. Some of the
huts I visit have a diet of no more than rice and greens they gather. Never
any meat and seldom an egg to split between many people. Vegetarian or
not, I find sometimes the best medicine for a sick child is to bring some
meat to the hut. It has an amazing
affect. And fruit. We tend to take nutrition for granted. The girl with the wound near to her eye is
doing fine. I made another trip back
to check on her and will go again in a few days. It is over two hundred miles round trip on
a small motorbike on mountain roads. Then in the villages it a host of things
to do, never planned or on schedule.
Babies with big infections, a child of six months loosing weight with no explanation. The child before died so the mother is really worried.
Teeth to pull, rashes, cuts, slivers, eye and ear infections, injuries that healed improperly, and the
list goes on. With the heat, between rains, the infants take
it the worst and the distances to clinics are very far and often out of the
question due to the roads. Then impossible if the mother
doesn’t have an identity card.
Or if you send them, they tell you that the doctor
gave them some non discript pills and they have no idea what they are
for. Babies dying quickly is quite common so it always makes me nervous
when I have to walk away with no help to offer. The first aid
assistance runs along side letting them know that books are coming and many of the children and
adults are eager to learn how to write their own language. Yesterday and
the day before were really long days. On June 1st in the evening one
traditional Akha doctor who I often visit told me that a man had just died near to
the village, that they were “Christian” and lived in a
tiny hut by themselves. I didn’t
know that anyone was even out there in that part of the
fields. The man before he died called the village doctor but she
told me that she didn’t know
what he was sick of but it was serious and many people thought aids and she
was afraid to walk into what she didn’t know. That may sound
strange to westerners where we can always call 911, but in a place where there is often no food,
poor food at that, not the best health all around and no good medical services
people tend to be afraid just a little bit about what the are not expert at. They gave me
general directions to the hut but wouldn’t go because that was a
“Christian” hut as well and they were from a traditional village
and won’t have anything to do with “Christian” Akha. As the night and day went on I was to find
out why. (Earlier that day two pastors from the
“Christian” upper village had visited and I talked with them
briefly.) I got to the
hut in the dark, the whole hut leaning sideways so that you had to walk in leaning to one side. A candle
burned. It was (Akha huts have a front
“everybody’s” room and men sleep there. The back room is for the women to sleep, more private.) On the men’s side of the hut there
was a mosquito net. The man woke the children. There was a little boy and a young girl whose face had been scarred by a dog. She pulled the net to one side and sat up next to her brother. She was stary
eyed. A foot away her father lay dead wrapped in a blanket. The mother was gone to bring friends to help. I stayed a while, there wasn’t much
I could do and no where to move the body over. I would have to come back in the morning. I would also give the widow time to muster
what she could. I didn’t
get back till ten oclock in the morning, some
twenty miles away from Maesai. I expected the hut to be surrounded by
friends. There was no one there. I went inside. The widow sat there, her husband’s
father who had been injured in the head and was “slow”. Her
oldest daughter, the young daughter and the boy. I walked in. Flies were already beginning to swarm. No one said anything. The “Christian” Akha
weren’t coming either. That morning
which was yesterday, I had borrowed $40 to keep everyone at my “school” fed and keep gas in
the bike. I have to make that long
trip to see the girl with the eye wound one
more time so I felt sort of happy to have a couple of dollars. I had stopped
to buy more medicine on the way out so it was already beginning to dribble
away. The flies buzzed. I asked them if
they had a coffin coming? Stupid question. These girls were going to have to become
prostitutes just for the family to eat now. I told them to
wait. I got back on the motorbike and
sped off in search of a coffin maker. Though I had seen many dead infants this
was my first search for a coffin for an adult. I went to the next large town. They wanted
$45. I went back to the traditional
village and asked a boy there.
He knew where there was another place so we went back out to the highway to that place. $40.
But I had already gassed the bike, ate one time and would need more gas before the day
was over. I offered $30. She agreed,
loaded the coffin in an old truck and they drove it out to the village. The Thais can be real kind this way. No charge. We wrapped the blanket tight and placed
the husband in the coffin. I gave the
children one last look at their father and they began crying softly. He had a strong face but looked to have
been very ill, but not AIDS. Maybe I
would find out. There were nails but
no hammer so I pounded the lid tight down with the back of a heavy knife
against the nail heads. Nothing is
simple. Now I had four dollars. They all looked at me. Oh, yeah, just where did I suggest burying
him? They had no place. I was beginning to discover the nature of
what the missionaries had done here.
There was great animosity between the religious and traditional Akha,
the traditional Akha fearing that their traditions would be taken away, the
“Christian” akha feeling they were enlightened and intelligent,
much superior. But then their own, like this woman,
got no help either. Since the
traditional village was afraid to help, I thought I would go and try to find the two roving preachers. As luck would have it they were just leaving the huge mission compound
and had closed the gate. So I caught up with them and told them that
there was this dead “Jesus” Akha and he had no place to die
properly. They said there was a cemetary at the top of the mountain next to the
village and that I could bury him there, no problem they assured me. I
thanked them and found the trail and fought my motorbike up it steeply
through the rocks and trees amazed that I could go at all. High on the top there was a cleared meadow
in the jungle, tall grass growing, and wonders, yes the man that commited suicide just last week. Buried gently there. A wooden cross with his name and age marked
the only mound. So I went back
to the family and told them that I had found ground but that it was way too
hot to dig and we would have to wait till 4 in the afternoon. Then I set off to another village to check
on some babies. On the way I met half a dozen Akha women marching down the
road with baskets. I asked them where they were going and they
said that they were off to the Thai corn fields to harvest dry corn that
the Thais didn’t want and gave them.
For five gallons of clean corn kernals they
get $2. So I was off with them to help them pick corn. After a couple hours we had our baskets full, a blistering sun and back to the
village. I had a motorbike and took one of them, the rest
had to pack full baskets of corn three kilometers back to the village
where where they would have to break loose the kernels. By then my head
was pounding, I didn’t have a hat, and I had more first aid work to do in that village. Before I knew it off for the mission. At the mission they had three trucks. I asked the top person there if they would come one
kilometer and move the coffin to the base of the mountain trail with one of
their trucks. Then there was this big discussion, much ringing of hands
and for some reason they just couldn’t do it.
I was no less than furious. I
asked them why they had stripped this Akha of his culture and then
didn’t have the decency to help bury one of their own? Oh, he was from over there, maybe even
Catholic, not Baptist. So back down to
the highway, and to the truck stand.
By this time it was pushing move the coffin because he really didn’t
want to put a dead man in his truck.
The Thais have special trucks for funerals so I knew I was pushing my
luck. Then the price went down to $10. I had $4.
So off I went to the place where I had bought the coffin that morning. Their truck was
gone, but there was milling around in the way when Thais are shaking and baking and something is
happening so I had a seat and waited.
No hand wringing here. The boys were
busy cooking chicken over coals and talking about their fighting chickens.
One had his chicken under his arm while he waited to eat a less fortunate distant kin roasting on
the coals. About 30 minutes later with people and trucks coming and going
a fancy red truck showed up.
In getting sorted out. I like that. Many westerners interpret it as timewasting and milling about and not knowing how to
get anything organized straight away. Looks are very deceptive. So one man snatched my motorbike, another offered me a front
seat in the red truck and we were off again. Back into the woodland villages of the
Thais nearby there.
Fish ponds a beautiful place, lots of ckicken
raising, lots of piles of farm wood here and there and then
more rickety buildings and soon we were at some makeshift camp
between trees and ponds at a rickety table, some net overhead, a small garage
and several men I had never seen before. It was dark. They were in the middle or end of dinner, seemed to have no connection to any of
this, and offered me a chair with much ado and washed dishes in a bucket,
set out a clean glass and poured whiskey, put soup and meat in front of me
and sat back and talked about and on, once again in the way we do things
here in westerners impatient and the real story
doesn’t even get talked about, but I could smell that progress was afoot so
I had a good eat. Then the man at the end, a big man, whose face I
could not see in the dark, picked up his mobile phone and began making phone
calls, the man on the left drank whiskey and talked about his new wife, the
man on the right laughed and poured me more whiskey with more handfuls of
ice. The pickled
garlic was crunchy and good. Then the man at
the end pulled out money, handed it to the man at the left and told him to
round up three trucks, four or five guys, shovels, picks, lights and hurry
up. I never did see his face. Soon not one but three trucks and
motorbikes where streaming down the lanes between the rice fields back out to
the mountain base village and out through the fields to one lone hut with a
candle. We loaded up the coffin, and then at the
request of the Thais, in Thai fashion drove very slowly down the lane with
all our lights going to this mans last resting place. The Thais are so cool and gracious. We reached the base of the mountain and
the group had swollen to twenty people.
We laid hold of the coffin and carried it up the steep rocky trail the kilometer
to the top where the meadow was. We
had to stop often. Once to the
meadow, all the whiskey and ice got set up once again and then with much laughter and merriment we
took turns digging down through the rich brown soil this great hole that you
need to bury a friend. His wife and
daughters were there, the young boy stayed home with
the older man. We dug for hours. There were huge rocks. Then we lowered the white wooden coffing down in and everyone helped throw in handfulls of earth. The young daughter had a hand hewn wooden
cross that she placed at her father’s head and then we lit lots of
candles all around the resulting mound.
One Catholic man took the widow and daughter by the hand and we all
said a prayer, and headed down the mountain to the trucks. When we got there we were met by angry
Akha men from the mission some of whom I had spoken to earlier, who could lend a
hand. Why had we buried him
there? Why late at night? Didn’t
we know everyone was trying to sleep?
Their faces became ugly and pushy, the widow, a small woman in her
thirties and the younger daughter were distraught and stood back. The Thais finally told the villagers from
the mission, hey, we were up there burying this poor woman’s husband,
there was no more time, it had to be done and hey,
lets just all have a good time and go home and sleep. It was Not to be done. So finally in a style that all could
understand the Thais all pulled out their guns and asked
the mission Akha if they would be so kind to be happy, smile and that
they hoped it was no great inconvenience if we had buried this pennyless widow’s husband and this girls father, did they mind? The mission Akha all got really big smiles and said everything was just fine and we all
loaded up and left. It was then that I was beginning to
understand what the traditions of missions here was. One day can be like that. It rained hard
when I drove back the twenty miles to maesai. I was a little wet, a little tired but the
widow was in peace for the moment. I
had no idea how they would get food now. The husband worked spraying herbicide, Zenaca’s paraquat to be
exact. He had great pain in his lung before he
died. Never a dull moment. It was Matthew McDaniel Email
Journal 28 June, Death of Meeh Sah I tied you to my back and carried you from
the village I took you to two hospitals on my
motorbike I gave you my own blood and that of six
other people And still there was not enough time So tonight I had to say goodbye to you
dear friend I laid you softly in the forgiving cool
earth Deep in the heart of the mountain jungle Between young trees and vines as you were
young And none of it was good enough To justify needing to say goodbye Goodbye my friend Meeh
Sah I knew you only for a year And it will never be long enough It is with undescribable sorrow that I must tell you that this
morning at Her child died with her. I knew her a year. I lost a friend
who I didn’t get to teach how to read in her own langauge,
I think that is how this all started, working on language. Her husband lost a wife. I had to bury her tonight in a very wet
jungle. It is almost She delivered a still born child just
before dying and I had to dig two graves inbetween
trees up on the mountain. How small us humans are. In the great
forest it was like standing down at the feet of great elders and laying a
friend at their feet, them looking down from the mist and the darkness as we
say our goodbyes. This was first about language, endangered
language, but life is not kind to these people. Matthew McDaniel More on death of Meeh Sah This last part
of this journal this week gives the information leading up to Meeh Sah’s death which I
did not put in the special note. Starting on Thursday or Friday I
don’t recall which: ......I just got my weekly newsletter sent
off and finished talking to Jim Goodman who has a new book coming out about
the Akha in the five countries here.
Then I went down to the Maesai hospital to
check on the husband and wife who have malaria. When I got there the husband looked better
in the male ward. My other friends daughter was there with her baby in the infant
section as well. Fever and lung
congestion problem. Then I went over to the women’s ward
to check on the young Akha man’s wife. I have seen enough Akhas die to know she was standing in the door. She lay in a
bed on oxygen and a transfusion drip, boiling with fever in a room just as
hot. I asked the nursing station what
was going on, how long she had been there like that and they could only tell
me between giggling that her condition was getting steadily worse and that
they thought she had cerebral malaria.
(pf) Though the wards were only paces away through a nurse’s
alley no one from the one side had talked to the nurses from the other side
about the spouse’s condition. The general attitude was that all the
charts were in order, she was sick, she was getting sicker, and it was lunch
time. I ordered an
ambulance, got her papers together and following on my motorbike sent her
south sixty miles to the private hospital in Chiangrai. She was immediately checked into the cool
air conditioned ICU. She was in
critical condition, the doctor tended to her immediately,
ordered up blood and ran a quick series of lab tests. Her malaria count was so high and her blood
was almost completely taken over, about twenty percent of normal. The people in Maesai
hadn’t a clue at how close she was to dead. Her chest heaved with every few breaths
from the oxygen mask, two IV bottles now fed her, and a unit of blood was
started along with something else that I didn’t get time to look
at. The doctor had another problem,
not enough blood. The only way he
could save her he said was to replace enough of her blood to raise her
healthy blood count from 5 to 15 in doctor’s terms. As fate would have it my blood and her’s were identical so I went down to the lab,
they ran tests and then I donated a unit of blood for her. First time in my life. After a few hours the doctor said that it
looked like he could save her but she really hadn’t gotten past the
critical time yet and that she could still suffer liver failure and brain
damage if it continued much further. Her little worn
down mother sat out in the hall in her tribal dress, no more than rags
really, and I went and got her a dinner and showed her where she could put
her bed roll as is the custom here. Her daughter, Meeh
Sah was one of only nine people in the ICU and had
much better care. It was all I could
do. But now her husband had no one to
watch him and feed him so I went back to the village, picked up the father of
the husband and hauled him back north where I dropped him off at his
son’s side in Maesai. It was I would have to
be in two hospitals before On Saturday, as you know, I had to say
goodbye to Meeh Sah. I made a second trip up into the jungle to
Meeh Sah’s grave on
Sunday morning and cleared more brush and small trees and cleaned up more
dirt and put more stones around and a post marker. I will be making more trips to move some
of the donated roses from near my cabin to her grave. Monday morning: Things have quieted down. I returned Meeh Sah’s husband to the village this morning from Maesai hospital. 001 Akha Journal Weekly Update 12 Aug. Dear Friends: You may subscribe a friend or unsubscribe
by sending an email. Well, this was a fast week since the last one, I have to ask people what day it is or find a newpaper. I stopped by one village yesterday. A woman I know was due to have a baby
soon. The neighbor
came to the hut I was at and asked if I could come and look at the mother to
be. I asked where the husband was and
she said he had gone to the other mountain to build on a hut for a friend. So finishing
eating I went to see my friend. Her
mother is a well known Nyeeh Pah.
(spirit woman) She was ten months along and said she had a |