|
Akha
Chronicles Pah Pah Nmm Akha was a border village in a
remote region which gave me the first opportunity to involve myself
significantly with the farming life and economics of an Akha village which
was traditional. In the end I married
into this village and worked significantly to protect its culture and farming
interests from outside predators which included army, police, forestry,
missions and land developers. Pah Nmm They know I am in the woods. The village that I have located in, Pah Nmm Akha, has
become family, and I have had the chance to learn the limitations but also
the incredible resiliency of the Akha and their village to family life. In the end I
have made many wonderful and fantastic friends in the village, one very large
family. Bah Mah Hahn Akha When it I am back in Bah Mah Hahn village. The two older fmailiy girls are already
gone to the fields for the morning to plant corn. The village is
plenty muddy making it a real struggle to get in and out of the village with
my truck, the last long driveway completely destroyed mud tracks that are
very steep and I have to power up. Coming out can
be a dangerous slide down. The fundraising
in the The rice
planting is not done yet. For Ah
Chooh's house it is but not for all the village. It is
interesting to note all the orthodox aspects if you will about the Akha. After the grandfather dies the girls won't sew
on their traditional clothes for 3 months.
Hope to know more about all of this in time. It is very
difficult to write down all that one sees in one day, to put it to words. The Wedding Going outside with the basket, for the stick and mud/shit Jungle context, The rain comes It was almost
like any other event for me, just something in my schedule. I had to remember to leave time for it, for
a trip to the mountains for it, just like any other. I would allow what ever
occurred to make it something different in its own way for an event occuring
with me rather than an appointment or
medical task. I so often worked in
such a daze that this was just how it was, not lacking particularly in
sentiment, just pragmatic. So I knew that
I would need a few days and I headed up to the hill with a couple of clean
shirts. Otherwise nothing
different. I drove in the village, I
was relaxed because I had gotten a lot done that day, those last few days and
so my mind was kind of in a state of play if you will. The village was anxious, they didn’t
know if I would show or not, yes I would show, but not necessarily on time,
so I laid that to rest, the wedding would go ahead as planned in the morning. The very next morning after I awoke at my
fiances house the very first thing that they did was to drive me from her
house, along with her, and tell us both that we couldn’t come back in
for anything for three days. Now what
made this odd, was that because I was gone so much, and I had no village of
my own, my wife would be residing in the new hut that the old woman had
blessed for us, apart from her parents house, but nearby so she would still
have family, since I pretty much lived
either in my truck while it was moving, or in front of a computer and that
didn’t leave much community for her. Since normally
she would be leaving to my village, the ban on entering the house was
necessary since it was still close by.
Numerous related families in the village would not be attending the
wedding, while all non related families would be, to keep the standard
custom. Since I still had to put on a
celebration for all of them as my friends, by choice, I needed two pigs,
since they couldn’t eat from the one that was the marriage pig. That was no problem because there were
enough people that it was going to take that anyway. Good thing I had been raising two pigs. The first thing
that happened after we left the house was that one man lost his grip on pig
number one and it got away, so we had to wait an hour for it to come back to
the shade at which point we made it part of the festival. Actually, we tried to make it part of the
festival once with a spear, but it ran off and we had to chase it into the
jungle where we cornered it in the creek and finished what we had started,
then slung it over a heavily sagging bamboo pole and carried it back to the
village. Then a great fire was built
and the pig was singed till all the black hair and top of the hide was
scraped off. At that point the pig
entered into the festival different from other planned cookings. I was sent to
our hut, then my fiance soon showed up, stopping before the hut, where a
white skirt was pulled over her head, and she dressed in it, removing her
black skirt, the only time a woman ever pulls a skirt over her head. Then a special Akha Jacket, one I
didn’t even know she had been making, was put on top of her wedding
woven hat, which she had put on for this moment instead of her head dress,
and the arms of the jacket were folded over her head and she entered the hut
and went to the woman’s side where she sat down with her back to the
partition. The hut was soon filling up
with adults and children, a mere ten feet by ten feet on each side or less,
two fires, and soon a man brought her her bed role from her mother’s
house. The pig was
brought into the hut and carefully cut up a special way, reading the liver,
and then taking part of the pig to the women’s side and placing it in a
can which was covered for the second day, the rest carefully cut up and parts
hung on a rod over to one side to keep taking from and other parts cut up
immediately and going into a pot. One
man took over the cooking duties after the old elder finished all the cutting
up and cooking certain items on the women’s side of the hut. The elder women of the village from the
other families gathered in a circle on my fiances side and began to feed her. The old men gathered on my side, began
telling stories and doing recitals done at marriages, carefully explaining
all to me as they went along, my not being of the best memory. Finally I was
called to eat on the women’s side with my fiance, splitting an egg
together which we ate with the shell from our hands. That night, an
escort slept in the hut, since it was against the tradition, to do more than
sleep during a wedding which officially lasted thirteen days, though there
was only three days of ceremony. This
was out of respect for the traditions. On the second
day there were more ceremonies, the second part of the pig was eaten spare a
few parts which would be saved to feed the elders on the third day. It did
not matter how big the pig was, the pig was split up for these three days to
be eaten on schedule. I took turns between feeding the Old Women
whiskey, cigarettes and then they in turn gave me token money for my
marriage. It was really fantastic,
that tiny side of the hut, all those elder Akha women in a circle talking and
smiling, many of whom I had not met before, so kind to me, blessing me that
we would have many boys and girls together and that the children would be
raised up in the full traditions of the orthodox Akha, which I assured them
would be the case. Both the many
children and the orthodox traditions.
I can not say that I have ever met such a collection of elderly women
so engaged in their place and role in life as the vitality of the village as
that group and such groups in Akha villages. Then my wife,
by this time, after the eating of the egg, took her turn feeding the men
whiskey and cigarettes and receiving their blessing and permission in the marriage
as I had done with the elder women.
The singing went on and on this second day one man stood out for his
ability to sing the traditional songs.
He sang on for hours. Many
visitors came and went. We ate the
last of the saved parts of the pig from the can, them being split between us
with careful instructions as to what to do with the bone, it must be put in
the fire, not discarded through a hole in the floor. On the third day my wife took two bottles
of whiskey to her parents and the ceremonies were over. Rice Planting There is a lot
to rice planting and care, care we must call it. My wife's
family, they got 120 Bpoh of rice this year.
A bpoh is a five gallong oil can by measure. There are three bpoh to a sack of rice, but
this is with the husk on, and that is how the harvest is measured. Planting the
rice took one day with ten people to help us.
We hired lahu workers, one a very tall and funny man, it rained and
the wind blew and he was very happy
with his long planting stick. It takes about
six days to burn the slash and chop the sod on a large mountain side
field. The slash is usually not trees,
sometimes, but is the bamboo from the field setting fallow for at least three
years. Five days of
work are required after planting the rice, to weed it the first time, with
two people working. The second
cultivation and weeding takes five days but this time with five people. I
helped this time too and it is very hard work. We also have to walk three hours to get to
the fields and back, an hour and a half each way. The land is
very steep. The women get a mark on
their left leg above the knee from resting their arm or hand there while they
stoop and work. They use a small hoe
for opening the soil and removing weeds which they twist into bundles. Vines are the worst and make the work
difficult because as you take them out
it is possible to damage the rice. One
vine has a fur all over it. One vine
is smoothe, these get very big and long.
They come from a great tuber under the ground, which when you are
busting the sod you try to find. When
you dig it up quite deep it is round.
This is good because you kick it good and due to being round fat and
heavy it bounces and rolls very fast all the way into the brush below the
field way down in the canyon. There are also
thorn plants, that maybe would become very big. When you find these small the leaves are
many and red and the stalk soft and you can boil them and add sugar and the
juice is bright red and has a very nice wild berry flavor. There is bunch grass also and other wild
grasses. There are bees
that love to sting you and if they do your face will puff all up for three
days and it can leave a big poc scar on your face. There are many
ants, some bite very bad and you get a big infection and fever, others leave
you alone, even if they are big and dangerous looking. Erosion is a
big concern so the men make side trenches.
The women plant cucumbers, the Akha type, and sunflowers so there are
things to nibble at harvest. They
plant this throughout the rice. The
cucumbers are large and provide wet fruit when it is hot and dry at harvest
time. Terraces are
needed but if the army moved a village it takes them a long time, maybe
twenty years, to build new terraces.
The Akha say it takes a full fifty years to build a village. The terraces
start in the bottom and catch the soil from erosion, they are essential but
do not get built when the village worries about yet another forced
relocation. Today we found
a viper in a piece of wood stump and killed it so it would not be living
there in the rice field, these long green whip vipers go very fast, they are
very thin and hard to see, yet they can leap an jump up off the ground,
moving like a whip. The wind and
rain continued in the afternoon cooling both us people and the earth. Our view was as good as food, which of
course to the whole lot of us we didn't have much. Mountains and valleys all around and below,
we ourselves nearly at the top of it and very close to the Burma Border. Planting Actually we
cultivated quite a lot for the final time there on top of the hill. Amazing what you notice. There are frogs (the Akha girl claimed
they made warts - Ah Pah Buuh See,
something like that). There were
tarantulas that I dug out. There was the one viper, they have a
chisel head like stealth shaped and hard to see. Meeh Chooh the Nyeeh Pah was there and she
had a dream about the snake then that night. Then there was
quite a commotion down the hill.
Though the mountain ridge is big, it is one long family from t his
village, Pah Nmm Akha. The otehr ridge
is cultivated by Pai ah Praih Akha. So
every one can see every one else through the distances even though it is a
great way. One can call out which is
heard a long way or is passed on.
Sometimes one can hear the other Akha singing from very far away. From here you can also see to the south to
Huuh Yoh Akha. And down below there is a Lahu village. What is beautiful about this now is that it
is still natural. The Thais want to
build the whole area up so it wont' long be this way but will soon be full of
business. The village
itself sits on very small ground, far to the east on the trail and towards
Hua Mae Kom and But anyway,
there was this commotion down below on the far "beach" five Akhas
jumping about obviously trying to swat or rid themselves of a bee.
When we got back to the village one woman's face was swollen so bad
her eyes were closed shut. These people
die quickly. After the big funeral by
only a few days one man went out to work cutting bamboo. Came home not feeling well. Began t swell up and a day later went to
the hospital and died. I figure he
tore a kidney or something. But theser
would b e little hope of good medical care to these people if the chips were
really down. When the hospital does
save them from this or that, particularly by way of surgery, I am always
impressed. Many of the
services coming to the area don't seem to be intended for them, but for Thais
who will move in and displace them. We got the
cultivating done. Lahu will plant the
rice. Ten people for 60 baht a day was
600 baht. Lots of plants. They know which ones you can gather and
cook. The road we
used is steep but clay drys very quickly from a rain. I am learning
how much one family farms. What
different crops etc. A medical note. Swollen stomach is a pain they complain of
here. Ulcers or too much chilis, not
sure. The other is what I call creeping
death. The hands and feet drain of
blood which appears to be just a lack of enough high calorie food and fruit. Maybe I should
have been out in these villages earlier, sure I should have been, I knew
that. It was learning the language etc. Can't do it all
but there is no doubt a great demand for help, books, first aid, etc. And all the
birds and bugs you get to hear every day.
You learn to listen to that and you never forget. Rock and roll was a crime against birds and
insects. Cause after you listen to
that too long you won't be able to hear them. Its funny, the
west is so concerned about the export or use of drugs from these places,
which the west exports huge amounts of toxic chemicals to these places, and
sure in greater quantity. Paraquat,
hedonal. The Akha here
spray salt water mixture on the weeds in the rice when it is hot in the
middle of the day. Then they gather up
the weeds after the salt has burned them.
I am not sure why the double action. The loss of one
working person to a family would be significant. Beating the The Story of Ah Meeh What they did to her, missing my cue Building the Pah Conflicts with the Lahu and their
motivation for those conflicts Jeh Teeh Jeh Boh The Lahu (Jeh Teeh) try to get me thrown
out of the village Help from Foreign Volunteers Rich Moments - Funeral I see so many
rich moments among the Akha, like the old man's funderal at Bpah Mah
Hahn. Then the coffin sprung a leak
when they were taking it out of the village, not nice that was, us all
dodging it when we were climbing the trail, death in the village, up close
and personal, and no one likes it, that is why there is a culture for
handling it. While the men
make the final preparations of the hole in the ground, there is quite lude
talk between the men and the women, the only time that I know of that it is
allowed, in a fashion to be the celebration of life, as compared to the death
before them. I find this quite
interesting, the perception of the balance of this. The Lahu Block the Road Pah Nmm Jeh Teeh the lahu blocked the road from
the village to the fields. He joined
with Jeh Boh, the headman who the village was named after. Jeh Boh did not want the road to cross his
rice terrace. Jeh Teeh tried to get me thrown out of the
village but I was still there. The Pig I remember the
time I bought a pig and hauled it to this village to have a little
feast. And what do you know, the
"family" took possesion of it and said no way were they going to
cook it, they'd get it fattened up real big and use ift for some other
occasion. Perfectly logical from their
standpoint. So much for my
sense of joy that I wished to share.
You see anyone in this house having any joy, we're dirt poor and broke,
sorry. These people
could suck water out of a stone. They appear to
have a religion of non want. If they
can't make it come up out of the ground they don't want it. There are
exceptions. A pig is not one of
them. Couse this is just one village. There appears
to be no want of one kind for outside items and then onother want of another
kind for everything. A joy to back
good ideas and actions. In Their Heads Best I could
tell the Akha were still in their heads.
The rest of the people had fallen out and were walking around outside
their heads, doing everything in their imaginations to get back in their
heads. Buildings, cars, houses, toys,
refrigerators. And so the Akha
lived from within their heads, singing was the only communication outside of
that, and everything else was an unimportant external item that you used only
if needed, that you did only if needed, such as planting rice. This varied
from village to village. The
missionaries spent all their time trying to beckon the Akha out of their
heads into the missionaries state of Eternal frustration. Even the body
seemed external to the Akha from my view of it. Opium Opium was the
most powerful "I don't care" medicine known to man. Some people claimed that the evangelical version
of Jesus was a drug of the same nature.
Christianity a religion to opiate the people. A comparison for this reason. A good smoke
left the man "unconcerned" for days and sleeping for a couple, so
one could only wonder about those who smoked a new piece of opium as long as
your thumb every day. The new stuff
was dark yellow pitchy and left a big hangover. The old sticky dark black stuff smelled
like fine deep perfume when you inhaled deeply through the nose and people
who smoked that stuff said it was super smooth. But it was all
a diversion from what was happening to them and was like having somebody inside
your body taking the controls and not doing anything with them. Used in small
quantities it had it purpose, few people who used it hurt anyone else as
compared to alcohol related traffic deaths or spousal abuse. The drug war to
get rid of it as compared to getting rid of alcohol was an incredible hypocrisy. Squash Leaf Notes If you wrap
squash in their own leaves it sticks to them and protects them on the way
back the village down bad trails which you must walk. For Her Love of the Fields Sometimes she
wanted to go far away from these mountains, all the heat, the sun, the steep
and slippery trails, the long walk to the fields and then working all day
only to eat a few vegetables with chilli pepers and salt. Her back hurt
so bad at the end of the day, from stooping all day in the fields that it
took her a couple hours to get to sleep. No Smoke I went up to Ah
Chooh's village. This is like the 17th of Nov. An
excellent farmer, she loves the earth. The village is
very excited about making use of the n ew road. It will be finished. I thi nk a circuit road would take back to
the old village and make walking safe again. Everything has
been on standstill for a very long time. I alway enjjoy
so much to go and be in the villages.
My greatest sadness is that it is taking so long to do more fore the
Akha. I do h ope this
changes very quickly. Anyway, the
villages, dusty, alive, full of life, people, friends, personalities. And there is
belief and hope that things will get better. Nyeeg Pah Meeh
Chooh has just made up a beautiful garden below the house. Many things growing now. This is what I want to encourage. There is so
much to do and give careful care to. My little boy
has been sick but very well growing also.
Back in the mountains Was a beautiful
ride on the way out. Stopped
by Booh Sah's place and met a Shan women doctor. The little girl of Booh Sah is not getting
better but the Shan doctor tries to help her with herbs. I dropped off some cotton for the flat
village. Running Goose Ah Seh, he told
me that of his family he was the only one who carried ammo for the Burmese
army over the years, ten years, and two years for the Wa. The Burmese
went to kill everyone. So the Wa
faught them also. He would walk
carefully in the old foot prints, to avoid stepping on a mine, Two Akha died
one time. He saw so many
dead. Near Tapin bridge too. Heads blown off, faces, arms, legs, and he
helped with a lot of medicine. The Burmese
used mortars that had poison gas in them.
Everybody close by died. Ah Seh
smelled it, was real bad, would smell the shells before they were fired. He packed them for the army. Where ever they hit everyone died. Their faces turned black, green snot and
blood ran out of their noses. The
Burmese killed Wa and Lahu this way. They used long
pins to probe the trail for mines, then walk exactly in the foot prints. There was gold
mining too. A mine shaft near Meh Joh
Akha in a place called Meh Poh Akha.
The Akha called them bird holes because hundreds of birds like swifts,
flew into them, straight down a hundred feet.
Akha and Lahu didn't work them, only Hmong. Then in a place
called Meh Bpah Tsaw there was a waterfall.
The Lahu found gold there, lots of it, at the base of the water fall. But Kuhn Sa told them not to work it. But they kept digging so his solders came
one day and killed all the Lahu, the men, the women, the children, everyone,
some thirty people. This was only five
years back. There is
another palce where the old men divined gold.
Soh Yah Akha is the place, the old men said it was there but no one
dug long enough. Sometimes the
Burmese army, he went with them for 20-30 days at a time and they would come
to an Akha village. If everyone fed
them, no problem, but fi they had run away they always burned the village. He saw 5 Akha villages burned, 10 lahu
villages burned this way. The Burmese
seemed cruel to him, always killing. They "took" women, and
"took" her daughter too if she was a widow. He used to live
in Loh Meeh Shaw. Then his folks moved
south because of all the war of the Burmese.
Every year war and carrying weapons. Ah Seh also
rode many years on the opium trains for the Chinese, speaking Chinese, Lahu,
Burmese, Akha of course. They packed
bags full of opium bricks fro here to there on horses. Then there wasn't allowed to be heroin so
much, the chinese did t hat, and it was very dangerous. In all th ose
years he bagan opium smoking. Ah Gaw
in Tachilek had such an old man in his mango orchard too, one who had seen so
much. He gave him every day opium,
cause he was worn out from the same war.
I remember that. Ah Seh said he
saw thousands killed. Lots of times
300 to 400 soldiers at one time, both Burmese or Wa. So his wife is
back, I told her not to bother to run away any more.
Rice Shortfall Pah Nmm I noticed in Pah Nmm Akha that after the
rice harvest (shortfall) that things really got tight in the village
financially immediately noticeable. Impressions of Ah Seh Ah Seh's wife
came back, it really was silly on her part. She must wait, as the rest of us have t o
do for things to get better. Ah Seh sat
there, talking to her through the wall, to himself, his hands stained dark
from opium, his hair always an incredible black tussle like a bear, a
small man. My concern was
the mountain road and economics, bringing in cash, but also good land and
food security. There were rice
terraces for sale that I could help them buy, but I didn't have the money for this. One close buy, quite large was overpriced
at $8000. A tribal center
was also needed, I thought of this, say high up on the mountain if I could
find a donor. Pah Nmm Akha
was far removed from the farming land, everything was made much more
difficult by this. This year Ah
Seh had good crops of all kinds. Less
people in the house this year as well. The ginger crop
would be big and healthy, everyone else's crops had caught fever and turned
yellow and died. They dug the ginger
all up and sold it very cheap. Crops really
were best for humans to survive, not quite so good for raising cash. Malaria Nov. 2000 For a surprise
from my I was glad to
be over it, working hard and then wham, nearly dead. The risk with malaria is that you can have
pf malaria, or cerebral and it can kill you very fast. The medical
staff doesn't really care about the difference, as they say, some live, some
die. Karma. Pig to Loh Mah Cheh Back in the
village was good. Lots of work to do
and progress to make. Ah Seh and I
took one of his large pigs to Loh Mah Cheh Akha and butchered it there in the
very early morning. It was still
dark. The manner of killing a pig was to stick
it in the heart down through the bottom area of the throat, catching all the
blood in a bowl, then the pig is burned all over to clean the skin, then
scraped white, then scribbed white with water. Then the guts are removed, and the pig is
chopped up. There is not much of it
that is not used. But there were not
too many people so we were unable to sell it all and I hauled the pigs head
between my legs on the motorbike, a big sack of meat behind me on Ah Seh's
lap. Quite a load. Disease One only has to
get hit with a disease here one time to know how hard these people have it. Malaria, even if it is treated, really
takes it out of you. Complaint One common
complaint I heard about the Akha was that all the young men only sat around
the village. What they didn't note was
that it wasn't always the same young men.
This was the village defence force and the Akha had plenty of reason
to have one. As to the Akha
men they were no light weights when it came to hiking, hard farming or
hauling bambooo out of the mountains over incredible distances of long and
steep trails, dragging huge loads. The
women worked long and paced in the fields. Men half my
size carried 100 lb sacks of corn straight up mountain sides through the
brush to the ridge trails where it could be packed out by horse. Same for harvesting rice, ginger, beans. Some men caught
fever which they called "Meeh Yeeh" in the rice terraces while they
got them ready for the planting, in days they wasted down to nothing, taking
men months to come back. Others died,
one got kicked by a horse, dying in days. Some limped
scarred by bullets from porter days.
They were the lucky ones. Burmese soldiers took long needles and probed the mud
for land mines. Ah Seh was
walking behind two other Akha porters when there was an explosion. Distracted for a moment, one man did not
watch his foot step placement and stepped on a mine. Both died.
Ah Seh didn't like portering.
The Burmese shooting then the Wa or Shan shooting back. Everyone got their chance to die. Muling opium
was better. He had a gun. He had a big bag of money, and he went and
bought 400 to 500 kilos of opium at a time and brought it with five horses
back to Khun Sah. He said those days
were good and happy days. Yoh
Byoh. No one stole from you, the Lisaw
headman wouldn't allow any robberies. I met the one
Lisaw headman at Loh Mah Cheh Akha.
Long nose, fine fingers, thin, he was quiet, soft spoken, and came
across as a very straight man. He too
had lived years on the top but Thai army moved everyone. No imagination then, killing people's
souls, robbing their eyes. The Thais took
the land, broke up history and villages. There were many villages now that had no
land at all. Don't Hit that Snake A viper lay in
the road. The drive didn't hit
it. He got out of the vehicle and hit
it with a stick. He said his brother
told him to never let the vehicle hit an animal because later on the vehicle
might go to hitting a person. Seemed good
logic to me. Opium Lives Some of the men smoked opium and after years of
this their wives would sometimes run away, maybe more than once, but smoking opium
was not always a detractor. Viagra had
nothing on opium. And the women knew
this. Opium smokers also stayed close
to home, didn't beat their wives, were laid back, watched the kids. Some people
would jump to conclusions and condemnation, but this was to miss the moment
of human beauty in the event. Opium
was not evil, it was not near as dangerous or bad to the body as alcohol, and
it had many wonderful uses. That is not how it was portrayed. Because the
husband denying nothing , would put on his best attire, and the village all
wishing him well, he would go off to the distant mountain in pursuit of his
wife and woo her kindly and gently back, promising to do better and get off
the smoke, or address some need that was a grievance to her. Maybe work more and smoke less, but surely
it was part of the marriage and not all women that I knew were full opposed
to it. I would doubt 50% of them were
against it. This was
theatre of human hope and given the land hard atmosphere that men faced in
the rugged illages over land problems, it was a noteworthy moment. The dispute
was, they couldn't get it up or they could keep it up a good long time. In Search of Akha Dreams Best way to say
it all these years, getting in their minds, trying to understand their lives,
and living long enough to do it. You had to lay
down in their beds to catch their dreams, looking at the laquered ceiling
thatch, bamboo, listening to the talk, the smoke rolling up thruogh the
light, the warble of opium, dark colors, creaking boards, brown boards,
village to village, the days and years gone, wrinkled faces, clouded eyes,
scratching life from the good earth, us outsiders, it foreign to us, but
these poeple lived upon the earth ntimtely, as if they knew they hd to
scratch its ears. Over the years
and up the mountains I had come, looking for their dreams, listening with
ears and eyes, their trails of songs, labor and tears, dancing in the village
square. Akha Pigs Some of the
pigs were really big, faces so fat they could hardly see. Some big pigs were 100 kilo, but the
really big ones, maybe 200 kilos. A big pig was five years old. But 60 kilo was a good size pig to
kill. You could sell all the meat in
one day. Bigger than that and there wasn't enough
peole to buy it all. Chopped up in pieces. Pigs were
mostly all fat. Really every best part
was lots of grease, but the hide was really fantastic, peole chewed or fried
the hide. Salted chilled fat was relly
good. Raw of course. Killing a pig
was a village affair, but it started really early in the morning. To see it happen you had to really get up
early. It certainly was part of a community
event. The Akha were expert dividers of the meat
not only by weight but also by content.
Keeping it fair. Gah Tauh Bpah Festival end of the year. In an act of community the festival of
tops and tossing seeds noted when the whole village at once got a year older
together. Ah Durh Tsaw urh, thowing seeds. Chauh Beeh, throwing the tops, slamming
them into each other, keeping score, making bets. One man spun his top down, then others
took turns striking it with their tops, spun with cords and sticks from the
hand. Somebody Important Every now nd
then somebody important came to the villages. The boss's lined the roads with flags,
police and so many big important cars went by All the
villages waited for ours till the cars got there, a few gifts, a few photos,
many men and women with cameras, rushing around from house to house, door to
door, classroom to classroom, then in a cloud of dust and flashing lights
they are gone and everyone wondered what it had all been about. The wait was
long, the food poor and usually for the hundreds of people who came and
waited with their small chidren there was no running water or no toilets. The babies and
small ch ildren cried, the legs and b ack hurt, and it either rained or was
hot, the air full of dust covering the motorbike riders as they went home
again. Always there
were these events, much flury, much fuel spent to get there, and nothing come
of it. The actual event of the day
lasted a few minutes only. Big gates, big
fan fare, big deal. Denial in an Best seen in
christian villages. Villages were
different. In some villages problems
were an aside. The village was mostly
prosperous. In other villages the
problems were the main dish and overwhelming at that. In all th ese cases the problems had been
imposed by outsiders. Army and
forestry. Missionaries did best if
they had the help of tragedy. They
considered tragedy a b lessing for their own agenda when it conveniently
happened to other peole, in this case the Akha. One could go so far as to say that by
omission the missions prayed for tragedy upon others. In the case of
tragic villages, ones with immense problems, a n ew trait appeared. Denial.
Total denial of everything. No
body moved, there was no where to move or attempt to alter the
situation. In the ase of Pah Nmm the
fields were way to far. To admit there
was a food and economic crisis was way too much, the soul would collapse in
despair. Instead they denied
everything. The food was excellent,
there was plenty of it. Rice,
vegetables, fruit. Well, there wasn't,
so what there was plenty of was salt and chili peppers. Dirt.
So you forgot to take the
cooking pot to the fields. So what, putting off eating for a day urnt
nothing, did that all the time. And it
traslated into everything. If first
you couldn't get to your fields, no hope of survival, then responsibility or
admission of all else was denied as well, to preserve ones self. It was down
right maddening. If people have been
denied hope, certainly the case here, then all else collapeses. No matter what
it was no one knew anything about it, who was suppose to do it or why it
didn't get done. Where did
something go? No one knew. Why didn't
something get done, no one knew. But the salt
and chili peppers were excellent and drugs were the main theme. For me I was
trying to help. I knew what the solution was, and I struggled for resoureces
and energy, amazed that the Akha held on so long, like dying, withering
child. Death asleep in the door , been
thre so long, not doneyet. Akha Frailties Few people
understand what it took for me to hold this whole effort together, from
keeping the basic doors open to the needed communications, computer, phone
line, rent, fuel, transport, and supplies. I didn't ride
hard on the Akha, because words would not be sufficient to describe how hard
their lives were. Full o freasons for
despair if not despair itself. I didnt have to
be there, but if I was going to be here, if I was going to be effective, it
demanded that I be as close to their lives as possible, and this was real
close to poverty. Mostly their houses
had scant rice and nothing else much to eat. I could not
sustain myself on wat these people ate.
And to say nothing of the haunting lok in their eyes as they looked
around a dark hut, shelves bare, just the mind. This was a
herculean effort, not to just go into poverty, but to set up camp there nd try
to do something about it over the long term. It was not easy
to see how hard these people had it but also to explain it, or do something
about it. While Back in Pah Nmm....... I got up to Pah
Nmm Akha and found out that one of the girls had tried to kill herself with
poison, but they got to the doctor in time. The kids work
hard, and despair effects them too, in this case it is a three hour walk per
day to the fields. Sometimes they would like a break, go to town and can
not. This means a lot to overworked
people, let alone young people. Two Kilos Opium One Akha man
bought two kilos of opium which he was busy reselling to others. Everyone trying to make a go of it, I
wondered how much he would smoke. It was some
thick and sticky, not this years he said, but not thick as older stuff I had
seen. Like the one ball I found in the
bed. No Money That way One man had a
white truck. He was owed some money
and the man wouldn't pay him so he caught his wife and tied her up, leaving
her in the jungle for two nights, thinking that this would get him his money,
but instead he had to pay the man and the man had to pay him nothing. Ah Meeh - Meeh Yuuh In a place
without mercy. I have to say
that seldom had I seen such a helpful person as Ah Meeh. Meeh Yuuh.
I think that Ah
Meeh had quite a capacity to help out in the village. I have seen
so many beautiful things here either
damaged or destroyed yet I hope on. Ah Meeh was an
extract of all of this, able to hope the best. Then there was
pain, a good share of it, and that is proof that you are alive because the
intensity comes across in all forms at that level. Capable of experiencing great joy and great
sorrow, good will and kindness. Pah Nmm The encouraging
sign in the Pah Nmm was that the villagers were talking about giving up opium
smoking, but there were nasty rumors of brutality from the army. About five
younger men went to a dry out camp with the army nearby. The older men would have to stop in time as
well, while those over sixty I think would be left alone. Opium smoking
was an impediment to consumption so one could not know for sure which was the
chief motive, health or consumerism.
Market economy. Ah Seh was
going to have to quit in two or three months as well. What I wondered was how many men would
ultimately end up in prison or on meth? Not all events
are related. But one could
not help but notice the size of the Chiangrai prison. Other than
that, making all the men quit was a good idea. Allowing some smoking for medicinal use was
valuable however. Pharmaceuticals
sure had an interest in this. Sept. 2001 Sick This time of
year I got sick with cold and fever, sinus infection. August and september. August had been lots of rain. Then
hot. Not much wind. Lots of clds and I succombed. The stress over the rent money of course
did not help. I had one sinus
infection one day and then came bck in a couple of days. Usually if I
got a cold at all it was in the winter. I covered the rent
and then the Sept 11 attacks on the The Flavor of Eggs On Sailom Joi
the Eggs had flavor
but the Thais always boiled them in oil.
Chili peppers were used to disguise bad cooking was my opinion. So I tried to
teach her how to cook scrambled eggs without oil. Pah Nmm Akha Ah Meeh worked
in the village at her own little store. We had been friends, now she was
married and had a daughter. I hadn’t seen her in years. She was the
cousing of my wife, daughter of Ah Beh. Around Transition The transition
from Maesai to the mountains was more confusing than substantial problems. I needed a while to organize my mind about
it al. Ah Chooh's
mother made a great stir in the village, I am sure it was not only her, but
the whole family, which was not helpful and added to our matrimonial
stress. By spending long hours with Ah
Chooh I was able to heal much of this. Everyone hears
everything in an Akha village so the fact that we had the Lychee Tree and
terrace land helped us to find space apart where we could go a shrot way from
the village and talk. The entire
process had beeen an illustration to me that I would narrow my project and my
contacts and would be very careful not to let people get inside what I was doing and needing to do and destroy
it. Many of the
porjects that I wanted to do were too widely structured to allow them to
succeed without better donor support and committment. I now knew the limits of that. Although Sept 11 was a not too frequent
occurance, it did help me to make major restructuring of how I was going to
do things in the future. Being better
integrated into the village was my goal and now I was moving back in that
direction. I gave the building and
accumulating useful resources a year, and did not like the result, so now
went the other way for a low financial overhead and profile, limited physical
assets, outsourcing all that I could, and high mobility. I still had to
seek funding, but apart from old bills I now had nearly zip overhead. My next project
was to get the Pah Nmm road built. I thought about
buying the press then decided that I would look at having all my printing done
in Chiangrai so that I didn't have to have a place for a press either. The relief of
the stress always left me feeling that something was wrong, having been under
it for a year or better. I was getting a
better feel for the village life and the things that were going on there. I do knot know
if my situation with Amy would be healed or not. House in order. I was slowly
getting my own house in order here in the village. I had sperated Ah Chooh, my wife, from the
connection with her mother, but I and her mother were still friends in the
end of it. When ever I got
a little peace I tried to write down the events I had seen happen around. I had gotten
very angry that night.. I moved Ah
Chooh to Ah Hkauh's house, my adopted father's younger brother. Ah Baw Sah was
my father, Byauh Leh Gooh. My name was
Pooh Jurh. Ah Hkauh's wife
had run away and married another man who then had to pay him a fine. But now I was
back in the new hut which sat empty for more than a month and was fixing it
up and trying to mend my heart and other things which was not easy. I finished the
bathroom with the help of Ah Baw Gurh, Meeh Yeh's father. Also my Ah Shauh. My house had
concrete posts but not concrete walls yet.
I wanted to build them soon
enough. Building the
bath was my first experience at laying brick or block and I was learning fast, but building with
block was very slow, tall and narrow, was a little work to keep them
straight, but not bad for my first project. I had built a
metal hotplate in my house, for cooking pancakes on. I would have liked a stone biscuit oven. There was much
I needed to do to weave the house together. I had
books. One computer, the other one
sold to Zera who didn't pay me in time.
I was beginning to finally decide that Zera was on the taking end only
and didn't know how to give back. I
wanted nothing more to do with him. He
could keep the money he owed. Making a transition Making a
transition into the village as I had takes much time, much effort, keeping
relationshiops in tact and so forth.
You must crack the whip but not too much, not too often, because it
takes timefor people to learn what you are like and why you are different. In a village
many problems are caused by ME not understanding what they are doing, and I
learned a lot in a short time when I moved fully into the village. I made many mistakes. The Light Through the Door Pah Nmm Akha Meeh Chooh's
Kitchen, afternoon. Door closest to
the the wood pile and village road. The light
through the door in the late afternoon was always a special time in my mother
in law's cooking house. The light came
through the bamboo slats in rays, lighting up smoke, dust, ashes and
faces. The cooking fire produced more
smoke than heat by times and it was a wonder they weren't all dead of lung
disease. Faces were
beautifully lit in the golden light. Bags of
recently harvested rice from the worst year I had seen, lined the kitchen
wall against the house. Squash sat on
shelves, and a few ants crawled the dirt floor in search of food. Black posts,
bamboo shelves, water bottles a few plates and spoons, such a small inventory
of wealth anyone had ever seen. Corn boiled for
the pigs, and smoke stained the two bamboo drying shelves above the fire,
where dried meat and tea were kept. Bags of seeds
and beans were deceptive of the fact that there was so little nutrition in
the house. These shelves and all on
them were balckened with laquer and webs of dust hanging down. Pah As of January I
was still promoting the Pah Nmm Akha road to te fields, the Lahu,
particularly Jeh Teeh and Jeh Boh were giving me fits about this. They were trying to block the progress at
every turn and one time there was a big fight the Akha punching the Lahu
guys, outnumbering them many times. Jeh Teeh was an
evil man, taking Akha land. Pah Nmm Akha, Army, War There is a fair
amount of army around Pah Nmm, Burmese army thieves ty to steal the Akha men
and the women for loot. Lots of humvees
but none for any good. Christmas Eve - Pah Nmm Now there ar
two incidents of random shooting and abuse that I have documented near Bpah
Ma Hahn and Pah Nmm Akha, Soi Yah Akha below us. |