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Akha Chronicles Much of my first contact with the Akha was with Akha
from I made many trips into My
travels were limited by my limited funds. Trip To Keng Tung I made one
trip to In (Was
this also a letter to a Brit I penned? in other Chapter?) I would like to mention a couple of things. First
off I think that credit is needed where credit is due. I
know many Karen in the north here who think that the position the Karen took
in the mountains for many years was stupid.
Either they needed to take the war to I
know of many thug armies along the border.
Each time I crossed the boarder on some back road I met a cluster of
new people in charge of the local thug patrol. Slowly the border is being taken by the burmese and
the militia, in cooperation with the burmese.
Now it appears to be the Wa and the Akha and the Shan and the Burmese
with a big growth in the latter. My second point would be that though the Karen put
themselves in a bad way, an unwinnable way, the Burmese government has a form
and order that can not be blamed as all bad or even predominantly bad. Shan state was a land of stupid bickering
people who endlessly fought among themselves and did little else but send
their daughters south. In
ten years of witnessing this feuding I have watched while the Burmese Army
restored order and set about to do the massive job of setting up the
structure of everything needed for civil administration. A few years back that jack ass Khun Sa came here to
Tachilek with his boys and attacked in the morning. Many of his soldiers were killed, many
shans were killed and persecuted.
Numerous soldiers were killed and several surrendered after the
burning of a neighborhood to get them out since they did not make it nack
accross the river in time to the Thai side.
I watched this event myself.
And all I could say was that Khun Sa was a major ass. For one thing, he could have taken both
Keng Tung and Tachilek at that time and the Thais would have backed him
up. The Burmese army was only rag
tag. But in addition, his action caused incredible
suffering among the shans and closed the bridge for the year. The closing of the bridge, because of this
stupid act on the part of the Shans, led to the death and suffering of an
incredible number of people to say nothing of the drowning of scores of
people who attempted to cross the river during the rainy season on a daily
basis. Khun Sa knows nothing of
that. Just like the westerners and
idiots who took the Burmese embassy one year knew nothing of the suffering
they caused when the border again closed.
I have friends whose babies and children died directly because of that
show boat act because they could not get enough medicine during that time. Currently
if you go to Keng Tung, there is good air service to this place, the road is
bad but safe. In keng Tung the
government adminsters the place well, I know many of the officials and officers. They have built a new hospital, a nurses
training school open to all ethnics to work in it. This you could NOT AT ALL SAY for I have been impressed with the careful administration
and public assistance in the Keng Tung region. On tiny supplies, the government by its own
order has gotten dribbles of electric way out to the shan villages that never
had it before. Not the act of a
hateful government. Sure there are problems
with Burmese soldiers marrying shans and taking their land, but many of the
burmese are shit by nature, so you can’t blame the gov that they
created it this way. Further, I know
many specific cases where renegade police and army raped or killed ethnics
and it was investigated and the people arrested, right up to ranking
officers. The burmese have this in
their favor. They act by strong
procedure, and though there may be corruption forming loop holes, the
procedure is strong and steady by comparison to anything the Thais have, one
reason the Thais have to fear them and one reason why Although the Burmese have cut trees in the ethnic
areas as a means of encroachment, they also have a strong replanting policy
while at the same time presenting a united and fair front to the hill
tribes. Since many Burmese army are
married to Akha for instance they seem to work together. In
my opinion, this polarization of the issues on The best thing that could be done now is to build a
credible, safe and strong dialogue with Burma. Try to understand the Burmese border
problems, try to figure out why they have these policies. For instance, here in the north the Burmese
have an incredible chinese illegal immigrant problem that threatens to take
over all Shan state and the Shans think they have it bad now, wait till the
whole bloody place is run by chinese merchants, every girl for sale, not just
every third one. It would be a Karaoke door to door to kunming from the thai
border and many girls getting shipped around the world as well. The problem that there is now, is that though
activists have done a good job at getting people to pull out of Burma, that
was not the best goal, unfortunately, since they were so good at it. What would have been much better would have
been to build a relationship of trust and try to understand the Burmese
position. Frankly the Shans could not
have run shan state and kept it safe from the Chinese. Just like the Karen could not have run the
border without selling every thing out the back door and making every boy a
mandatory chrisitian soldier. People who visited mannerplaw before it fell, told me
that the mentality of self righteous fundamentalism was so strong there that
it was little wonder the Buddhists defected. Unlike
all the reports, I never once witnessed chain gangs on the Keng Tung road and
for more than a year I personally witnessed while burmese army troops worked
like slaves on the worst parts of that road. "Free Burma" should not be the only goal,
but trust and dialogue. There will be
corruption anywhere, but the Burmese
government has many governing styles and efficiencies that not even Thailand
has with all its “freedom” and opportunity. It
was printed in the london press, but I was privy to it myself when the
Burmese airline plane crashed here in Tachilek. The
shans, the noble shans, raped surviving passengers, killed surviving men,
left children to starve while they plundered the entire plane for five days
of rainy weather while the burmese army searched for it. They got six months jail time or some fool
thing. I know many Burmese officers who are doing their best
in a bad location to make Keng Tung a safe operable city with sufficient electric
and water and sewer and food and environment for everyone. That they haven’t sold their soul to
the Chinese long ago is what amazes me
because the administrators just don’t have any money to operate
on . Meat beggars in keng tung market, akha went to from stall to stall
with a bowl, didn’t see them last time yes,
I saw this, going from those two meat stalls and around the market, like the
urchins they were. Meng La I and a Kiwi who worked on oil rigs off of East
Timor, took a trip up to the China border with hopes of getting into china
but not at all sure that we would be able to. The
trip to Cheng Tung was long enough in itself, the road rough and the driver
less than good. The problem with these
drivers in Asia is that they knew very little about their machines or
machines in general. Everything was
“No Problem” and away they go.
In most of the rigs the four wheel drive part is worn out almost
completely, and when needed it is weak if there at all. But
we made it to Cheng Tung and then the next day we headed for Meng La on the
Chinese border after getting all of our papers straight with
immigration. Then it was up into the
mountains, devoid of trees for the most part.
After some driving we got to more forest wherein the Burmese army was
supervising workers who were cutting down every single tree of size. I wondered about this as we drove on and
wove our way through the mountains to the river and the final immigration
checkpoint before the Chan autaunomous area.
An intelligence officer came out, like he had just
discovered the interrogative question and asked us where we were going. A revolver handle stuck from his pocket in
a haphazard way as if due to picth out onto the ground at any moment. The heat was intense so I commented about
it, his weasel eyes looking us over.
My impression was that military intelligence in Burma all needed to be
sent for long years in Siberia until they repented of their ways. We
drove on across the metal frame bridge and up the mountains on the other
side. More logging, and then we passed
the last Burmese army outpost and arrived at the first Chan army
outpost. Then I concluded that the
Burmese army was going to log right up to the autonomous area to get as close
as they could and take as much wood as they could. And it wasn’t being logged for boards
but for fire wood. Short cut
pieces. Inside the autonomous areas
the forest was still thick. The Chan
only taking out what they needed for themselves, not trying to fire the needs
of ever more wasteful towns. At
the border town of Meng La it became obvious that the Chan were unable to
hold back the chinese and the main street was dominated by ugly Chinese style
shops, not a single wall or window frame straight. Every girl available was prostituted in a harder
fashion than I could recall elsewhere in the world. Certainly
the Chinese are proof that there is life without beauty, art, ascetic or
form. Everything was as ugly as
possible with mindless Chinese money grubbing faces. The Burmese were a different people as were
the Akha. Bunny like Akha young women
darted across the road with their baskets. After getting our rooms we went to the local pub as
it were nearby, and there the girls danced. One Akha girl really got into it. She reminded me of the Philippino girl I
saw at the enlisted club in Bremerton years before. She had a promising future, but not a good
one. We spent the night in ugly rooms, cold, no toilet and
no water. For a shower you had to go
down to the river, everyone, even those who owned cars, did. The outhouse was proof that the Chinese
hadn’t progressed much. A nearby
construction of a “New” guest house gave whole new meaning to the
term “New”. Not a window in it was square. After a night’s rest we went to the
border. We weren’t able to get
in as blonde Burmese people for some odd reason despite the best efforts of
our Burmese student friend. Generally,
Meng La was really sleazy. A slob of a
fellow hung around the hotel while we were inside drinking a few beers. The next day we headed back to Cheng Tung. Back
in Cheng Tung we went up to Ga Tai where we hiked into the mountains to the
east to find Akha villages. In massive
heat we found one, after hours of hiking.
The dehydration was incredible.
I barely made it down to the other village on the way back, Kevin Wood
being in better shape than I. There
the Akha put us up and massaged my legs which were seized with cramps. The next day we headed to the next villages and a
water fall on the way. Best I could
tell these Akha were extremely poor, and the villages bare. But they did own a fair amount of rice
land, being on the edge of the valley.
At one village a couple Chan women came and bought rice from them. Then
we got a ride to the road on a motor bike with three of us on it and there
our Chan driver was waiting and we headed back to Cheng Tung where we stayed
at the Sam Yeat guest house. Before
coming up we had spent a few hours the day before on the Mekong River. Joeseph of Keng Tung Joseph was a muslim man whose wife died of these last
couple years. He helped Joe as a guide but Joe wouldn't pay him much so he
quit, that is what he said. He knew a few details of the area. He lived now in a tiny shop house next to
the mosque, like an old lonely man pulling up his feet to the grave of sweet
dreams, let us hope. Annie Tip Annie Tip was a kindly elderly woman with a
beautifully gentle face, greying hair and graceful lines of age. We sat often talking on her porch next to
the lake in Keng Tung, Burma. Her
son had gotten into a drug that caused him to “go off” somewhat
and he needed to take medicine for a while to undo that. Her house on posts, was filled in with brick. According
to Annie Tip the Thai police ran town until the 1967 revolution. Annie Tips Son So annie tip's son did some kind of drug, then he
went up to immigration and began tearing up office papers. “So the police took him away and
called his mother. he must be 20 and
over. He has a striking resemblance to
Richard Gere, facial expressions and all. The Mission Keng Tung In the Catholic mission in Cheng Tung there are books
written about the Akha by the priests, and one can infer that there are also
many writings which have been sent back to the vatican library in Rome. Least
one would think. Then once my friend
checked on it and said that the journals often talked of how life was for the
priests, and said very little about the life of the locals around the
missions. There were rumors that the Bishop was eating the
money, and surely neither the mission nor the surrounding Akha got any better
off. The girls kept getting sold south
to Maesai for prostitution. Only
changes were more and more crosses and more and more church buildings in the
villages. The locals didn't like the mission because they said
that it stole the money given to help people.
Then the army built a very large Budda next to the church grounds,
higher than the Italian chapel, with its arms out stretched. Tourists asked why this was, and the locals
said that when the Budda was first built he was not pointing. But so many tourists came asking where Khun
Sa lived that the Budda began to point, "Over there". Overview Burma I have been to Burma a number of times. The first time was with Joe, the Toyota
truck buckboard, Lawrence of India, and Don the San Francisco cop. We
didn’t take the jewish photographer from LA who was totally impressed
with himself and wrecked motorbikes if you passed him going to Doi Tung. The road in Burma to Cheng Tung is bad. The Thai construction crew made it
worse. Then the boss died and it
stopped. My landlord died about the
same time, no more the bigshot with the stainless gun in his belt. Sam Yeat guest house in Cheng tung was best. The market was fun. Looking into the life of hilltribe people
who came down from places like Lomi Shaw. Cheng
Tung itself was a provincial looking town where there were many British looking
buildings and something about princes and their dealings with the
British. But no more. The shan were a subjegated people and no
doubt their role in the international opium and heroin death trade had
something to do with this. Nearby was china, and it was obvious that the only
people who could really let in the Chinese or really keep them out was the
burmese army. The burmese army was
always rough but more western and civilized in some aspects than the Thai
powers that be. Many of the Burmese army
were very young. Army road posts were
frail and dirty places, looking like they could easily be over run by anyone
with any amount of determination. Khun
Sah’s men showed this when they over ran Tachilek and killed a few
soldiers and shot things up but in the end the Burmese army won. Lots of cheap chinese goods flooded burma at the
Cheng Tung market and since the burmese produced so little themselves all
they had to trade was timber, flesh, and recently gem stones and jade. But the latter two didn’t amount to
much, and the timber money went to the government and army mostly so all you
have left in the way of economics on a family scale was selling the daughter
which the families did as a matter of course. In cheng tung there is a large church facility. Catholic.
Baptist also, with an empty baptist hospital long vacated. Now the government has started a nursing
school and has young women they are trainging at the hospital as long as they
speak english. The burmese don’t know anything about road
building but I can’t help but think that they leave the road mostly as
it is as a buffer against developement they are not ready for, wanting to be
in control of it when and how it will happen and on what scale. For that I give them credit, even if it is
not intentional. I travelled to Meng La with the hope of going over
the backroad into China, but that didn’t happen once we were at the
border. Mister Joe succeeded after
four tries because he got Burmese immigration to make out forms that they
were all burmese citizens, but the tourist involved was a little put out at
it because he didn’t know this was how it was going to get done and
knew what a mess could occur if it was found out by the Chinese that they
were foreigners while in the country in that fashion, or so the story goes. I also crept closer to Lomi Shaw, one of my goal
areas. I went as far as the lower
string of Akha villages starting near Ga Tou and Ga Tai as they are called or
possibly one and the same place. Here
is the flat dusty rice lands of the shans with the Akha up against the
mountains. I
took medicine where I could. The
police, army, and intelligence (MI) were always asking my driver what it was
that I was doing. There was one Akha village past the Ant village that
I went to a number of times after quite a hike. I did eventually find how to get on the
road that would get me quite close by truck. Near
the Ant village about some 30 minutes walk there was a very famous monk, or
so the pleasant doctor in Cheng Tung told.
I had yet to check it out. Also there was Loi Mwe, the old british army base and
the lake and the radio tower. If you
drop off the back side on the road you end up at the summit road stop as you
are first coming into Cheng Tung valley after the long road trip of a hundred
miles from Maesai which takes a good 8 hours. There
is also a hot springs and the infernal disco on the lake in Cheng Tung proper
where taxi dancing and fights are the main event along with the box and three
dice gambling games. Drink and food. Some real exotic shan food, I don’t
recoment, and then a rat infested restaurant called the Banyan tree because
it is beneath a huge one, and the food is also horrible and they never get
the instructions straight being your typical slacks that don’t understand
that maybe things can be done a specific way, even if it is different. The drivers usually drive too fast on the streets and
roads in burma, making their foreign guests uncomfortable, not needing to be
anywhere that badly. Apparently
carrying tourists about is a task of great importance and speed and honking
of the horn as one races dangerously through the street enhances that. Going back to maesai, like a horse to the
barn it is always worse. On
the road to Cheng Tung there are a few dusty towns and Akha or Lahu villages.
Meng Pyah, the biggest is the midway point before the long churning twisting
tank test road up the canyon to cheng tung. On the way to meng la one passes a army and
intelligence and immigration checkpoint with laboring trucks along the way and
then it into shan territory with their own army and such. Ant Villages It is a funny name, I am not sure how it is spelled,
but since after ten years I have never seen it in writing, I will spell it
Ant. It may be Ent. I don’t know. But these people wore black long dresses,
wrapped their heads in black cloth turbans.
There was one of their villages East of Keng Tung on the way towards
Bah Cheh Akha up on the side of the mountains. I didn’t visit them much, others did,
they lived near the bottom next to the creek. I knew little of them or the language they spoke,
since we could all share Shan. Burma was a sad place in that it had such a complex
and interesting cultural heritage which war and ambition were destroying,
while much of the world already looked back on other pasts. People, humans, in general, about the big
things, don’t learn much, thus the saying that history repeats
itself. Great wisdom, doesn’t get
passed on. People remember to think
about tiny wisdoms, but great ones are scorned. Near to the Ant village it was said that there was a
famous monk who lived, I wasn’t sure.
And also there was a large tree, with the orange flowers, which people
dried when they fell to the ground and used them for herbal tea. Getting out to the Ant village one had to go past or
around the airport of Keng Tung and then out through the rolling hills, past
the checkpoint fork in the road where there was army and sometimes not, then
past the great trees, huge they were, with perfectly balanced canopies, and
then there were great slabs of bee honey and brood comb hanging up there in
the trees always. Soon one came to
rice fields, in openings in the hills and the beginnings of the shan
villages. The shans lived in a light
kind of melody, their villages, soft, raised huts, tile roofs, a temple and
monks, a bicycle, water buffaloes, in a gentle embrace of life and time. They seemed to mock at war and
suddeness. The roads were soft, so close
to the water that fed the rice, ox carts used them but it would appear that
no one was allowed to be in a hurry here which all the ruts and pot holes reinforced. Near the villages a girl sat out at a stand, selling
something, as much a place for talking and someone with a bottle getting
drunk. Life was full of joy just to
look around at it all happening in every corner of God’s great earth,
going on, starting, stopping, coming again. The temples and living quarters of the monks were
worn with time, faded colors, whites washed by rain, lived on with mold and
algae, great trees, shrines, things standing, fallen over, buried, raised up
again. Brick houses, wood houses, hay,
pigs, chickens, it all went on in the light brown and grey hues of life close
to the soil in a land where there was rain. Akha Keng Tung Trip Dec 18, 1996 Back in Bangkok from a miserably hard year and 4
months in the US. Missing
my work and the people. Check
out Kosarn road to see if there are any Akha there but it is already too late
in the night for them. Only video
still going on and not much of that. Going
to Chiangrain there was no baggage charge and I was happy for that because I
was over as usual. I made a stop to see Meeh Suur’s mother and
Nimit before heading up to Keng Tung the next morning. Stay
at Adaw’s house, police keep checking in Burma style. Make
electrodes for the heart monitor that I delivered by cutting pieces out of a
piece of an Akha silver head dress. Lt. Col Win Han accepted equipment and offered to
help with fuel for medical supplies from Daungy by truck. Visit
the Catholoic hill at soon Sat Gone Immigration
man from Tachilek Aung Min goes with me an paves the way. The
small girl in Adaw’s village has a swollen neck, secondary infection
from TB. I pay for meds. More money thatn they have cash for, 1/2
month’s pay. The
tv blew out on irregular power and 220 110 radio shack step down was actually
only 220-100, not enough juice to power the TV. A
burmese man who studied law ran a tv repair with his wifre in the market and
repaired it. Very nice to talk to. There is a real shortage here at soon sat goh of
skin, eye and ear medicine. Lots of
children die. Doesn’t appear to
be any records kept of how many. Lots of the children have ongoing colds. This is the face of peverty. I
hear that the switzerland Andy who had Aids at Nimit’s place went to
Hat yai with his I
knew him a little. Think he was a good
guy dispite 20 years of drugs that killed all his friends and him as
well. He had had Aids for ten years I
think. Then found out that Gabriel at the Italian restaurant
in Ch.Rai had died of aids as well.
Too many young girls. Went out to the Roads end Akha village. I left my motorcycle there and then hiked
down steep ravines over hillt t second far ridge village packing alll the
camera gear and the medical canvas pack.
The boohseh said one hour, but it took four hours minimum because I
didn’t knmow where the trails were.
I spent the night needless to say, drenched with sweat and fatigue. Going
to more villages this morning. A
horse is definitely needed once in the mountains here to ride a string
ofvillages. big horse. I
have got to hand it these people, they farm rice and corn on hillsides I
could hardly climb pack or no pack. The burmes immigration Man from Tachhilek was
exceptionally helpful in arranging everything. He was my official escort to keng
tung. no charge for entry into Burma. Zera
arranged papers from customs for the heart monitor to go north. I had to pay 200 baht to move it across the
border which I though a little much. I
think h8is help can also be inflated by times. I
got permission to stay in Adaw’s house at soon sat goine from
Immigration in Keng Tung. Between
the greatly reduced transport fee in a toyota wagon for $60 to the no charges
to the $15 charge for a motorbike for 8 days.
I then had a meeting
with the new hospital admin and a doctor who received the Data scope
heart monitor in the private office of Lt. Col Win Han . Win
hand is the Div Chief Officer of Easter Shan State east of the Salween River. Very pleasant man. At
hospital three people a week die of aids.
Everyone admits problem is getting worse, especially among shans. Christmas
in a couple of days, big festivities.
Need more head lice medicine, lice combs of plastic. Guards
at Maesai Plaza Guest House both died of aids last year. Quite quickly from when I saw them
last. Maybe in their early 20’s. The
fat Burmese man died of aids this spring 97.
He came to my house once, he was very afraid. Charlie had funny things to say about it
that really weren’t funny at all. Gabriel
of Ch. Rai Italian Restaurant died miserably of aids with hives over his
entire body. It
takes time to get a feel how to best help these Akha People. Especially the ones in the upper villages. However
I have noticed that scabies is far more prevelant in villages near towns,
including other skin ailments as well. In
the night Mee Loo Loo (earth quake).
Rats dropping kernels of corn down on me all night after biting the
germ out of each one. Need
Bactricide and clotrimazole. Need
more Benzyl Benzoate oil. Village # 1 Bah Cheh Akha This
is the village at the end of the road that is Ooh Loh Akha Spend
numerous nights here. Village #2 Pulling
teeth of Ai Yeh. One top back and one
bottom molar, fragments and root only left.
Hard to get out. He
told me he had headaches while working.
One look in his mouth and no wonder.
Abcess in progress. Pulled six teeth.
All broken off. No novacaine.
He didn’t make a sound. Village #3 Bah
Cheh Akha/ Bah Kow Woman
missing leg 16 years. Still
can’t find it. Using very worn,
very short crutches which cause her to stoop causing chronic low back
pain. No wonder. She is 47.
Som Yuuh. I
spent 1/2 hour negotiating to see the stump of her leg so that I could tell
if she had a knee left or not and measure it for length against the other
one. No luck. She
lost it to a land mine. She
asked for cough medicine, jah gah ah seeh. Som
Yuuh wouldn’t let me see her leg to measure it and the baby she was
caring for shat heavily on her lap so I loaded up and left. Village #4 Bah
Cheh Akha Nice
gal in village. Ooh loh Akha. Her
father asked me if I wanted a wife? I
pulled the tooth of the head man. He
really knew how to prepare chopped vegetables which he steamed in an army can
mess kit thing. Catholic villages. Mefloquine 4 tables day 1 2
tablet day 2 younger
person 3
tablet on day 1 2
tablet on day 2 Quinine
treatment contributes to black water fever. Bah
Jeh Akha I
think these were at the village I visited with Akha Girl up the road to Meng
La. Kin to Adaw of Soon Sat Goh. Video
in the market is hard. Too many short
takes. Better in the village. Great
need for nutrition and medicine.
Replentishing agriculture. Inflation
of kyat from 106 to the dollar to 168 to the dollar in less than 2
years. This greatly diminished the
buying power of the Akha. MPI,
myanmar pharmaceutical Industries Yangoon
Black market Unicef Benzyl Benzoate. The
Akha who go to Thailand get Aids. Need
for more soap. Who can pay for it? There
is a great need to tend to these mainor skin ailments before they increase. Chicken
pox vacine available in Thailand if older than 1 year. Yellow
fruits for kerotin -B2 deficiency which causes mouth cracking. I
see all of this need of such a good people and I wonder how to increase the
voltage? How to better be able to
help? The
film and pictures will help some. I
try every day to tighten up my ideas on both.
Hoping for the best resutl for these people. So much to be done. One
doesn’t know how to do except to do more of what they are already
doing. consider
myself quite fortunate to be able to stay here for Christmas. The
police asked me to get a driver’s license in Thailand for motorcycle
use here. Village
names Bah
jeh, north 1 hour Bah
Jah near to there Bah
cheh, above ant people Huuh
gaw, visit with Akha girl, Adaw’s ah nyee Jah
dah is road get off destination for lomi shah Merry
Christmas. Good
photos today. Getting
more the hang of it. Video
is harder, has to be done more slowly but shooting gets done off the duff on
the spot planning as you shoot. I
prefer studies with video. Then
on photo work I sometimes shoot a whole roll of fim on one person, trying to
discover their expressions have gotten some good voice recordings of Booh
Chooh. This
evening half of the little police showed up to ask all the questions all over
again. The grace of my host is
significant. I then discovered how
often the police have stopped and asked her questions about what I was
doing. Made it very uneasy for her but
she was very happey I am here, how generous. 26
Dec. In Huuh gaw village a good ten
miles up the Keng Tung Basin on the west side to the north. I keep adding to the villages I know. lots of need. TB is common it seems. I have been “shooting water”
for two days now. The old high stomach
bloated feeling once again. Nursing
along on about 35% power. The
biggest missed spurce of money I see is manure. Totally unused. The probolem is that vegetables must be
grown close to be watched yet separate from dogs, pigs, chickens, cows and
geese which instantly eliminate them. Then
they could raise more squash and get their B-2. They
do grow a variety of beans and other seeds.
But very little vegetable vitamins except mustard greens they call ho
pah. It is ver easy to see why these girls will head south
and take their chances. The Burmese government
deserves some of the blame as well as divisions put in place by the british
which left the border minorities at odds with the government. But
as long as Shan state was poor the girls will head south. Thailand needs this resource and hungrily accepts
it. The
catholic system here in Keng Tung appears quite mindless. Foolishness
for women and children. A
village might see a tatecist once a year if they were lucky, but are
compelled to build aith a tin roof anyway. There
is great need here for practical beneficial teaching in each village. Drunkeness
and gambling common. Many womein with children have split up over this,
not that splitting up is the only solution but for them it may be. I suppose if the men don’t stop the
wojmen become ill of it. Many
girls faces are looking for a ticket out of here. Thrre
is a need to get these people into some kind of side hut farming. There
is also a need for washing stations in the villages and a supply of soap
which these people can not afford. And
Toilets. The
shat is definitely getting into the creeks. Tons of new army trucks near the airport. The
police twice stopped meover driver license and they can’t even get
gloves and needles at the hospital. Airport
is being greatly enlarged. The
rich air tourist hungry for new destinations. And
Thai toruists coming up the road. As
a Shan girl saidl. The Thai men think
they can always buy a woman but somehow always end up with the cheap ones. Thoi Koon, more pretty, more prone to go south. More
cops came by, lots of dumb questions all translate3d by one very drunk Akha
man. Then they summonded a very
dignified Alkha man who was the villagae cop from the Akha perspect Then the
two left to consult their supervisor.
One looked shan, one looked Burmese, the smarter one. We waited till midnight but they never came
back. Amazing all the work I make for
them and still no gloves and no needles. Doh Moh Akha is the first southern village on the
road from Keng Tung to Gah Tow-Gah Tai over west of there against the
mountains. The
trails and cart roads too it are difficult to find and the Akha girl and I
fought the motorbike out through the dry rice p addies to get there. She
and I spent an awful lot of time on the road together gooing from Huur Gaw
Akha on the NE side of the valley and on to many others. We even went up to
the way station up on the mountain to meng lah where they park the bull
dozers. A radiator water stop for
trucks before they n to the river and into shan army territory. We then went futher north in the valley
than I had before but saw only one small akha village. I had been to Doh Moh Akha before about a year and a
half ago. Then back across the grey
muddy rice paddies to Gah Tow and back to Keng Tung. More
cop interviews. I
think one must start with the obvious to make improvement. There
is the need for gerater nutrition, side gardens. Tehre is excessive use of alcohol and lost
money to gambling. There is a total
lack of traning among many of the men and women. Kicked the Cook Out So I had to kick the cook out, I didn’t not
like to do that but I got tired of all the constant complaining and sourness
after all I was continually doing for her.
She was basically making her daughters into prostitutes rather than
teaching them to use their minds. It
went without saying that they had benefited well by me. I spent more on their
family than anything else, including myself.
But this is the stupidity of life, so the little boy and girl will
suffer most, learn early on how cynical life can be. They
had not been back. In fact it was the
first time that I had ever asked anyone to leave, usually it could be worked
out. I had no idea how they were going to make it. I had just been prepared to shell out a lot
of money to help them when they up and said they didn’t want to work on
the books anymore or go to school any more.
Oh well, they didn’t get one baht that day. And none since. Keng Tung Today I met a baptist pastor named Richard in the
market. We had a good talk about Paul
Lewis stuff etc. I forget what all
about, but practical two fold theology. The christmas festival started today. Lots of Akhas. Lots of photos. This was festival one would not have wanted to
miss. I am so thankful that I was able
to make it and get to meet so many new friends. More
and more of the police are getting familiar with me. But
I moved back into the hotel sam yweat guest house to make them happy. Actually
I am quite surprised I got so much liberty to date considering their general
paranoia. I met Booh Nooh in the Cheng
Met
Ooh Ah Too. Sings at festival. Called me lee Shah. Lives at Naw Jet Akha U ah yah queh nah. He
invited me to his house on my next keng tung trip. So
I was busy filming the evening away when the call of nature hit as it had
been doing these last few days. I
asked my driver where the toilets were but hhe said at this time of night the
building were closed so to go behind. I
walked down a long terrace and then
balancing on one hand dropped off the porch at the end of the building only
to find my boots squirming in the shat of 100 people withthe same idea. Keng Tung 97 Road up is only 30% as good as last year I think with
many large holes. Much
of the problem is that they don’t do one section, tar it and move on,
so the next rainy season it all washes out again. Plus they continue to use round river bed
stones which don’t pack like crushed rock and was out more quickly,
like peas popping up out of the road.
There isn’t necessarily a shortage of rock in the road it just
isn’t always in the right place. Ate
on the road at Mong Phyah and got sick that night to shits and puking. Spent all next day in bed. Sore.
No massage available all though the catholic hill village sends all
its best south as prostitutes. Gave
meds to the hospital. Invitation
to the Akha New Year on 28th. Met Father Ah Pah at the RCM in Keng Tung. He has a wonderful clarity about the
language and can teach me much. I must
come here to study and concentrate on the language if I am going to do any
good with it in building a dictionary.
Soon all the knowledgeable old speakers will be lost. Mong Pyah Mong pyah is the half way town to Keng Tung from
Maesai. There is a catholic mission
there that Father Bosco runs. There
is a dusty kitchen stop across from the church where the drivers stop and eat
and it is fine if you don't mind dirty
food and getting the squirting shits.
Just a basic travel tip. The
road to Mong Pyah is best, then it gets slower and more mountainous north of
that. Keng Tung was different It was boring but it wasn’t Thailand. One needed a little bit of both, but the
mentality in Keng Tung was different and I made new friends. There
was the Akha priest father Appa the
photographer who was Akha the
old man he knew writing the book in shan or burmese about the Akha, with his
portable hearing aid and his young chubby grandson who knew nothing about
Akha having grown up in this artificial catholic neighborhood but yelled in
his grandfather’s ear anyway. The catholics had built a huge compound on the top of
the hill and it was mostly run down, all the foreigners having been made to
leave, though catholic leaders still visited. Appa said that too much of the old culture had been
lost. He knew it. I knew it.
Yet the catholics as a whole couldn’t admit it or that there
could be a better way so the big wheel kept turning and crushing it all to
powder. Catholic
orphans sort of got sent into the convent automatically it would seem. Then there was the catholic run leper colony. They certainly weren’t all bad people
by any means, just if it could have been modified a little. And Keng Tung was a quaint town. Not a lot of cars, big and small
streets. Business going on in the old
fashioned way but one knew that this was just because there was an artificial
cap on everything. As soon as the road
was good there would be probably just as much recklessness here as in
Thailand. Everyone had to take the
consumption ride it appeared. After
they learned, a few only I should say, the most part had not a clue as it was
in America. Road to meng la used
to be really bad but only three hours now The Murder Joseph, the muslim man in Keng Tung told me that the
policeman from Rangoon had come to continue an investigation into a murder
from the fifties when a shan woman was killed. Apparently her daughter worked overseas
sending large amounts of money home and then someone killed her for her money
belt and burried her in a little bit far place as Joseph put it. But the daughter who still lived abroad is
still interested to know the solution to that case, why her mother was killed
so the police have come to inquire. It
is thought that family members near to the mother killed her. Possibly the daughter is paying to have the
investigation move on. The road crew From Thailand They moved equipment up into Burma to work on the
road and tore out huge sections of mountain side and then the whole thing
came to a hault. I
don’t know if it was connected to my dead landlord but the project
stopped about the same time he died. Taxi dancing keng tung That’s what the call it. You buy so many tickets in a strip and you
dance with the girl you give it to on the floating disco on the lake and
everytime the bell rings she tears a piece off the ticket till its all gone,
so the floor is littered with tickets and broken hearts. An Akha ran the pussy game there. Men with
rifles. Jeeba Daw I was at this one Akha village way up on the mountain
in the Cheng Tung area and they brought this man into the hut who had a big
lump on his head and blood all over his shirt. I
got him to go back out side in the sunlight and then the story came out that
he had been drinking and got in a fight with another man who then struck him
hard on the head with a stick. He had
a huge hemotoma under the scalp. I sheared the hair and cleaned the place on
the scalp where there had been the initial opening. There was another man in the hut who was sleeping off
his drunk and I supposed this could have been one of the parties in the
discussion. As
I was doctoring the wound to the head the drunken dancers from a nearby hut
came by to add to the pandemonium. I
couldn't help but wonder about the Shan who came up to these Akha villages
and set up gambling on holidays, ultimately looting the village. I had seen the same in Thailand. The Akha
sort of considered fair game to loot. I had first visited the upper Akha village higher on
the ridge some two years before and it had only been once I had gotten there
that I had spotted this other village that I was told was half Akha and half
Lahu. But on this day the headman of
the upper village knew I was coming as I had met him the day before. So when
I met him at the trail head he told me that most of the people from the upper
village were down in the lower village for the Chinese New Year Party. So we walked back down to that
village. Some of my friends from the
upper village were there whom I was glad to see but overall the idea of a
party seemed to be more getting drunk and having gambling fights. I was glad to see the headman's daughter was still
alive. On my last trip she had had this hot malaria fever for her tenth day
running. I only had two aspirin at the
time. So I was glad to see she made it. These were tough people. As
I sat with a couple of men on the sloped grass of the hillside village we
looked across the ridge to some of the saddles to the north and I asked what
the villages were. They told me the
names, which I promptly forgot, and I began to get some ideas that I was
hoping very much I could implement in the future. One woman from the same village I later met in town.
She had walked in with her husband. She brought a load of wood with her to
sell. The Last Village The afternoon was almost gone by the time he left the
end of the road and headed up through the brush towards the top of the ridge.
He didn’t know where the main trail to the village was and so he just
picked out this track and that muddy track, most of them made by the cattle
and water buffalo. The
going was steep and he was soon hot.
Animals sort of burrowed under the brush but he was too tall for that.
It was hard enough without trying to thread himself through all of those
openings. He knew that once he reached
the ridge there was a trail that he could follow all the way up to the higher
points on the mountain slopes. Ridges
always had trails, if not made by people then first made by animals. He had been to the village another time but it had
been some two years before. A lot had
happened in his life after that. He
had traveled around the world twice since his visit here. He wondered how that related to a village
that hadn’t gone anywhere for the last one hundred years? Western people were very busy as though
going somewhere and getting something done.
His life was proof of how little that could all come to. Those two years had seen the loss of his
business and the need to start all over again. He understood that to be the beauty of investing
in people, the investment stayed
around a lot longer than money. After thirty minutes of non stop climbing he fought
his way out onto a clearing on the ridge and caught his breath. He still had a long way to go but now it
was just climbing the length of the ridge as he walked along the top and
there wouldn’t be any more brush to fight. To
his right he could see the lower village. This one was Akha and Lahu, a small
village. High at the end of the ridge,
in the direction he was walking, he could see the scar on the mountain where
the village was that he was going to but it was too far to be able to distinguish the huts. Darkness
was coming on. He would have to hurry.
The pack he carried was not heavy yet but it soon would be with the
pace picking up. With
the falling sun on his shoulders he leaned over a little and began walking as
briskly as he could up the trail. Along the trail there were old stacks of cut wood
that had been gathered for the charcoal market in town. Ah yes, deforestation for the townsfolk,
convenient enough to blame on the villagers if need be. When
the season became hot enough he had the notion that some type of vehicle made
its way up here and picked all the wood up.
In places the weeds had been cut back to clear the way already.
Here and there some dirt had been
leveled out. He thought to himself that life could be good living
out here. But for him there was too much to do and too many people who needed
his help for him to spend life only living in one village. At least that was his initial thought, even
though he had to admit to himself many times that a person’s assistance
to others cannot always be at a sacrifice to ones self. Even though he had medicine in his pack right now, and even if
he kept that up for many years, he knew that he could find himself unneeded
by all of these people, whom he wanted to help in some day to come. Life was like that too, but as long as he
kept that in mind he still felt it was a good thing to do. He was content
with himself however life turned out in the future. He knew how fickle life was. Once Einstein had said, when asked what was
the most important thing in life,
“Don’t keep all of your eggs in one basket.” He
viewed himself as a facilitator. Sure,
he did carry first aid supplies with him and a few other items which the
villagers were always asking for but he felt that it was the fact that he
cared about them as a people which they appreciated, not that he was bringing
something to them. He hoped they
always felt that way. He crested a hump in the ridge, and the trail dropped
down into a cut quite steeply. He would loose a lot of elevation and then he
would have to climb back up again even higher and more steeply than
before. That could not be avoided. Now
he could see the village quite clearly, across a saddle where the ridge
snaked up to it. He would have to go
another fifteen minutes at least, the sun slipping further into the evening
chill, turning all of the grass to a sort of golden look. Walking
down into the cut in the ridge it was easy to slip and fall down. When he got to the bottom the trail
narrowed and headed up again over heavy erosion and a very scarred
surface. The going was tough. Most of the dirt in these hills was red, but up the
trail a little, he could see where it became crumbling white granite. Sticks marked the edge of the trail, driven
into the ground, for reasons he didn’t know. Once on top of the last major climb he snaked along
the ridge, almost level with the village he was approaching. He could hear very distant voices and dogs
barking. In the evening sun and
through the filter of memories the village looked surreal, not possible to exist in the same world,
the same time space as all the events which had happened to him while he had
been away. They knew nothing of it, he
could not speak their language well enough to tell them of it and all of that
was what made his approach so much more of a beautiful experience. This was his secret place. A reserve of friends whom the hard edges
of the business world would not be able to disturb for another year or
so. Humanity was so in contradiction
with itself, and so bent on destroying the best things that it had, like
peaceful villages. He wondered if they would remember him. There was one little girl who had gotten
burned and one old woman who had begged him to stay the night. Those were his
memories of that short visit. Tonight he was prepared to stay over until
morning. He
couldn’t see anyone as he got to the gate of the village but could hear
a dog barking very distinctly. There
were voices and then as he made his way into the village he saw some
children. From what he could guess
this was only the second time these people had seen a white man in many
years. There had been very few in the
country since thirty years before. A young woman peered out at him from beneath the hut
where she was working on some rice. He
made his way a little further into the village clearing and then sat down in
order to give the villagers more time to discover he was there. Depending on the time of day and the
location of the village, the village didn’t always know when someone
had come into it, except in sort of a general way. But word soon got spread and the children
began coming, the smaller ones with their mothers, to see this curious
person. Others went on with their
evening chores, carrying baskets full of water gourds to the spring holes. By this time the sun was soon to be behind the
distant mountain ridge far across the valley to the Western side. The long
shadows of mist clung to the tops of all the folds of the descending and
ascending ridges and hills that lay between them. As far as he had come he reckoned it was a
long and full days journey ridge to ridge. The
evening was still and peaceful. When he asked about the little girl the adults
remembered him and pointed her out. There
was no sign that her leg had ever been burned. She must have turned all of six by now. One
man told him the Headman was no longer in the village and invited him into
his home. They carried his pack and
after he took off his boots he settled on the outside porch. What a splendid view it offered. Not just a
view of a vista but a view from within a kind of life. He was looking out from some eternal place
where time had stood still. Sadly he
thought to himself about how rapidly all this would change. The children gathered about again and he slowly took
in all their faces and the soft murmur of their voices. Moments like this, listening to the children,
was why he liked their culture and their language so well. They were meant to be listened to. Their language was music to him. With
the setting of the sun, casting its last rays like spikes to his eye, another
day was drawing to a close and he was glad that he could end it in such a
wonderful place. He knew in his heart,
that when a western person came here there was little of spiritual substance
that he could teach these people that they didn’t know already. What he could learn was immense. The
man called him into the hut for tea. His clothes were wet with sweat. One of the old women asked him if he had a
change, as she wanted to wash everything for him so that it would be clean
and dry in the morning. He didn’t but found the offer a welcome no less
than a full family welcome. Chilled he sat close to the hearth, his feet
almost in the coals, watching the evening household routine. There were always parts of several families
in one hut when there was a visitor, but also because of some shared task and
the extended family. His eyes grew
accustomed to the dark and he took it all in.
The hut was large with a big loft area where things were stored. Right now lots of big ears of beautiful
corn, nice as he had ever seen anywhere, hung overhead. Then there were baskets, mats, and odds and
ends of this an that, all natural made, many having uses he didn’t
recognize. Cooking utensils hung in a
bamboo wrack above the fire varnished a dark red from the smoke. The floor planks were old, polished as
smooth as the seat of a bench, from use. A couple women busied themselves near the fire. One man cooked corn in a pot, before
removing the boiling brew from the fire with his bare hands, and pouring it
into a wood trough where he mashed it a little before feeding it to the
pigs. Water softened corn feed. His
eyes adjusted fully to the different parts of the hut and he listened to the
evening conversation. He sipped tea
hot off the fire which took away some of his chill. Then it was that he noticed what looked to
be a person sleeping under a blanket on the other side of the hearth. When he asked who the person was,
suspecting they were sick, he found out that they were indeed sick. He set his tea down, got up and went around to the
figure and pulled the blanket back.
Boiling in fever lay a twenty year old woman, her face drawn in pain
and haunted. The fever had been with her for ten days, they said. He figured it must have been malaria. He only had a couple of aspirin in his bag
and so he gave her one, holding her head up so she could swallow it with
water. Then he placed wet rags on her
back to cool her. He didn’t need
a thermometer to know she was really hot. The
woman struggled with the fever. The son called to him that the food was ready and set
a woven basket table out in the middle of the hut and all the men gathered
around. Men and women didn’t eat
together according to tradition, best he could tell. This wasn’t solely a man’s
world but men had a place that was to them alone, as did the women, and this
he liked. There was an order. He ate his dinner of rice, vegetables and
salted fish. Once he had gotten used
to these meals of hardy mountain rice he never went hungry in an Akha
village. After eating he went again to changing the wet rag on
the woman’s back. The water in
the pan got hot as he wrung the rag
out repeatedly. Finally, giving her
his last aspirin, he went to his corner, next to her father and tried to fall
asleep. He
worried for her. She was really sick and should have gone to town long
ago. The fever had exhausted
her. The mother had tried to explain
some of the difficulties of the ten days but it all sounded like malaria. His mind slowly turned with different visions as he
made his way down into a land of memories and gentle caressing fog, passing
off to sleep. Late in the night he awoke from his dreams when he
heard the woman crying out to her father.
From what he knew of the language she was horribly cold. The father
got up and began building a fire and he got up also and checked on her. She was like ice. He helped layer some more blankets on her
and went and got one of his own making seven in all. Slowly the tongues of a new fire licked up
and began to warm the hut taking some of the unnatural chill off her. He sat with her a while and then went back
to bed, wishing he had more medicine with which to help her. He drifted off to sleep again hearing only
a few murmurs in the background and noticing when the father brought the
blanket back to him some time later, the daughter’s chill having
broken. He was awakened to the melodic rhythmic pounding of
the rice that resonated from beneath the huts throughout the village. He soaked in the sound, knowing that there
would probably come a day when this sound wasn’t heard anymore. Getting up he checked on the woman once again. She looked tired but better. He slipped out into the village, breathing
the cool mountain air and seeing the beauties of this wonderful world these
people lived in despite the risks of health
which every human lives under. These
were tough and proud people. A young girl came singing a beautiful Akha ballad as
she carried water back from the spring hole in two buckets cast over her
shoulder on one of those springy bamboo slats. Women
stepped rhythmically on the ends of their rice hammers striking out different
cadences here and there throughout the village. They did it with such poise. Like gallant sentries of life, guardians of
the secrets of the mountains that gave them the sustaining rice. When
he came back to the hut where he had slept, the woman who had been so sick
sat out on the porch catching the first rays of the sun’s warmth, her tired and drawn face carrying a soft
smile and those haunted eyes. He ate breakfast with the men and then lingered
around the village till the sun grew strong and warmed him a little. Around
the corner of a hut a woman came leading a child, blood running down the
girl’s face. He looked at her
head and found only a small cut. He
asked what had happened as he washed it off and disinfected it. One of the other children had been after a
dog with a knife and missed the dog and cut their friend.
Then it was he noticed that it was the same girl who had been burned
two years before.. She was becoming
regular about these things, he mused to himself. After
patching up the little girl he reluctantly said goodbye to all of them and
had to work to get out of the village because some invisible force was
drawing him back, trying to keep him there and weave him more permanently
into the life it had to offer. Some
day he knew he would have to make peace with that. He walked quietly and thoughtfully down the ridge,
the noises of his village friends fading into the background as if swallowed
by the mountain as he pondered all that he had heard and seen there. Surely it was a balm to the soul to be a
part of that village. There was very
little clamor for anything but the necessities of life. The trail came out on the road. He made a mental note of the spot. Not
seeing any passing transport he began walking back to the town in the middle
of the valley floor. He walked for a
long time down the dusty and hot road.
He got to town in the early evening.
He feet were sore, not used to that much walking. Once
more a village had made its way into the fabric of his heart and this made
him glad. He would come back again,
many times, to see his friends. Jiminy the driver Relative of chads, lives in Burma, drives pajero shan
driver and van van
was older, said most his high school class was dead of aids, said jiminy was
a part boy but not him Rangoon Not been there, john says its dirty, people are rude
and so forth, but John doesn't know what art is and doesn't have any
appreciation for people in the first place. Just a computer. dyke in dawngee writer
from canada told me this story, and about the dyke packing a gun and how she
told how the missionaries ran guns and paid in opium Skating Rink Meanwhhile the chinese from Mengla had made a contract with the Burmese government to run a skating rink next to the lake with music and games for 20 years. T |