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Akha Chronicles In the Villages My experiences in specific villages and how they
served to educate me about the lives and
hard times of the Akha people.
The services that I was able to deliver them were far below what I
wished that I could do. That is my chief regret. Year by Year Year by year, I laid my life down behind the wheel,
going from one village to another, visiting the people, learning their names
and faces, finding out who they were, where they had lived before, how many
years they had been in that village, wether the village was split already or
not, the church, and what the grew.
How many huts were there, did they have clean water, were there any
major problems, were they being threatened with relocation? I asked many questions, writing much of it down,
taking note of what they needed most and how I might be able to help. My truck looked all the worse for wear, the fenders
gone, the roof battered, the frame cracked repeatedly, sometimes bad tires,
sometimes good ones, and of course first aid medicines and all the tools I
needed to either fix the truck or fix the road. In the Villages This chapter is a look at the different Akha villages
and the ones that take a representative place in my work. Some are stable traditional villages, some are fragmented
broken, targeted for conversion, under pressure, bandit villages, villages
exposed to the worst sort of exchanges with Thais, others are villages that
are remote and isolated, relieved of many of the problems. These many villages make up the wide variety that I
deal with and each category may be represented by many villages facing the
same type of problems. Overall it makes a picture of the Akha dilema in
modern Village Conditions Beisides the heat life in vilages was very difficult. Much
of the owrk that had been invested in old village sites was lost with forced
village relocation. One could not
easily calculate the lost food security, fields, terraces, preparations such
as this. The cost was incalculable. There is a need for great investment in the
villages. Water, roads, electric,
terrace building, crops. So much to do and so much money to find that it was
discouraging. The villages Stories
of the village, all the villages, their roads, trails, lives, talks, by the
fire in every hut. The
vilage squares, dances, ceremonies, wisdom and knowledge of the elders. There
is peace and strife both in the villages as life is either let go or fought
over. The
struggle must go on, this is life. To
fight up, to grow, to improve. To fix, t repair to rebuild. Always
h ope that the best, that knowledge can be spared and passed on. The
Akha have great potential. 1.
Haen Taek Area Villages Aih Yoh Akha Village
above San Chai, tired, heroin, aids, another gangster village. San Sook woman
here dyes cloth. Another
gangster village, heroin and aids. twins
lived in this village, I think they had health problems, many people came to
see them. Mae Chan Luang Akha I went out behind Maesalong to Mae Chan Akha. They were having a problem about the village
being split, and I had fought this for a long time. The road was bad in and I hoped before I
got there that the problem had not gotten worse. I also wanted to talk to them about
forestry because I wanted to find out how much land forestry was taking and
leaving them to farm. Well, as it
turned out, forestry was taking just about everything, leaving a few fields
per family to farm, not enough for rice for the year by any means. The old structure was taken down and they were still
waiting for me to build the Sala but because of the moving of Huai Maak I had
been delayed. Then
the headman told me that of the nine houses that had split off, now only six
wanted to split off as the others had come back and taken up the ceremonies
again. This was good news to me and I
hoped for the best. Booh Dzmm’s
father had still split off and Booh Dzmm’s mother had split off, I
didn’t know about Booh Dzmm, what she was up to any more. I
asked about the road behind to Huai Maak but would have to run it in day
light to get a good feel for it. Dead, Nyeeh Pah Meeh Cheh Nyeeh
Pah Meeh Cheh relates how an incident was connected to Ah Baw Tooh from Mae
Chan Luang Akha, Booh Dzmm's father.
Two tourists were robbed, killed and put in a shalow grave and
gasoline poured on them to burn them up.
Somehow this was the fear causing event behind Ah Tooh's desire to
become Christian she said. I captured
the discussion on video tape but have not retrieved the copy. The Boeuh Maw Mae Chan Luang I wasn't sure what the truth was but only knew I was
getting closer to finding out. The old
man wover the strip of bamboo around the stick, caught anohter clasp of grass
blades and tied them first one way then folding them over onto themselves
around the stick, tied them antoher way, repeating the process till the stick
was full making up one grass roof tile. These he piled up, some one meter long, till he had
hsi share to donate to the ew sala that was being built. Water ran on the grass mid section so that
it would bend around the stick without breaking. He told me that the reason the family had become
christian was that the grandfather had been murdered. And now th e father's throat had becmoe
sore, Ah Tooh, and he was afraid. I
was sure I was only getting part of the story but he could not explain it
very well. He seemed also
uncomfortable, afraid, so I let it go.
The straw hat blocked the sun, his hands working
surely, sitting there in the heat, next to the fence near his house. His wife occasionally said something, as
she stacked broom grass nearby. The
ground was covered in green dust which was the seeds from the broom
tassle. They got the seeds out by
rolling the tassle on the ground. The old man said his heart hurt him to see the
village dividing so. Breaking, a split
gone in it. Maybe 8 houses pulling out
to become Christian. The wife of Ah
Tooh could not explain how she and her husband joined the split or guided it
actually with the visiting pastor. The headman had more exact sentiment. He told me how
that the woman had been pregnant and when she gave b irth to her first child
she could not feed the baby girl becaue of a painful breast. That he had helped feed and raise the
couple and their first child. His
expression was not betrayal but just dismay at the current results. The pastor was always coming mid day when
the elders were gone to their fields. Now both the girls from that family had gone to be
prostitutes in Ah Baw Meh His one daughter was 15 and working at some
unspecified job in Huai Krai. His
other younger daughter was working in Mae Salong and living at home in Mae
Chan Luang village. The family was poor.
Very poor. All the details were
not at first obvious. The house was so poor that the most noticeable thing
in it was a large sack of rock salt next to the partition. Not only was the house dark it was in general
bagginess. Bags hanging everywhere,
blankets, clothes, no fire ring, just a heap of stones, a broken mirror, no
shelves, rice sacks against the walls. The man's knee had gone bad. An old woman came with a leaf and chopped
leaves from the jungle and plastered them on the leg after spitting in lime and making a line of white around his
leg just above the knee. His face and eyes were big and open, like a face that
didn't see the sun enough, yet hard working and human. The hut was set steeply at the bottom of the
village. He had not enough land to
farm, one kaw was all and forestry might take that too. Very predictable, forestry, missionaries, army
working in all these places. Booh Dzmm, the three month story Huuh Mah Akha The Beginning of the Huuh Mah story I did get to the new village site below Huuh Yoh
Akha. What an awful looking
situation. Shows what happens when the
government tramples on peoples' rights.
Things sort of go bad, once the bad thinking starts. The workers had taken a cat and cut huge
terraces across the face of the mountain, very close together and very
steep. The Akha would not be so intrusive,
taking out only small pieces here and there for a house at a time. The Akha swore with good reason that this
site was not safe and might well all fall down now during the rainy season
because they had opened up so much of the mountain side at once. Block houses one after the other, asbestos
ceilings, from freeman to slave just like that. And narry the land to till near the old
site, impoverished the Akha would be if they moved to this site. I went around the mountain and found the road into
the village that was to be moved. The
road was long and beautiful through the trees, passed another villge and went
on long into the mountains to a secluded valley. There the Akha were rich with fruit
trees hillsides to farm, beautiful and
abundant rice terraces, buffalo, cattle, horses, pigs, chickens and
geese. The place was high, beautiful,
quiet and they had been there 78 years
best anyone alive could remember any way. In the village not a single person wanted to
leave. The headman had been Wa, as there were also
Lisaw in the village, and the Wa headman and Lisaw had been involved with the
Chinese and agreed to move the whole village accept that 37 houses of Akha,
which made up the majority of the village didn't agree to do this. The government told them they were destroying the
forest, hardly the case, and that if they wanted ID cards they had to move. Forestry was the real culprit and I had a lot of work
to do if I was going to stop this one.
The despair hung in the air, the roof pulled off one storage
shed. They had sold some pigs already
and would have to pay for all the trucks themselves, and sell all that they
had because there would be no room for any livestock where they were being
made to move. I told them to not tear down anything, that I would
see what I could do, that they should give me two weeks time, if they really
did not want to move. And the rest is
history. A Real Shock Huuh Mah Akha was facing eviction and I had to take
two foreigners up to locate in the village as observers. As I drove up the mountain a truck load of Akha waved
for me to stop. They were from Huuh Mah and told me that there had
been a meeting there and that the forestry had a letter from me about the
relocation and they were really angry. The army said they would be forced to relocate
anyway, even though forestry was backing off, and set the eviction for The village was jubilant at this first small victory
to keep their village in tact. I drove on to the village and once we were all there
we wrote up a statement to stay in the village. Everyone signed it with their thumb that
they did not want to relocate from the mountain. The Akha said that they would refuse to
move if they had any kind of back up.
I promised them that I would do the best I could. I really felt for them. They had this village, all the food they
needed, totally self sufficient, and the army wanted to move them into
poverty. Story of Huuh Mah Akha How
I discovered Huuh Mah Akha First
contact with the construction site First
contact with the village Army
in the village at that time Party Email
alert People
who came First
contact with the army Meeting
in Chiangrai the
vote the
village remains the
general forestry Sawat Village
Water problem No
power, no road, amen. Food
secure Huuh Mah Akha Action
Alert Forced Relocation of Huuh Mah Akha Call
for observers ACTION
ALERT!!!!!! This
is a very urgent message!!!!! Please
forward it to all the people who you know!!!!!! FORCED
MOVING OF AN There
is the immediate need for people to come to north locate in
a remote Akha mountain village to prevent its 400 inhabitants from being forced
to move within the next 30 days, meaning by the end of January 2000. Happy new Millenium, the new world
order. They will have to abandon
all their land and homes and have to pay to move
all their
possesions to a place where they will have no land to farm, no place for
their animals to grow and breed, and live instead in concrete box like houses
with asbestos ceilings and on a very steep
hillside opened up in
such a
way that mud sliding is imminent next rainy season. This
move is highly illegal on the part of the Thai government and forestry
department and these people have no voice and don’t want to move down
to the last person. The
village has been there for 78 years and there are people who have lived in
the village since then. This
village move will only be stopped by a physical presence such that
intervention is obviously on an international level. If
no one comes, there will be no blocking the move, and all the families will
be shoved into poverty by the forestry department. They have been told they will not be
allowed to become citizens of There
are not many days left. Please
contact me if you want more info or can come, the village is waiting to hear
if anyone will come and help them.
They have no rights, they know that, which leaves others to help them. Matthew
McDaniel Call for help THIS
IS AN EXTREMELY URGENT CALL FOR HELP. WE
NEED JOURNALISTS HERE AT THE VILLAGE PLEASE
FORWARD THIS TO ALL YOU KNOW. Chiangrai,
Forced
Move of An This is an urgent message and update about the forced
move of an Akha village. This
move is to occur January, end January, this year, NOW in a few weeks. Myself
and one other visited the Akha village Huuh Mah Akha (thai pronunciation Huai
Maak) in Ampour Mae Faluang District of Chiangrai Province. The
Thai personell at the village at the time said that the village was being
forced to move because they were cutting down trees and poluting the water
shed. The move was being ordered by the Thai Forestry
Department and an office dealing with Watershed. As
I have monitered this area often, I can see no proof of cutting of trees that
could not be controlled, especially since non native pine is planted up all
the way to the village on most sides of the valley, the valley, small valley
walls being used for food and highly developed terraces, the terraces
supplying most of the rice, making slash and burn not desired or much
necessary. This village happens to
have one of the most environmentaly friendly situations in the area, as they
have put great effort into these terraces and to use a minimum of the
land. Certainly forestry and water
issues could be addressed without taking all that these people have invested
in and owned all their life? What is very badly needed now is that anyone who can
alert a journalist to this situation should contact me, so that some
arrangement could be made to come here and look at the situation. We contacted the Ampour office for Mae
Faluang district in Many
have asked what they can do. Well, we are really in need of some reporters to come
here and look at this, and any other people that can be observers. I know that few can come, that it is not
easily possible to drop all and go, but at the same time it is not going to
be easy to stop the move without there actually being people here to look at
the situation, report back to their own countries governments, and make a
presence to the village. The
Akha involved, except for the land, have not much of anything, they are poor,
are lucky to have temporary id cards issued the hill tribe and have no legal
rights or recourse. All
the Thais I spoke to said “sorry, it must happen” not to them of
course. It is also recommended that you contact the nearest
Thai embassy and equire politely what is going on. Do not be confrontive, but persistent and
polite. The
name of the village is Huai Maak. It
is a few kilometers on your map from a town called Haen Taek north of Doi
Maesalong in It
is not the issue strictly of legality, but of humanity. If this is the cost of trees and water, we
need it not. Huai
Maak village latitude and longitude coordinates are: 20degrees
13.31 N 099degrees
34.49 E 1053
meters Matthew
McDaniel PTT Dear Tansamrit-Hoho Songkiert at Petroleum
Authority of A Ms. Josephine Birch sent me your email address and
suggested that I visit
a village that she noted is being forced to move by the Thai forestry
department. She said that you are opposed to moving people to
plant trees. I
hope so, and that this order to move a village can be turned back. As
I am very busy I don’t always see things happening as they build up and
in this case it is very unfortunate because this situation has progressed
very far already. A village in Ampour Mae Faluang, Chiangrai District
named Huai Maak, is being told that they will have to move. This Month. A “village” has been chopped
out of a mountain for them. Complete
with highly carcinogenic asbestos roofing in these tiny row houses. People
in Forestry and Watershed are both involved in this decision. Since I noted that there are a score of
pine trees surrounding this village on all sides and your signs often
accompanying such plantings I could not help but note the connection that she
pointed out. On
visiting the village and talking to the villagers I indeed noted that they
are being forced to move against their will.
The village has been there 78 years according to them, that is going
back to about 1922 if I calculate correctly.
A little of a long time on immenent domain. I
also saw the site where they are being crouded into row houses on a hill,
courtesy of some money from The Thai people at the village today told me that the
village was poluting the water and that villagers were cutting trees. Yet I saw no evidence of either. After all, rather old growths of pine are
planted up to one side of the valley ridge and much younger pine planted to
the other side near the site where another village was forced to move three
years ago. Your strategy is obvious, take all the land that the
Akha are living on and force them to live else where while you plant row
after row of non native specie pine tree to the impoverishment of Today
I inspected rai apon rai of pine planted, ten years old I would guess, not a
damn thing growing underneath it, the soil dead. Since anyone can tell you that pine has not near the
bio mass that verdent jungle does, your progrom is increasing the likelyhood
of drought in Thailand and the diminishing of multiple species of both plants
and animals. I don’t know if
someone plans to harvest this in the future or not, sure looks convenient to
that, a rich portfolio. The other foolishness of this kind of planting is
that in these mountains each spring huge layers of very humid air build up
from flash rains, heat presses it all down, making the forest a furnace and
then lightning strikes all afternoon, you can see it rolling in the clouds
like great electric fingers. Normal
jungle is diverse and wet, many layers of wet, pine blows like an exploding
flame and both animals and people die and forest is stripped bare in
minutes. I have seen it here near Doi
Tung, and I know of people that have died from it, you can not outrun such an
inferno shooting to the ridge. If
you will, could you please explain to me why PTT (Petroleum Authority of
Thailand) is engaged in sponsoring all this non native specie pine and
further how you can justify moving villages? This village in question has been there for 78 years,
much older than you or I, a history, a people, rice terraces, fruit trees and
a fortune in human memory and knowledge of the environment. Rather
than work with them, as part of that environment, they are to be moved
against their will, this month, January, 2000. Welcome to the new millenium and the new
world order? Is that it? The
concept that they are above watershed is foolish at best. The water from this valley drains into the
Haen Taek region only kilometers away, where every kind of polutant is dumped
into the water, so how is one village endangering that? Further, we have been after the idea for
years that all these herbicides and pesticides should not be so freely sold
in If this is used as an example, following these flimsy
guidelines, you could justify the moving of every Akha village out of the
border mountains of The social welfare cost to the several hundred Akha
in this village will not come cheaply to them or the Thai government once
this move is forced. I have worked
with other villages that have been forced to move. The death rate of the elderly and the
infants is quite high, and since there is no land for these people where they
are being forced to move compared to their current location, we can assume
they are being moved into poverty.
Pigs, cattle, water buffalo and chickens not only do not do as well
down at lower altitudes but there will also not be room for them. So the protein supply and the fruit supply,
the general nutrition of this village will plummet. Rather than being self sufficient and
independent, they will be forced into a cash economy completely, and will
have to farm themselves out to rich others who will pay them the standard
$2.50 US per day for whatever labor. Have you ever spent a night in an Akha village? Do
you know who these people your trees move so easily are? From every place in the Doi Maesalong and Doi Tung
area I see where these
pine trees have been planted in mass it has turned rich jungle and manageable
areas into rows of single specie trees which impoverishes us all. If you don’t know that these things are going
on, you should find out who is putting your PTT signs up all over the mountains of I
am always seeing in the Huai
Maak village latitude and longitude coordinates are: 20degrees
13.31 N 099degrees
34.49 E 1053
meters Sincerely, Matthew
McDaniel Forced Move of For anyone interested in the Akha Hill Tribe of North
Thailand and the preservation to their right to live, land and their own
traditions: Forced
Move of An This is an urgent message and update about the forced
move of an Akha village. This
move is to occur January, end January, this year, NOW in a few weeks. Myself
and one other visited the Akha village Huuh Mah Akha (thai pronunciation Huai
Maak) in Ampour Mae Faluang District of Chiangrai Province. The Thai personell at the village at the time said
that the village was being forced to move because they were cutting down
trees and poluting the water shed. The
move was being ordered by the Thai Forestry Department and an office dealing
with Watershed. As
I have monitered this area often, I can see no proof of cutting of trees that
could not be controlled, especially since non native pine is planted up all
the way to the village on most sides of the valley, the valley, small valley
walls being used for food and highly developed terraces, the terraces
supplying most of the rice, making slash and burn not desired or much
necessary. This village happens to
have one of the most environmentaly friendly situations in the area, as they
have put great effort into these terraces and to use a minimum of the
land. Certainly forestry and water
issues could be addressed without taking all that these people have invested
in and owned all their life? What is very badly needed now is that anyone who can
alert a journalist to
this situation should contact me, so that some arrangement could be made
to come here and look at the situation.
We contacted the Ampour office
for Mae Faluang district in that
the order came from by
the Thai army. True to their word we
found Thai army in the village today,
with a truck and putting on a party before “the chicken’s head is
cut”. The Thai civilians in the
village said that no body was being forced
to move that all the Akha present wanted to move to the tiny houses
being built by generous Taiwanese people down the mountain on a steep
hillside of a “new village” that will have little to no land for them
to farm or place their animals and all investment will be lost. The
Akha all present immediately sung out that this was not true at all
and that none of them, not one, wanted to leave. Can you imagine being 55,
having lived somewhere all your life, and your mom, and being told,
hey, sorry, you are a non person, want identity cards in well
then you have to move. This is a move
into poverty. Probability that these
families will see their daughters go into prostitution is high. Having
little resource once the land is gone.
The boys as well may very
likely enter into the drug trade to make up the difference. The cost in
social welfare to the Akha and the Thai government will also be high. In
addition if trees and watershed are going to be the set method of determining
if a village gets moved then the real goal must be that all
the Akha villages get moved out of the mountains into the flat lands, into
ghettos if you will, landless, labor class for the Thais, as is the
case in many places already. Many have asked what they can do. Well,
we are really in need of some reporters to come here and look at this,
and any other people that can be observers.
I know that few can come,
that it is not easily possible to drop all and go, but at the same
time it is not going to be easy to stop the move without there actually
being people here to look at the situation, report back to their own countries
governments, and make a presence to the village. The
Akha involved, except for the land, have not much of anything, they are poor,
are lucky to have temporary id cards issued the hill tribe and have no legal
rights or recourse. All
the Thais I spoke to said “sorry, it must happen” not to them of
course. It
is also recommended that you contact the nearest Thai embassy and equire
politely what is going on. Do not be
confrontive, but persistent
and polite. The name of the village is Huai Maak. It is a few kilometers on your map
from a town called Haen Taek north of Doi Maesalong in Chiangrai Province,
north It is not the issue strictly of legality, but of
humanity. If this is the cost of trees
and water, we need it not. Huai
Maak village latitude and longitude coordinates are: 20degrees
13.31 N 099degrees
34.49 E 1053
meters Matthew
McDaniel ********* URGENT UPDATE: JAN 30 FORCED EVICTION OF ONE OF This
is an urgent up date in the latest events of an Army eviction of an Akha
village in north Please
forward to as many people as you know. Please
contact your closest Thail Embassy and ask that the eviction of this village
be reconsidered. Don’t
be confrontive, be polite. The
name of the village is Huai Maak, in 20degrees
13.31 N 099degrees
34.49 E 1053
meters Dear
Friends: This is the latest update as I have the information
regarding the forced eviction of Huai Maak Akha village here in Chiangrai province slated
for the end of this month, Jan 30. Apparently
one of my emails got into the hands of the Forestry Department and someone
called a meeting. Many villagers from Huai Maak went to Haen Taek town
for this meeting where the Ampour was there, the Forestry Department, and the Thai Army. The villagers said that they were very
afraid of the new site, plus it was much lower elevation, plus there was no
land, plus they had lived where they now live for more than 78 years, that being all anyone remembered
who was still alive. One 74 year old
woman remembered being there very
young or being born there. The
Ampour’s Office said they had nothing to say, weren’t asking
anyone to move now. Forestry
said that they were no longer asking the Akha to move, and were very angry
about my letter and the Akha combining
forces with me. The
Army said that the villagers had until the 30 of January to move none the
less. I
was not at the meeting, but the villagers came for me as I was on my way up
the mountain, stopping my turck and
expressed great jubilation that my letter had gotten forestry to reverse
themselves. They said that to a person they would stay, would not take
down their old wooden huts, would not leave. I
warned them not to have an army confrontation. Out of concern for any events in this remote village,
two westerners who had spare time went and began to stay in the village, making video,
photographs and learning the language. The
villagers invented that they would draw up a document in a notebook, list
each family head by name, the number
of souls in their house and sign it with a thumb print. Both Lisaw and Akha. All 31 families did so.
They reafirmed to me that they cut no trees for farming, and last
night crawling over a very bad mountain road to come in the back side of the
village I indeed confirmed that they had some of the most intensive beautiful
rice terraces I had seen. I also noted that the Asian Development Bank has
offered a policy in I
took the document from the village of the villagers stating why they did not
want to leave, and all their signatures and left late in the night. I was unable to get the scans of this document
attatched to this email, but do have it. As
I sat eating in the dark wood interior of the very old hut last night, all
heads of households crowded inside,
the hut swaying on its stilts, I could not help but feel what a tragedy that
it would be if one of the oldest Akha
villages in Say, what did that Nikon cost. To
force this village to move, would be in extremely bad faith on the part of
the Thai government to its obligations
to minorities set forth in many accords, and also to its obligation to
humanity. The Thai government
has avoided classifying the Akha as refugees, or taking note of the fact that
the Akha way back years before had not
much concern for whose mountains they were living in, there were no Thais
there and they in fact went on living
as they always had, in the mountains.
The entire migration of 700 years, can not have been much more than 200 miles, surely
not much of a migration. Yet they are not considered to be full citizens in most cases either. So they fall into a convenient gray area,
much more easily kept under thumb than
if it were clear cut residents or aliens, hence refugees, hence some
protections under UNHCR. But
this move also brings up other matters. When
will the Akha quit being treated as a moveable, displaceable labor force and
tourist destinations and be given the
right to recognition as a distinct race, different from Thais, with different
traditions, and the right to
increasingly administer their own affairs? This
would include that if they are on the menu for tourism, that they manage the
tourism themselves, and also get the
dollars for each time people come to gawk at them like so many caged
monkeys. It really is quite disgusting. All these western tourists coming up to see
these striking people while in fact the Akha
have not hardly a right, and certainly not much the right to raise
their voice. The concept of nation states and no one else like
small peoples having much of a voice is western engineered nonsense and
western people should stand up and see some of this reversed. The
Akha are a people without a country.
In laden
two bit army that comes along. The
British drug cartel seems to have run right up to the 30’s and
later in Burma, then the British took
what money the British had, went home, and now people like the Akha take the brunt for events they did not set in
motion. The Akha are not home in They
showed me a notice trying to entice village young people to jobs in Chiangrai
to strengthen this hand. On
the one hand, MP Paveena’s Tourism Authority of Thailand makes a small
fortune for selling
the exotic fare that these Akha present in north They dare not move, that will come soon enough. Their children and young and old alike must
fight for the village square with a
host of road traffic. Springing
up everywhere now seems to be some kind of “Hill Tribe Culture
Resort” like the rather revolting
Lang Tong resort on the road to Doi Maesalong, or the The
administrators kept giggling about these backward “Ekaw” people
during the interview, that there was
even this little clearing in each village where all the young people
went for free sex. Gee, how
interesting. What
people will believe and give lip service to when it suits them. But
back to this village move, it is a human rights issue, these people have some
rights as humans if they are in Then
the churches and missions, standing under the shaken and broken tree can
claim one more victory, adding a score
more poor and desperate to their ranks, proof of how backward the culture
was, so strapped in “darkness
and bondage” as they like to say, and just that much more justification
for how they abuse these people of
their culture as well. Where is OMF,
the American Baptists, the Korean Presbyterians, Youth With A Mission, the Chinese Baptists,
the Australian Pentacostals, now,
the Catholics, all of them? Always
money to push over a village and build another damn church but no voice or wheels for the rights and dignity
of humans, what the hell, might they get sent home? Gee that too would be a shame! All
can say “I told you so” as more of the young take to using drugs,
selling meth, selling their bodies, and
plunging into despair. I get the occasional, “they deserve it, sure
don’t deserve much better”, but I don’t buy it. Where
ever you are, contact who you may, and plead intervention on the behalf of
these people. Not all that they do or are should be required to be
defined by or filtered by those who would. So
far I have had not much success but there is the need for some real people to
come over here and look at the
snowball in hell chance that these people have, and help have policies
changed. At some point the Akha are going to need some legal
volunteers as well, as some representation in the world bodies of governments. At this point they appear to have none. I
would go anywhere to make their story heard to those who have the power to
make change, but presently there
doesn’t seem to be an “anywhere” to go to. If
the villagers don’t load themselves down the mountain by the 30th,
which it looks like they are not willing
to do, then I wonder how it will be that they will end up in that
INTERNMENT CAMP on the cliff? Or does this just happen to all orthodox people? If
you can come, please come will you, while there is yet time? Just
an army of one. Matthew
McDaniel If You Must Go, My Friends The Akha It
seemed they were all there The
remnant of a people the
sun and toil weathered deep in their strong faces now
covered with the dust of fear the
beams held the roof up but
the place still swayed not
so much the wind as
the force against their lives what
would happen if this? and
what will they do to us if that? the
talk went on late into the night the
children concerned not to sleep but
to watch the
trees planted near by they
were the advance troops not
friends the
old trees behind they
guarded the back road canyons
of jungle and banana full
of life and moisture they
shook my hand I
felt ashamed each
an art that
would get no thank you if
the army comes what
do we do? they
say they will come the
hut holding firmly its posts in
the spaces between the rocks the
horse, tiny horse, cribbed
next to the steps every
board fitted and worn the
feet of so many children over the years free
and safe from
hut to hut full
of fat rice wind
and work the
rains to dust the heat, the
storms to lay the soul to rest sour
greens tasty
pig thick
rice whiskey the
Lisu the Akha all
speaking laying
their voices for mercy in the stones the
pine, from foreign land, stomping their dark stubbly feet at
the edge of the village death
the dust of their shoes rice
terraces ten times the height answering
back to accuse them from
across the way the
arena seats of ten thousand souls come
and gone to the rice from
the years before do
you know these lands? do
you know these children? do
you know these stones which
you slight and
all the weary mothers, carrying
child, who
have polished them with bare feet, walking
over them the years do
you know that star there or
the wind my friend on this left ridge the
Akha children laughter
from the village over can
you soothe more than one hurt with
the pitch from your soul that
leaks out and runs down
your stomping legs can
you bend the rice yet
not to break it can
you dry it yet
not to drop it before
you make it to the hut can
you send the water from
under the rocks to
the valley bottom without
troubling the grasses or
frightening the chickens can
you give the shade to
the brown cow’s back but
still put the sunlight on
the ears can
the Akha dance in
joyous circles in
your dark and
desolate halls once
for the rice a
dance in the singing planting
each seed some
growth to give once
for the swing the
drum throbbing the
maidens so cheerful warming
the souls of
their elders of age once
for the rice gone
into the chambers wooden
tops and black seeds hopping singing
voices, all
till dawn the
babies sleeping cradled
on mothers back silver
all around our
ancient terraces can
you better us now? When
the lightning comes it
will eat your soul if
the Akha be gone the
silent spirits will dance forever
to cheer the
saddened memories of
all that was lost here the
wind still tumbling down
the mountain with
great leaping sobs the
bamboo wailing to
honor them when
others were too great to
ever understand. Robbery Here is an updated web site with the situation photos
of the Forced Akha village move to occur on or before January 30,2000 plus
images of the five pages of the petition which the villagers made up saying
that they did not want to move, 31 families, both Lisaw and Akha, who have
lived at this location in health and relative wealth for 78 years. Robbery,
this is how the indigenous get impoverished. After
the theft, everyone calls them backward. Matthew
EXTREMELY URGENT COUNTDOWN FORCED
MOVE OF 99-01-22 Thai
Army Dear
Friends: This
is the current situation with the Forced Move of Huuh Mah Akha (Huai Maak)
Village in To remind, this is an Akha village of nearly 200
people, having lived and buried their dead at this location for 78 years and
longer, one of the oldest undisturbed villages in But
we think it is time to stop this policy. This policy to force the villages to move however
approved by people like the US Government in their paranoia about drugs fails
to take into consideration that it is a part of the role of genocide and
considers not one right of the Akha people.
Thai authorities continue to insist that the village
wants to be moved, yet can not produce a single Akha of this point of
view. Since there are a score of
villages that have been moved, and all these villages were opposed to the
move, it is hardly likely that they
ever could find an Akha to agree with this move either. Keep in mind that very few of the Akha are given a
national ID card, and the bulk of the rest who have blue cards are not
allowed to travel beyond their district, and predominantly do not have any
rights of any kind, including land. If
someone were to claim that they do have rights, we would like to ask how
these would be enforced, why these stop short of being able to get a passport
and travel at will? Two days ago I was rousted from my sleep, having been
driving all night from villages including Huai Maak, by four soldiers of the
Thai Army. They were angry, they
photographed my truck, photographed me, demanded to know who I was and what I
was doing, that they had some kind of big problem. The one man from forestry stated that
Forestry also had some big problem, that it was all about the internet and my
email to Petroleum Authority of Thailand.
I asked him if he had gotten such an email. He said one was received. I asked him what the problem was. He could not reply specifically. I asked him why he did not answer the
email? He could not answer this either.
I asked him why the forestry and PTT were planting all this pine and
damaging the environment, he could not answer that either. Finally he asked if I could go with them to
meet an Army officer at Two
people, one from No
person who can show that they are in charge has been identified or stood up
to address the issue. We
will have to see what happens on Monday.
We can assume that since the village doesn’t
want to move and since the Army is telling them to move, instead of the boy
scouts, that there is real probability that intimidating force will be used
to make the Akha comply, abandon their homes and decades of investment in the
land as well as their sacred cemetary in the jungle where they have buried
their dead for so many generations.
This disgrace of the Thai government and associated “Hill Tribe
Cultural Development” people will be redressed by formal legal filings
with the UN if it goes forward under genocide. Since there are very few social services
now to the Akha in general and since the location that they are being told
that they will be forced to move to is unsafe and a health hazard, and since
the children and adults who have seen this location are already frightened by
it, we can assume that the forced relocation of this village will have
immediate and long term mortality effects on the health of these Akha and
Lisaw concerned. There is no land to
farm at this location, and animals relied on for income and nutrition in the
diet will immediately decline as they have in other villages. Many domestic farm animals will not do as
well at hotter low altitudes than the higher cool altitudes the Akha now
prudently live in. Excuses
that the Akha have no rights since the Wa nation pushes drugs through their
ranks is foolish. At
Huai Maak Akha the villagers do not smoke opium, are fully employed, have
rich diets, and have no financial reason to be engaged in either expanding
their existing farming areas which are very well managed, or deal in the
methamphetamine trade. While the Akha are being blamed for all the drug
problems, which in turn is put on this village, the Thais do a fantastic
trade in all kinds of wares with the Wa, basically laundering huge amounts of
Thai baht to build a fantastic center on the Burmese side, so fantastic that
the Wa now want to relocate 90,000 of their people there from all over Burma
and even China. No
effort is made to ascertain that the money to buy all these Thai building
materials, and so forth, is not coming from the drug trade with If
it is being paid for in say US dollars, what country is converting all the
baht into US dollars? Whose
financial institutions? Yet
the Akha, the poorest of the poor, are threatened that they will be forced to
move because of what ever suspicion they are under of using drugs. There will be this big meeting in Chiangrai, many
people attending if the Thais do not cancel it. Please
continue to press the Thai government for direct answers as to how they can
justify this village relocation into destitution, labor class, and poverty,
of a culturally wealthy and healthy people. My
ability to gather financial resources for this ongoing battle has been
seriously hampered due to all the time being spent on this, and at the same
time my costs to maintain this presence in the mountains has put an
incredible drain on finances. The
truck is quite battered, seriously lagging in repairs and the bills are going
unpaid. If you can send any kind of donation to help with
this work please do so to the credit card access below or to the addresses or
bank accounts listed. I
would once again like to thank Sven in I
will be forwarding more updates this week as the 30th draws
closer, it is not my attempt to flood your mail boxes, but this is a very
serious matter for a whole lot of men, women and children, including elderly
and pregnant women as well. Please
make use of the contacts below, and protest this forced move. Matthew THAI
EMBASSY CONTACTS ABROAD; DIRECTORIES; http://www.waw.be/rte-be/english/embeur.htm Telephone:
(06) 273-1149, 273-2937 Fax:(06)
273-1518 Cable:
THAIDUTO E-Mail:
Thai@csccs.com.au LOS
ANGELES PRIME
MINISTER OF Prime
Minister Mr Chuan Leekpai PUBLIC
RELATIONS DEPARTMENT Director
of Mass Communication & Information Centre Mr
Coosak Rongsawat Director Press Relations Centre Me Surin Plangprasopchoke TOURISM
AUTHORITY OF THAILAND offices CHIANG RAI; AUSTRALIA; UNITED
STATES; Prime
Miinister of Mr
Chuan Leekpai Office
of the Prime Minister The
Public Relations Deptartment Mr
Choosak Rongssawat Head
of Information Co-ordinator office
02 618 2323 ext. 1011 home
02 814 1136 mobile
01 8314913 Information
Co-ordinator Mr
Surin Plangprasopchoke Director
Press Relations Centre office
02 618 2323 ext. 1505 mobile
01 254 0790 Ministry
of the Interior Office
of the Permanent Secretary Mr
Chakraphan Yomchinda Ministry
Spokesman office
02 222 8005 home
02 589 9066 mobile
01 614 9831 Ministry
of Defence Office
of the Permanent Secretary Lt
. Gen. Sanan Kajornklan Special
Office of the Permanent Secretary of Defence office
02 226 2309 home
02 612 3826 mobile
01 9416 888 Deputy
Maj. Gen. Pichai Siripibool office
02 225 6789 - 02 226 3114 home
02 532 1729 - 02 993 7300 mobile
01 837 3257 Supreme
Command HQ Royal Thai Army Head
of Information Co-ordinator Col.
Sant Noiboonsuk Director
of Public Relations Division office
02 281 6482 home
02 503 7511 Royal
Thai Army Col.
Samkuan Sangpattaranetr Army
Spokesman office
02 279 7925 - 02 278 5321 home
02 981 8790 mobile 01 981 8790 Governors
Office Chiang Rai (053)
711 600 Ministry
of Defence 3rd
Army Chiang Mai (055)
258 545 Provicial
Affairs Development Division 02
221 9121 Ministry
of the Interior Local
Affairs ID
Card 02
281 3962 Phitsanulok
3rd Army Department
of Civil Affairs (055) 244 145 Countdown Please
Pass This Message To All List Servs You Know. This
is an urgent message to advert ongoing genocide of the Akha Hill Tribe by
governments and missionaries. EXTREMELY
URGENT COUNTDOWN, FORCED MOVE OF 00-01-22 Thai
Army Dear
Friends: This
is the current situation with the Forced Move of Huuh Mah Akha (Huai Maak)
Village in To
remind, this is an Akha village of nearly 200 people, having lived and
buried their dead at this location
for 78 years and longer, one of the oldest undisturbed villages in
have
been forced to move over the years. But
we think it is time to stop this policy. This
policy to force the villages to move however approved by people like the US
Government in their paranoia about drugs fails to take into consideration
that it is a part of the role of genocide and considers not one right of the
Akha people. Thai
authorities continue to insist that the village wants to be moved, yet can
not produce a single Akha of this point of view. Since there are a score of villages that
have been moved, and all these villages were opposed to the move, it is
hardly likely that they ever could
find an Akha to agree with this move either. Keep
in mind that very few of the Akha are given a national ID card, and the
bulk of the rest who have blue
cards are not allowed to travel beyond their district, and predominantly
do not have any rights of any
kind, including land. If someone were
to claim that they do have rights,
we would like to ask how these
would be enforced, why these stop short of being able to get a passport
and travel at will? Two
days ago I was rousted from my sleep, having been driving all night from
villages including Huai Maak, by four soldiers of the Thai Army. They were angry, they photographed my
truck, photographed me, demanded to know who I was and what I was doing, that
they had some kind of big problem. The
one man from forestry stated that Forestry also had some big problem, that it
was all about the internet and my email to Petroleum Authority of
Thailand. I asked him if he had gotten
such an email. He said one was
received. I asked him what the problem
was. He could not reply
specifically. I asked him why he did
not answer the email? He could not answer this either. I asked him why the forestry and PTT were
planting all this pine and damaging the environment, he could not answer that
either. Finally he asked if I could go
with them to meet an Army officer at Their proclivity to get people out of bed with guns
and then cancel their
appointments was not nice. The soldiers
when they came to the Akha house were angry and demanded my passport. I stated that I had no
idea who they were and needed their names.
They refused. I then stated
that as far as I had been informed,
passport control and the issuing of visas and travel permission
inside jurisdiction
of Immigration, and since they could not tell me who they were,
I assumed they were not from
Immigration and therefore would not be giving them my passport. Two people, one from No
person who can show that they are in charge has been identified or stood up
to address the issue. We
will have to see what happens on Monday. We can assume that since the village doesn’t
want to move and since the Army
is telling them to move, instead
of the boy scouts, that there is real probability that intimidating
force will be used to make the Akha
comply, abandon their homes and decades of investment in the land as
well as their sacred cemetary in the jungle where they have buried their dead
for so many generations. This disgrace of the Thai government and
associated “Hill Tribe Cultural Development” people will be
redressed by formal legal filings with the UN if it goes forward classified
under genocide. Since
there are very few social services now to the Akha in general and since the
location that they are being
told that they will be forced to move to is unsafe and a health hazard, and
since the children and adults
who have seen this location are already frightened by it, we can assume that
the forced relocation of this village will have immediate and
long term mortality effects on the health of these Akha and Lisaw
concerned. There is no land to farm
at this location, and animals relied on for income and nutrition in the
diet will immediately decline as they have in other villages. Many domestic farm animals will not do as
well at hotter low altitudes than the higher cool altitudes the Akha now
prudently live in. Excuses
that the Akha have no rights since the Wa nation pushes drugs through their
ranks is foolish. At
Huai Maak Akha the villagers do not smoke opium, are fully employed, have
rich diets, and have no financial reason to be engaged in either expanding
their existing farming
areas which are very well managed, or deal in the methamphetamine trade. While
the Akha are being blamed for all the drug problems, which in turn is put on
this village, the Thais do a fantastic trade in all kinds of wares with the
Wa, basically laundering huge amounts of Thai baht to build a fantastic
center on the Burmese side, so fantastic that the Wa now want to relocate
90,000 of their people there from all over Burma and even China. No
effort is made to ascertain that the money to buy all these Thai building
materials, and so forth, is not coming from the drug trade with If
it is being paid for in say US dollars, what country is converting all the
baht into US dollars? Whose
financial institutions? that
not all of their money is going into buiding materials and vehicles, so what
are they storing the rest
as? Gold? Yet the Akha, the poorest of the poor, are threatened
that they will be forced to move because of what ever suspicion they are
under of using drugs. There will be this big meeting in Chiangrai, many
people attending if the Thais do not cancel it. Please
continue to press the Thai government for direct answers as to how they can
justify this village relocation into destitution, labor class, and poverty,
of a culturally wealthy and healthy people. My
ability to gather financial resources for this ongoing battle has been
seriously hampered due to all the time being spent on this, and at the same
time my costs to maintain this presence in the mountains has put an
incredible drain on finances. The
truck is quite battered, seriously lagging in repairs and the bills are going
unpaid. If you can send any kind of donation to help with
this work please do so to the credit card access below or to the addresses or
bank accounts listed. I would once again like to thank Sven in I
will be forwarding more updates this week as the 30th draws closer,
it is not my attempt to flood your mail boxes, but this is a very serious
matter for a whole lot of men, women and children, including elderly and
pregnant women as well. Please
make use of the contacts below, and protest this forced move. Matthew Update of Events IMPORTANT: This is an update of events of The
Thai soldiers and forestry personell in Bah Mah Hahn told me that today was
the appointment but on the arrival of
myself and tv channel 3, a newspaper reporter and numerous Akha from the
village Huai Maak and my translator, along with a number of other witnesses,
the Forestry officials knew of no such meeting but knew of Huai Maak and the
situation. The
top forestry official met us, then became very angry and demanded to see our
ID. Since neither I nor my translator
who is from In all the hub bub I told the forestry that I would
not be there had the army not rousted me out of bed with gun carrying
soldiers. The police took both I and the translator to the
Chiangrai Police station to the Police chief on the instructions of the
Forestry official. The police immediately recognized me and said that we
should be released and that we must be delivered back to Forestry. Upon our arrival at forestry the Colonel
from Ban Terd Thai (Haen Taek) Army Base was flown in to the forestry office
from the mountain. Upon the
Colonel’s arrival he called myself, my translator and an Akha man, and
a couple other individuals of forestry into the meeting room we had been
rejected from not so much before. The
head of forestry came back again and became angry at me again and the Colonel
appeared to ask him to leave, that we had business to discuss, and the
Forestry Official did so at once. We then talked for hours. I told the Colonel that the village should
not be moved, that it would have international repercussions. He told me that he would like to move all
the villages, but that it seemed he had an obstacle, chiefly me. We discussed many details and I told him that
the matter could not be resolved without a stated policy and decision on
government papers that 1. The village did not want to move and 2. What the
government had decided to do. He was
not sure that he could do that, so I explained to him that it wasn’t up
to me, only that one action would require that I report certain things
overseas and that another action would mean that I would have to report a
different action overseas. It was up
to him. This he seemed to finally
understand, but was not in agreement with it. He
said that the village would be given the right to make one more statement if
they wanted to move or not. This then was left to us and the Akhas upon
consultation said that they would
once again provide this information to the Army after Thursday
the 24th, which is in three days. We are seeking international Human Rights observers
present, this does not leave much notice, but to verify that this final
statement on the part of the village is without duress at the time that it is
made on the 24th at There
are numerous reason how this village could fall under duress in the next few
days. Any
Human Rights Organization who can provide us with an observer at this time,
it is crucial that you send me an email at mailto:akha@loxinfo.co.th
immediately. You may call me at
01-881-9288 in During todays meeting we were told that other
villages are slated for moving, Huai Yoh being the next one. We were also told that We
have not yet been able to find contact emails for officials at the Asian
Development Bank. In
the afternoon late, when our meeting ended, we were soon able to see numerous
flights of both military and forestry helicopters to the Terd Thai region
coming and going from Chiang Rai. Today’s
situation demonstrated two things. The
effect that a few people can have on a situation and also the need for UN
representation for peoples like the Akha, people who can be appealed to in
order to represent their case. The
current situation with the UN and impossible access is totally unacceptable. I
will be making further updates this week as I find out more, we still do not
know if the village will be moved. But
the Colonel did say, one, that he wants to move many villages, two that he
knows what he is going to do, and three that if they do move the village it
will be very fast. Please
do not hesitate to contact me if you can be of assistance in this matter. Matthew
McDaniel Maesai,
Weekly Update Update of the situation at Huai Maak
Akha Village Maesai, Numerous people replied to multiple calls for
assistance and arrived in northern A
meeting was held with the Thai Army for the Therd Thai Region and it was agreed
on that the village would be requested to express their wishes once again by
a vote. A
number of people from outside the region came to Huai Maak to witness that
vote and make sure that the conditions in the village were without
pressure. Upon the completion of the
vote 35 Akha and Lisaw families stated that they would choose to remain at
Huai Maak while 12 Lisaw families said that they would leave. Col. Sawat of the Thai Army met us at his
office in Therd Thai and accepted the signed statement for the record and
appeared to agree that the village would be allowed to remain where it was. I can not say that I trust the situation for a number
of reasons although the intended moving date has been passed. Currently Huai Maak is in continued
discussions with the Thai Army because now it is said that there are not
enough people to move to the new location so no one will be allowed to move,
not that this should trouble anyone, but I am just curious what the new
strategy is? Secondly,
the policy of the Forestry Department is so blatantly disregarding of the
health and well being of the villagers in so many villages that this has to
be an issue that does not go away. In
discussions with numerous other villages in the last few days it becomes
clear that the Thai Forestry Department continues to treat the Akha as aliens
in The Akha meanwhile are being paid small wages to
plant these trees on the land they farm as a kind of consolation prize or
mockery at best. Many
villages no longer have enough land, and many
more are loosing crucial amounts of land this year. Reduced quantities of land force the Akha to
plant the same land over and over with decreasing rice yields and the
collapse of these soils which then can not be rotated. Without
hard numbers to draw just how dark the picture is it can only be said that an
overview of the situation shows the Akha to be in a crisis of survival
because of lack of land. The
alternatives is that they move little by little, dispersed by the hardship,
the villages breaking up. I will be studying how this situation can be
addressed as a collective issue for all the villages, not just Huai Maak and
will be reporting on that as soon as possible. A
second gathering place has now been completed in Matthew
McDaniel !!EXTREMELY URGENT AKHA ALERT!! Dear
People: THIS
IS AN EXTREMELY URGENT AKHA ALERT!!!!!!!!! HUUH
MAH AKHA UNDER INCREDIBLE PRESSURE!!!!!!! I
have been monitoring the situation in Huuh Mah Akha since November of last
year. January
a move was stopped, an eviction of this village by the Thai Army and
Forestry. http://www.akha.org/eviction.htm Huuh
Mah Akha is surounded by Non native specie Pine plantations. We
are told that this is wanted for pulp for pressboard. We would dearly like to know what company
is behind this, who is backing this Forestry,
Army and Petroleum Authority of Thailand Joint venture. If
there is a western company providing seeds, a factory later on, you name it,
we want their balls. I
remember now that I spotted a western consultant in these regions at the time
of the clearing and planting of some of this pine but had no
vehicle to investigate thoroughly at that time. FOR
THE LAST TWO DAYS Thai Army has been preparing the way for five helicopters
which will come to Huuh Mah Akha on the 8th of may, simultaneous
to the Asian Development Bank Protests in Chiangmai at that meeting. A
long dissused helo pad was surrounded by beautiful trees. Because of the large numbers of
helicopters coming the Thai army made the
villagers chop down all these beautiful trees in a perimeter around the pad. I
have been in and out of the village. Today
I went in because the woman from I
passed humvees and army command cars leaving the village, more army was still
there when I got there, making villagers smoothe the landing site further. The
observer from are
going to put a project in the village, that they are going to help develop
it, and so forth. Army
says they are coming to develop the village. A
polotician is coming as well. They
are saying the will give gifts to the villagers that they are there to help
them. These are the same people that
two months ago didn’t believe
that the villagers didn’t want to leave and made them vote twice. Maybe from all the wars, army is tone
deaf? The
villagers are being told that if they will become Christian they will be
given much more. DAPA,
the two faced mission org, now claims it is not a mission org and even has
peace corps working for it. This
is the organization started by the famous population control and
sterilization expert, Dr. Paul W. Lewis of the American Baptists. Development
and Agriculture Project For Akha. It
works hand in hand with the missions, but now says it is not a mission org. We
wonder how this works? Not
a single village that this org works with is the culture promoted in it. They
get money, they eat it. Good life.
Know how to play golf anyone? Window
dressing. Further
more, people connected to this org are moving girls out of villages for
Christian indoctrination. The girls say that they must abandon
their culture and become Christian.
We verified this in interviews made by international journalists. We
denounce anyone who claims to be a Christian but uses their religion, their
church, their mission, to put down the culture or traditions of
the Akha people, which includes almost all of them. And most backed by moneys from Church
people in the Imperialism.
We
are also informed now that the 2001 Cobra Gold excercise that the US Military
does each year with the Thai military, will be held in Chiangrai
province as a joint “drug interdiction” project. We
highly protest this because this is one contributing factor to the
militarization of the Akha Highlands.
The Thai border is artificial and
gives no consideration to the tribal peoples. Police raids for “drugs” are
made at all times of day or night in villages full of old people
and children, forcing men to flee the houses as they do not know what the
attack is about, and if they are lost from the household the
children will nearly starve. There is
no concern for human rights in these large gun toting raids which I have sat
through more than one
time. Can
you imagine a pick up truck roaring into a village with a bunch of men
dressed in black, carrying assault machine guns, racing through
and around the hut you sit inside, no papers, no explanation, no concern for
nothin. Explain that to an old lady who has had her village
burned more than once. CRAP!!!!I
say, GOD DAMN IT. CRAP!!!!!!! The
UN so far is not interested in investigating this matter. The
citizens of Huuh Mah Akha told me that they are under severe pressure now
from many politicized parties, mission and army and “ngo” to give up the sovereignty
and control of the village to their projects. We
stand for security for Huuh Mah Akha. Not “development for consumerism
industry, eco tour, more crap.” They
are self sufficient for food, have solar power, have tons of rice terraces,
fruit trees and forest. They are only
short for peace and good
medical care. The
villagers also have not asked for development, they have asked for books in
Akha (not religious) have built their new gate and rededicated
the village to the traditions of Akha, and they have asked for coffee plants
and a traditional Akha language teacher. They
have asked for limited teaching in english for some of the children and some
of the leaders. As
well, a very frightful illness has moved into the village in a very
mysterious way. A
large number of villagers complain now of a strange fever. I took two back to
the village from the hospital today. Two
men lost almost all their body weight in six days. When I visited the village two days ago
they were very frightened, said their bodies
hurt all over, and were coughing up blood right in front of me. They had just come back from the hospital
where the doctors could
not tell them what was wrong but gave them anti biotic anyway. They do not have TB. This illness occured in less than two weeks,
healthy men going down to nothing with pain all over the bodies. I
immediately thought of the possibilities that these villagers have had their
water tampered with. There
are complaints of illness throughout the village. I
suggested to the villagers today that there was the possibility that
something was in the water. I
suggested to them that they should check
their water source and see if there had been any activity at the source. They
said the illness, how wide spread it was, was very unusual, that they are
seldom sick at all in the village, and when you see how the village
is, how they live, you can see how this is true. They
said that today the army was asking questions about their water source. The
turnoff for the entire Haen Taek region has been militarized. The corner road at Sam Yak Akha village
where you turn to go into this
region now has a heavily guarded military command. A second army command road stop is being
built just before Bpah Mah Hahn Akha
on this same road. Huuh
Mah Akha is a first class example of how an undisturbed village can be self
sufficient, buys few consumer goods it doesn’t need, and
lives well from carefully cared for fields, terraces and orchards. But
this will no longer be the story, thanks to incredible stupidity of
outsiders. One
mission org said it will go immediately to work on the road, which will
increase traffic into the village. Few
Akha have reason to use the road at this point. I
would ask that if ANY of you know ANY international person who is qualified
to come here and report what they see, and take that information
to a world body, please contact them immediately and beg for this help. We
also need full time observers at this point for monitors
of this situation. Observers must be
unobtrusive, there is a house provided, and a team of two is preferred. You
must brings funds
to contribute, must provide for your food, and the villagers will show you
how to suitably cook in this situation. You
are there for the safety and security of this village. This is a full time
job, pays nothing. Also,
call, don’t talk, DEMAND to know from your local Thai embassy what the
.... is going on here and why this village is being made to
cut its beautiful trees and why it is being so visited by the army so
much. These villagers are being
harrassed in a crucible now, constructed
especially for them. AND
BOYCOTT ALL THAI RESTAURANTS AND TELL THEM WHY!!!!!!! It
appears that the UN doesn’t get off its ass till people are dead. The
tell me they can’t get involved, that they can’t involve
themselves in internal
affairs. But
World Health Organization can deliver the Tetanus Toxoid vaccination, not
once, not only twice but as many as three and four times to
every Akha woman who dares get pregnant with pinpoint accuracy. Now
go FIGURE!!!! I
received a call a few nights ago from a man with an American accent who asked
if it was Matthew McDaniel speaking and then said, “Mr. McDaniel, you are going to be
shot in the back of the head.” I
hung up. There was no trace of the
call on my phone. Now
one more thing. I
really appreciate all the people who write in and tell me what a wonderful
job I am doing. I feel more it is
just a job that needs doing. But
I would like to say, that this job does not happen for free. I
have no office, and I am even closing out my tiny room in Maesai. So
I can spend more time with my bride, which is my battered falling
off. It is not that me and the truck are in love unless american style,
because I really hate it. It beats me
often, never says sorry, and
never kisses me. It never goes dutch, always makes me pay and pay and pay. So
there will be no rent. I
don’t recall that I take pay. I
eat. As long as it conforms to three rules. 1.
I remember to. 2. I have the time. 3.
Oddly, only when I have money. But
eating doesn’t produce food, and driving doesn’t produce fuel and
repair parts and getting sick doesn’t produce medicine, surgery, or doctors. Thankyous
come in, but donations don’t. I
hate to talk about this, but you will not find a more committed individual, a
more village centered, money spent in the villages project, in I
spend all my time either on this computer, or on the road, or in the
villages. I
go non stop. Seven days a week. I maintain, with the help of one friend
now, one of the largest web sites on indigenous issues on the net.
You may not agree with my commentaries but you won’t come away without
a firm idea of some of the issues if you visit Akha.com. I
receive no government money. So if you like the work I do, donate
please. It is the only way that there
is medicine, fuel, parts, Akha books, plants, tree sapplings, visits to
the doctor and the stopping of what other people would prefer to do in their
theft of the Akha people. For
ten years now I have put every resource of my own, every inch of brawn, brain
and keyboard, into this work non stop.
I own ZERO assets
either here or in the I
only know how to write the occasional story and when people are spitting
blood, it is hard to remember what that one I had in my brain this
morning was going to be. If
you care about these people, if you think my work valuable, then please
donate. I
have unpaid internet bills, a balance for the woman in the hospital, urgently
needed repairs to the truck, another Akha woman who need proper
medication for hepetitis and needs for more medicine and vitamins. The elements that let me do my job well are not free, maybe my
time my life is, but the components are not. You
will never find more bang for the buck that goes directly to a people, no
strings attatched to spur their ranks and bolster them in time of
need. I
don’t even force them to believe in Jesus. Please
donate people, I make the money go very far, I use it to help these people
very carefully. Matthew
McDaniel Just
back from Huuh Mah Akha. Security for Huuh Mah Akha Achieved. Ox Bells, The General and Beautiful
Birds: The Death Of Bright Eyes. She called me in the morning, she wanted to go home
and see her children one last time. I
told her that they would not let me take her out of the hospital till the
bill was paid. And I was still waiting
and hoping that some money would come in quickly, in time. She had way more cancer than what surgery
could remove. In my heart I felt that
the surgeon must have known this before the surgery because the tumor was
already visible on the skin. Meanwhile situations were brewing in the mountains,
fuel money was short. It came down to
the evening before the day that the army would be holding a meeting at Huuh
Mah Akha and I still did not have even money for gas. The room was hot, the fan going, the heat
duplicating the despair that gripped my mind.
My friends wife called many times from the hospital but there
wasn’t gas to go there even. I
searched my mind, I searched the streets, a light rain fell. Somehow I found two hundred baht. This
wasn’t much relief, because now I would be forced to go directly to the
mountains as there was not enough to go to the hospital and see her and then
go to the mountains. Without better
than a thousand dollars to get her out, there was not much that I could do,
yet I wanted to at least spend some time with her and talk. It wasn’t possible. The light rain cooled the street and I
headed for the mountains, feeling not the least good. It was past I climbed the bad roads into the village, complicated
by rain, mud and now not the best tread left on my tires, the four wheel
drive having to work that much harder, and by two in the morning I was
there. Didn’t really matter when
I got to Huuh Mah Akha, they knew I came early if I could, but they always
made tea, so we sat and drank tea, and talked till three. None of us knew what was going to be happening the
next day. Whatever it was it was
serious as there was an army patrol sleeping in the school, a helicopter had
been there every day, and the pad was clear and big trees had been chopped
down right in the village for a second one. They were very concerned, many people had been coming
to the village proposing this and that project, knowing little to nothing of
the village or its situation. Finally I went for some sleep. I woke to the sound of ox bells down below my hut and
the village. I could hear bugs, wind
even, the dawn as it were. There was
no big road into Huuh Mah Akha so no Thais came there at six in the morning
tooting their horns to sell things to the villagers which was a most annoying
mentality. There was no big rush of
traffic, no electric wires and poles, blaring TV’s, each youngster
going through their state of having the power that the volume control offers
on some big cheap plastic stereo. Falling water at the washing pad, the drift of
childrens voices, the bright green as when trees are still wet with dew and
cool. In the morning it is not light.
It is gold and green. The light is a
substance, not something you look through and past, but a color, it is here,
it is there and then it becomes different and disappears, only giving sight
to the stage. The trees and
magnificent jungle around Huuh Mah Akha help you to see the light, where it
is, and below the trees, the golden light can not get there, but it is only
cool. In the morning the trees seem to
carry the light on their shoulders, like some kind of liquid gold that they
bounce up and off their leaves, tossing it to one another, higher and higher
till it gets hot enough to vaporize and then we can not see it any more, yet
it gets so hot it comes back and burns the very trees that gave it loft. Then in the evening once again the light
settles back down to the ground upon the leaves and down between them,
falling onto the ground as dew that lays there till it begins to bounce and
stir again in the morning. There is
one bug that gathers the dew of light just at night, after it has fallen off
the tree leaves, onto the grass, and this bug catches a bunch of it and then
holding it in a small spot upon its tail it races about half the night in
drunken circles flashing everyone with this tiny collection of light. I went up to where the second helicopter pad had been
cleared at the top of the village, two beautiful large shade giving trees had
been felled by the army, course the Akhas had been made to do the evil deed. I could see figures coming down the road that led out
of the village up to the ridge toward the I took the time to explore the elements of the
village a little more, expecting missionaries to show up as they said they
would, I wandered up and identified the pastor in the village. He was an invader, didn’t live in
that village, had no family there, wore a shirt that said something about
Jesus belonging to the Chinese. He
didn’t farm, didn’t do anything but try and split the village it
would appear. Apparently he got his
pay from the German who was busy shipping transvestites to More army officers began showing up in the village by
truck. I spoke with some of them. One took me aside and told me that there
were many goings on, that there were many problems in this region, that the
pine was very bad for the jungle, for the mountains, for He showed me statistics on the Chinese in the region,
who were running their own mafia, drugs, smuggling women, buying ID cards. They numbered about 10,000. Gin Haw. The Akha numbered about
24,000. Now it became sort of obvious
why the Chinese missions were working so hard to convert the Akha into their
controled ranks, it trippled the people under their control and gave them
much more power. The day lagged on, we had lunch and into the
afternoon. Still we waited for the
Army who were coming, no NGO’s, no missionaries showed up. None of us had any idea what the meeting
was about. Then around two in the afternoon a call came in on
radio that the helicopters were on their way. Soon we could hear the distant throb and looking far
down the valley we could see them making a line up the jungle mountains to
us, striking as for the appearance of intent and power, drawfed by the magnitude
of the place they come to visit, like mechanical bees in it all. And only three to this vast expanse. They followed the contours up, their rotors throwing
slow motion white to the eyes. All
three pulled high and to the left circling, and then the first one came in
low below the village and touched down while the other two headed further out
for the moment. Then letting some
people out, the first one lifted off again and all three went to see the new
village site, hung now on the eroded mountain, some of the houses damaged by
mud already. Soon one senior police officer, the assistant Ampour
and the head of forestry, a portly guy, puffed their way up to the benches
where we were sitting. The police
officer from Mae Faluang was indifferent, chatted, the Ampour was a tall
fellow, a few questions and the head of forestry was most unhappy, puffing
and grumbling about a foreigner getting him into all kinds of shit. Sorry, did it yourself sir. Were going to cut the end off your nose was
his humorous reply. And then the helicopters were back. Two more landing the third circling and
flying off again toward Hua Mae Kom.
No one landed at the second pad for which the big trees had been cut
down. This is the mind here. Top ranking officers came up into the village, a
swarm of commandos, and the General. I
was told his name but did not manage to write it down, all was happening so
fast. A few weeks earlier I had a
meeting with Colonel Sawat. He had
laughed off my concern about the pine being planted on Akha lands. Now he was obviously ignored. The head of
forestry spoke to the General, said he had a big problem because of this
foreigner. The General took a very brief look around, began passing out care
packets of food to all the villagers, and then began talking to them. Yes, talking to them. How come you planted all this pine up to
the village he asked the head of forestry?
Oh, they can be moved down below said the forestry man. And how will they not all die replied the
General? Oh, but sir, we have planted
all the way to the And with that, he went back to the helicopters and
they all flew away. The villagers stood at the village perches, watching
as the rotors wound up to speed and the great beautiful birds turned and
leaned as it were out and over the jungle, then off and down the canyon. Looking over the head dress of one Akha
woman and her baby it was a most odd moment. The villagers talked that a road would bring too many
people and ruin their hillsides and that power lines would do the same and
cost money and make them look awful and that they had solar anyway. I told them to think it over carefully but
that the decision had to be made by them.
If they refused the new road and power lines, they would remain one of
the most beautiful Akha villages in The phone rang surprisingly, my phone still showing
no signal. The hospital. My friend,
the woman with the beautiful bright eyes at her final hour, was dead. The bill was not paid, but could I just
come and get the body quickly anyway.
How odd, how the priorities change. Death, more powerful than
greed. And now only her tiny baby girl
had her beautiful bright eyes. Since
no truck would volunteer to take a body to her village, nor were they able
due to the roads, I was forced to wrap her body and bind it carefully to the
truck for her final journey. Now, in
mockery, at least enough money had come for gas. The hospital staff were all
too eager to let her out now. The villagers met me at the entrance of the village,
helped me to unload her carefully, carried out the proper ceremony at the
village entrance and then carried her into the house for the funeral to
begin. Her husband was very poor,
there wouldn’t be much, but they set about to making a coffin in the The
Television
Praih Ah Paih (Cheh Pah Kah) I went out to mae maw and pria a paih. Ifind that the villagees are now more
accessible but that the people are still very poor and the culture is greatly
broken. There are western style
religious influences everywhere yet still grinding poverty. When you see the wealth of the promters of
this religious line you realize how hypocritical it is. Prai ah Pai was a village with Lahu, Chinese and two
or three Akha Villages. They were
growing more and more tea every year, and were always into some kind of
business. Bpah Cheeh Akha Bpah Cheeh Akha was where the Sah Mah lived. His father had been out cutting a tree one
day and didn't come back. They went
and found him lying there like he had a seizure or a stroke. The village men said that when they got
there they found three spirits standing nearby. Two wanted to kill him all the way and the
one said not to do it. They took the
father home and he remained like a caged animal after that for many years,
tearing at his bedding, growling and making noises, not going out of the
house, eating his food out of a pot with his hand, aggressive to some degree
but childlike in others. They had
taken him to Chiangrai but no one knew what to do with him. Church - Bpah Cheeh Akha The
Taiwanese Chinese Baptist had finished building the church at Bpah Cheeh
Akha. There was a Christian side of
the village with one church so now they came and built a church on the
traditional side. So missionary. Pooh Cheeh Kah 8
Christian Middle
is all Christian, 20 Lower
steep village is less than 5 christian and 30 Akha traditional In
the upper village Ah Churh is the headman He
said that the christians give the children cookies to make them come and the
parents advise them against this. The
interloper is a pastor from Doi Tung, Ah Sah. Ah
Sah says if you believe in Jesus you won't get sick. These people are desperate, the christians
that is, they have to resort to everything.
It is so odd that people would resort to a lie to spread the
"truth" reminds me of a manure spreader more like it. Now is the year 2000.
Three years ago in this village Ah Sah told Ah Pah Rgoeuh Yuuh that he
should be christian. The reason, he
had one child and this child died, so Ah Sah told him this was the reason he
should throw out his culture, burn his traditional things, and be christian. He didn't understand it but went along with it. You can lead anyone, and Akha should not be
blamed for being led in a bad way, this is not the first or the last place
where the christians have worked to this legacy. The pastor told him that becaue he didn't have any
kids he should become Christian and abandon his culture. Always the weak spot they need. Peeh Mah's Hut Long haired one, Ah Yeh cheh Muuh Gooh. In the upper Pooh Cheeh Kah village. One son, wife died.
He has a nice small hut, he gave me the tail from a Pyah Eeh. A
pyah eeh is a long tail spotted cat or Lemur.
Eats bannanas and rats, snakes, turtles. Tail is ringed black and white. (tauh kauh
is the ant eater with armor, pangolin) His son takes medicine to try and stop smoking meth
and opium. Everyone is trying to stop
now. PIlls cost 60 baht for ten. Tramadol HCI. There are two Nyeeh Pahs in this village, both are
men. One does bone maipulation and
massage, one "sheehs". This is very unusual, least first cases that I have
heard of. (Note: since
then one Pooh Cheeh Kah man was beaten along with Ah Tay and Ah Juuh when Ah
Juuh died at the army base. Also the
village, one of the sections, caught fire and burned.) The Christian Akha in this village say that they
don't do the ceremonies any more but also they don't have any chickens, pigs
or good rice. Shah Mah I first met him at the hospital when Ah Chooh was
there. He was fixing an Akha woman's
broken leg. He had strange eyes, a
Shah Mah right off. His dad was
"possesed" like Nebuchadnezar.
He is in the lower Bpah Cheeh Kah village. His name is Ah Doh Mah Yurh. His father never left the house, slept always in the
bed. Understands to piss but does it
in the house, growls and grabs food out of the food pot that he holds. Eyes big, has wild thick black hair. Five years before he fell a tree. They went looking for him when he didn't
come home. There were three
spirits. Two wanted to kill him. One said not to do it. The son went and found him. He is 56 now. When he found him he was mentally broken
like he is now. The tree was cut and
totally finished. He was going to
build a pig trough from the tree. He
is a very interesting looking guy and his story is an incredible story that
needs to be explored further. At the time of the accident he was found with his
eyes rolled back, a little shaking but no injury. There was never a repeat, but it could have
been a one time seizure. He doesn't act like a stroke but more like something
snapped as they say. He reminded me of a human who had become an animal,
growling, hair thick and black as a bear, Nebuchadnezzar. Loh Mah Cheh Abaw Leeh Gaw House Burned. Abaw Leeh Gaw was not a Peeh Mah. More like a dandy they said, asking people
for money to solve their illnesses or problems, just to get the money. The christians in the village had one place
for the church they built, but they wanted the dominant spot for the church
above the village and Abaw Leeh Gaw would not give it to them so they burned
his house. One went to jail, one went
crazy and ran away and two were shot by someone. His house had been a nice wood plank house of many
years, he rebuilt it with a small bamboo one on poles. I came by the days after the fire, his grandmother
cowering in the rice shed, without a single blanket, I gave them the ones I
had in the truck. Booh Saw was the Nyeeh Pah at Loh Mah
Cheh Akha The wife of a christian Akha came and asked the peeh
mah to do a ceremony for her and while he was doing that the woman's husband
went and burned the Peeh Mah's house down.
The sky was filled with flames, a good wooden plank Akha house. Hua Mae Kom Hua Mae Kom village was really two villages of Akha
alone and then Lisaw too. The Pah
Luang was Lisaw, there was an upper The lower village was already a baptist village from
the Chiangrai people for a couple of years.
The pastor was young, the culture was villanized as usual. I helped one man put up his rice there one year, he had a nice family, lots of kids. The headman had a nice terrace below the village, but
his brother sold it to someone very cheap and ran away with the money. The Thais wanted into the area first with flower
plantations, then telling the people not to cross, not to use the water, and
a lot was soon going wrong. Quite frankly the Akha had not one reason to ever
trust the Thais who always went back on their word. Black Friday in an Draft
declaration on the rights of indigenous
peoples Article
12 “Indigenous peoples have the right to practice
and revitalize their cultural traditions and customs. This includes the right
to maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations
of their cultures, such as archaeological and historical sites, artefacts,
designs, ceremonies, technologies and visual and performing arts and
literature, as well as the right to the restitution of cultural,
intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their free and
informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions and
customs.” I and a friend fought our way up mud track roads
after a four hour trip to reach one of We had a gift of writing books and pencils for the
last traditional families in the village. Two
weeks before the headman told me that the Chinese Baptists had come and
convinced three
quarters of the village to become Christian.
From personally checking with the families
they had told me that it was required that they abandon all of their
traditions in the process.
Finished. So when I climbed the ladder to the headman’s
porch and sat down I was greatly concerned as
he sadly poured me tea. I and my
friend drank while he related the events of the last two weeks.
There had been five or six families that stuck with
him. There was one village elder
living up the
hill that was helping to hold it all together. The headman had not invited the missionaries and
did not approve of their demands. But
then some time in the last week they had convinced
the elder to join their forces below and abandon the headman. So he moved down to
those huts. The other families soon followed along. What could he do, with the last elder gone
from the tradition there was no one left to teach the old ways to the
families. He was more
than just a little sad, saddest that I had ever seen him. Though the huts had not moved he
was now a headman without a village and the new puppet pastor the new
functional headman. He knew that the missionaries always
promised to give lots to the people if they converted. Meanwhile the villagers were still asking
for medicine that the missionaries apparently weren’t including in the
deal. I went down into the other huts and was immediately
struck by all the changes being imposed
on the people. Numerous women were no
longer wearing their headresses as they had
been so proudly doing all the years that I had supplied medicine to this village. I asked them
why and they said they couldn’t any more. Some of the older women still hung on. But
the pressure was now definitely there to abandon them. There would be no traditional practices,
songs, or dances at all now, possibly something would be allowed at
Christmas. The
woman who practices the traditional knowledge and medicine for the village
was stopped. She was told that it was evil and that she
could no longer treat people’s illnesses. In
the name of their religious beliefs, and quite in contradition with the
spirit of those beliefs, the
missionaries are eradicating Akha culture in village after village. The Akha, with probably
98% written illiteracy, their books the elders, have no way or perspective by
which to
judge this method that comes with all the promises of prosperity. Prosperity that seldom materializes. From a standpoint of incredible rapid
economic change and severe poverty they
are being robbed of their rich heritage.
Children are taught that their parents are living under
the power of darkness and bondage, teaching disrespect to parents in direct
contradiction of the missionaries’ own religious texts. Such practices could not be gotten away with without
much criticism in the west, but people who
enjoy the freedoms of their individual traditions and beliefs in the west do
not believe in offering
those same freedoms to others if they can exploit them for the agendas of
their mission agencies. We
believe this has everything to do with endangered language. If you ban the culture, what exactly
is the language then good for? A
religious ban imposed on culture is just as powerful as a governmental ban on
culture if not more so. We find these repeated actions to eradicate Akha
culture from among the Akha people as going against standards set forth in
the UN Draft of Human Rights for Indigenous Peoples. Anyone
who would like an entire copy of the UN Draft on Indigenous Rights please
send me an email. There
is a whole lot going wrong here. Pulling teeth, (met Yellowcat) Lumber Today I made two trips from Bah Mah Hahn to Hua Mae
Kom for the lumber when the roads were dry. The army needed to see the receipts and I had them,
loaded the wood on the truck's light rack but the wood stuck too far up in
the air so I took the light rack off and hauled the wood. I loaded all the wood behind Ah Chooh's dad's
house. I had to get to know the
headman who seemed like a really nice guy, Abaw Zah, a little guy. But I could already tell that Ah Chooh's
dad would just as soon that I didn't build the school platform, or Sala, but
that I just gave all the wood to him. The wooden boards had two kinds, dark brown and
lighter yellow. The bugs ate the
lighter yellow fast. But the wood is finally moved and that will be good
news to the woman at the small schools in Then I found
out today the standard thing is to pay for the headman to turn the whole
village if you are a missionary and want to convert the village. The Akha are tough to hold onto their
culture so they even fought this, many families now willing to go along or
starved out of their culture, but now willing to give it up. The headman, as in the case of Hua Mae Kom upper Akha
village, got some money, a new kitchen building, a new retaining wall of
stone and concrete, but the Akha in the village overall got
impoverished. The Chinese Christians
from Maesai Baptist did this. Pay the village off they do, missionaries,
marketplace and then fragmentation, people giving up control of their lives
by the deception of others. An
interesting human trait, like boiling a frog, often people dont' know that
this is what they are entering into and time they figure it out they are
often sold out and destroyed in many ways. The loss is so significant, the abandonment of an
entire way of life and knowledge, that as a western person it doesn't even
register, but of course it happens in the west too. In the west we are also not raised to
notice or care about these events imposed on us by others. Some people go through their entire lives
not realizing how they have been used by others. The Akha have never been without their culture on the
other hand, so how can they know, how can they compare what is being done to
them now, to think of its final outcome, which for them may be extinction?
Maybe they don't want their culture any more? Maybe they think they can let
it go and catch it again? I think being fooled and then ending in decline is
the process we can see in action now, we don't have to wait. I am made numb by fighting it. One needs peace even in the middle of a job
fighting for the wall, peace for themselves and for their part in the work. Hua Mae Kom and The Nyeeh Pah Explain
what a Nyeeh Pah is. I have to go through several army check points going
to that very distant village Hua Mae Kom.
I am never stopped by the army but Sunday when I brought out the old
Akha Neeh Pah I was stopped at every one of them and asked just where the old
woman thought she was going. They
obviously did not want to let her go.
This matter needs to be investigated more, a general ill treatement of
the hill tribe in this area as their land is taken away. Hua Mae Kom is the villag I brought the Neeh Pah
from. After lengthly discussion with
the village headman, in addition to having to deal with the Chinese Baptist
which basically replaced him and took over the villge, the Thai army wants to
push all the village down to the flat miles below so that they can have the
mountain sight for a resort.
Electricity into the village was just small wire off to the side, the
big poles and lines in there really for the Thais who are coming to grab up
the land. The village has been there
for thirty years over. Does anyone
know anything about indigenous rights?
We need the help. We now have an Akha Doctor, called a Neeh Pah, down
off the mountains interviewing daily about her abilities to heal people. She is over sixty years old. She has a very important story to tell that
we hope to get into a book. We also have the problem that the missionaries are
actively suppresing traditional knowledge in this very village and forbidding
any of the practices that go with the culture, without even knowing what they
are. So
it is a race for time. In her village she is being told that she can not
heal people which she has been doing for many years. Apparently the pastor is the omnipotent
power now, something we find very dishonest, in contradiction to the
teachings of the Bible itself and very unfair to the tribal peoples who it so
radically effects. This has an
incredible impact on the youth that the Christians are teaching them that
their parents and elders are doing evil things that have no knowledge. We find these western church people,
despite their pretense at religiousity, very dishonest from a number of
standpoints. Must be fever time, lots of fever in the villages at
present along with lots of body rashes on the children. I am working feverishly to get all of the text of the
Akha book into the computer and into pagemaker. As
I have worked on this project I have felt two things. Number one that there is a tremendous
amount of knowledge among these people that they have of the mountains, the
animals, the plants, about people, about us as humans. And number two I feel a lot of anger that
so little of this knowledge over the years has come to light, that missions,
the dominant and most people numerous group to work with the Akha have
intentionally hidden and sensured this knowledge. I can see the only motivations to do this
as selfish ones, mission agenda serving ones because the knowledge that these
people have about the forest about life, about how we all fit into it is most
fantastic. I am also working to get an ambulance four wheel
drive to not only get medicine and sick people out of the mountains but to
find out where all these Neeh Pahs are before the missions eliminate them
completely and put them on some kind of encouragement/support so that their
knowledge will not be lost, once again, with dozens of missionaries scrubbing
through the hills, looking for that last wayward lost soul, as long as it is
Akha, the race is for time. Then
getting these Neeh Pahs out of the mountains and down here to where we can
interview them on video and find out about their lives in the past years and
also how they see the things that are occuring for them now. Yesterday, when I brought the Neeh Pah up from the
lower village where she is staying with friends, two other Neeh Pahs and a
couple other of the elder women wanted to come into town with her for the
first interview and so I rented a truck and they did, six of them, and then
we trooped all over town, buying this and that, soap, needles, a water pot,
shoes, a drinking cup, a thermos for hot tea water, a tub for washing rice,
fruit for the children, a fan. Lots of
fun. We went to the bank and while I
took care of some matters they tasted their first air conditioning. The man had to do some typeing for me and
after he did that and I got in the line, then they all stood there leaning
against his counter watching him work at that odd machine. They are all in their sixties and late seventies so
you can imagine the life that they have seen and come from in the
mountains. To an air conditioned
bank. Just a little time warp. Wish I had had a picture. Wednesday I took the Neeh Pah back out through a 100
miles of mountain roads to Hua Mae Kom, her distant mountain home. Stayed the night, talking longer to the
headman about the land that was being lost.
Everywhere the Thai government was taking the land away from the Akhas
and giving it to the Thais to the point that the Akhas would not be able to
raise enough food to live on and would be forced to move to town in poverty. In the morning I headed down the mountain and back to
one of the other villages to just check in.
A young married couple who had been sick with fever had gotten
worse. So I had to make two trips
thirty miles to the hospital, the wife so hot she hardly knew who she was and
I had to tie her to my back so that she wouldn’t fall off the
motorcycle, then come back for the husband and same thing. Both had malaria. Now, as of today, as far as I know all the contents
for the children’s book are in and I am busy typing it all up. The artwork still is not finished so I am
waiting on that while I finish entering all the text and doing page layout in
pagemaker. It
should be a very nice book. That is it for this week. The
jpeg photo is of two Neeh Pahs. The
one on the left is the one from the mountain 100 miles away. Hua Mae Kom The Thais are steadily buying and taking away the
land from the Akha in this area. One flower grower alone took 120 rai of Akha
farm land. I doubt he paid much for
it, according to the Akha nothing. Sometimes they buy land from a family member in
gambling or drunk like that makes it legal, they don't care, just an in. Bpah Mah Hahn This
is the village area that really makes up Lisaw, Lahu, Akha and Army Soi Yah
Kah Organized
Village Akha taxed
by pastor Church as franchise imposed on Akha
like Amway Therd Thai Shopping and trade center for Akha and other
hilltribes. Old home of Khun Sa. A
Wa leader used to live there many years ago but was ambushed and killed by
the Thais. His
name was: Killer canyon (steep) This
was out behind the steep village. I
took a honda dream motorcycle here a
couple of times and then a big bike here a couple of times and the horrible
tourists too. After leaving the steep
village the trail split up. I had to
find the right one, which was not easy.
Once I found the right one the trail dumped off very steeply, hardly
made for bikes, and one had to drag the motorcycle through a couple of the
steep curves. The trail went steeply into the creek and then through rice
paddies and up over hills to another village and out to Haen Taek. It was absolutely the worst trail
possible, going down through roots of big trees next to the creeks and then
up through areas torn up by the cattle or by an irrigation chanel cut by the
hilltribe farmers. And the humidity
was immense. I would have to rest
often and once lay right down in the creek with only my nose sticking out
above the water, my head and body were so hot. The Canyon (Steep) Yesterday I took a fellow American from By We turned at the forest camp lookout down a dirt
track to the left and then into the canyon, across another creek and up to
the next ridge where the road turned right and left. Right way went to another forest camp and
left went down the ridge to the south. We arrived late at one village on this saddle. Since I had been there before they knew me
and it was alright to arrive late though not normally. We sat on the Akha porch looking at a
bright half moon and talking about cross cultural marriages. Then I got a rambunctious massage from one
of the kids for 30 baht before trying to sleep on the men's side of the hut
on the hard board floor. It was hot
and sweaty and I finally managed to get to sleep only to wake to voices and
the calling of a child to its mother, Ah Mah-oh. We took a few pictures and then headed further down
into another creek toward the west on our way to Mae Maw. Here is a Lahu village and we took that
ridge to the south again and then turned west down hill through a very steep
village. Across the canyon there were
three villages on a distant ridge.
Behind that is Pai Ah Prai village.
But to get there we have to head straight down into a creek, very
steep. I lost my license plate in the
process so had to walk way back till I found it. Somehow I left the license plate beside the
trail and had to go back for it again, I was that tired, delaying us once
more. By the time I got back to the two motorbikes I was
fully exhausted. Then we had to fight
the bikes down the trail mostly in the creek because it was washed out so
bad. I was so tired that I had to get
Robert to h elp me out with my heavier bike several times. I was so tired I
could no longer heft the big bike past the smallest obstructions or mud
holes. At this point we reached a
bigger creek not far from an Akha village and the main road on the other
side. I stripped and lay down in the creek, cooling everything but the tip of
my nose. After a half hour in the
creek I got cooled off and had my energy back and we climbed up the last hill
to the Akha village shoving and throttling our bikes. From that Akha village we made our way to
Haen Taek and some good food. And from
there back to Doi Tung, where we passed the washed out river culverts at San
Mah Keeh. From there we went to Maesai
for more food and a good wash and nights rest. In these early years I could not speak much Akha. The
government was building lots of roads into the area on the idea that a place
without a road was no good. This
contributed to the problems for the villages and later on more forced village
relocations. Back to The Last Village (steep) I had ridden out the various dirt roads west of Doi
Tung in Chiang Rai province many times when I could get the use of a
motorbike. The roads were good during
the dry season, totaly inaccessable during the rainy season on especially wet
days. The main problem was keeping the motorbike upright. The
big bikes where good for the wide open but a honda dream beat them all when
it came to close to the ground manueverability. When the road was muddy a Honda Dream still
got there. If it wanted to slide on
down, you could either hold it back or just let it go, no problem, a broken
mirror at the most. The
last village had a bad road and you didn’t want to take a big bike on
it. I had done that a time or two and
once you have had to stand a big bike back up again, try to start it, get on,
get going, forget it. Do that once or
twice and you want to forget about big bikes. No matter how you cut it, from the one side or from
the back side new road, it was still a very long road into that last
village. I don’t know what the
name of it was, but someone built a big useless locked empty church there and
taught them all that their traditions were shit. I wonder about all of this. Real crap what these missionaries do. This case the missionaries were Thai
Lutherans or Methodists. Like one man
said, the missionaries are going to butcher it no matter what you say. Drained
Gasoline June
97 I
had gone to this Akha village many times over the years and always brought
eye drops for this one man and his older son to say nothing of other
medicines. This
last time I did the same and found out the son’s wife died. Wife #1. In
this village they spit on the old ways.
And then when Blane Jackman and I left in the morning they had drained
our gas and we ran out and had to walk for more. And
we had given them 100 baht as well. What humans. They
had gotten a new road to the village and how fast it had all changed. Now they were connected to the road from
Pai ah Pai. Ngah Nger Akha Battling
near here with shans. Albino
man and his life stories Huuh Yoh Lisaw Where
the Wind Blew Huuh
Yoh Pah Soh Huuh
Yoh 2. The Pah
leh Akha are soap village I
took soap there one night. An
hour straight up after I got to the right road, then long down road into
Chiangrai, need a 4x4 for that sort of thing. Later
I got the four wheel drive and it was still a challenging village. I took out blankets, bread, vitamins, first
aid meds repeatedly, and wanted to rebuild their water system. Gkeeh Seh Tai A
chinese missionary came here once and told us on camera that he told the Akha
their gate must go because the devil came in and out of the gate. They aught to put a bounty on
missionaries. Specially the
fundamentalist chinese. Keeh Seh Tai Traditional This
village had little but poor old women left.
They sold Akha crafts up at the tables near the road. The road down into the village was
very steep. Gkeeh Seh Thai Meeh
chooh The termination of the activities of Peeh Mah
basically guaranteed the termination fo that culture. The oldd no longer passing on the knowledge
of the past and the context of that knowledge. What the missionares were doing and saying was that
they were giving a new way, and pushing people away from themselves and self
sufficiency to a kind of fatal dependency where the new rules weren't about
survival, only survitude. They were forbidding the past, the language, the
history. Ah Surh Akha
Remember
water project Chasing
machette The Pastor - (Ah The pastor was a younger fellow in his late
twenties. He had been a pastor for a
couple of years in this Akha village.
They had sort of talked him into it and he was not so aware of what
they were up to, all the help that they had offered the village was tempting
at the time. They had given him a little money to build a better
house and came and helped build the church, but the other things for the
village never materialized. The church
was much in disrepair, and it had greatly fragmented the village. Now instead of walking to an Akha drum they
were trying to follow the distant directives of other people, who neither
lived in the village nor shared in its hardships. The elders felt misplaced, fell out of their jobs,
had little left to offer or discuss, their lives, their knowledge and
experience were discouraged and put on the shelf. On occasion they would be called on, but not so often
any more, why excercise what was scorned at?
So the village lay confused, nothing running clearly and no clear
leadership. Some of the villagers ran gambling, many Thais came,
even police for that, for gambling and to join in about some kind of drugs
while it was all going on. The
gambling was out of doors, next to a big tree, on the top of the knoll in the
village, all night long, twenty baht here, twenty baht there, only those who
would sleep could not. Some got
richer, had a big wad of cash, but next day were broke like their fellows
also. No one could get up the road
easily so they never got busted, till the regional head man shut it all down
in the end. Even the pastor and his new wife played. Course this caused them to fight that
much more. His first wife he kicked out cause the
Christians said he couldn't have two wives, so he kicked out number one with
his three sons. She moved back to
father's house but wasn't happy about it in a general way. Yet I couldn't tell if she was all that
unhappy about it. Maybe it was more
convenience, while he chased his second wife till she had a baby boy. Well, he did chase her too, and once down
through the village with a machette, cause he was sick, also the baby was
sleeping, and then she was gambling next to the tree and cornpatch there near
the widow's house, and the baby woke up and cried and she was no where to be
seen so he got pissed. She ran with
the baby, ducked into a hut, and all the village gathered round, to watch the
reveling. She came out crying and
blustering, he cooled off and went back to his place. The disjointedness of the village was apparent. One new family came to the village but the pastor
wouldn't let them follow the traditional Akha ways. The Christians were never tolerant of the
non Christians, but always wanted everyone to be tolerant of them, splitting
villages and so. They were a most
hypocritical breed. Worse yet, never
could admit to this double standard.
Arrogance. The village finaly got new water piped in and that
took a lot of stress off it. Still the Thais were encroaching more and more all
the time, playing generous with this hand, then taking up the slack with that
hand. The pastor, though he was sort of the leader of the
village now, by displacing all else, wasn't much of a leader at all and it
wouldn't appear that he did anything to protect the village. Yet he was young and it hadn't been his fault that
all this had been foisted on him with promises and then not much
materializing. But once the culture
was displaced, it was hard to restrengthen the old strong leadership that had
carried the people for so many years. Back and forth to the village with the very thing
girl. Sitting with her while she eats canned meat till it is all gone and
then drinks milk. Still not close to
being out of the woods. An old Akha woman came to me with blisters on the top
of her feet and up her legs and on her wrist and arms. I asked what she had been doing and she
said “picking chili peppers for the Thais.” But she could smell herbicide in the field
between the rows. Unfortunately all to
common here. Another Akha woman showed me this evening blisters on
her hands. Different place, different
village. Picking corn. More herbicide. The village with the very thin girl showed me their
water system. A ditch bringing water
from the head of a creek, far down the ridge to the village where it flows
into a pit above the village from which they drain it to feed the village
water for washing and drinking. If
it is even coming from a spring it would need a protective spring box and
then protective pipe to get it safely to the village. Very clear now that the elders in the one village
have been supressed for several years, virtually bringing their educational
and historical function to an end such that the children can not learn about
their traditions. Need I say more? Took a harmonica up to a blind and mute girl. Several missionaries came into town, and this is a
record of the exact conversation for those of you interested in giving people
a choice to learn their own language. “What
do you feel about people forbidding Akha’s from learning about their
culture?” “Well,
when people become Christians they are transfered from one kingdom into
another one and that is the end of their need for their culture.” Not to harp on it but I report what goes on here in a
realistic perportion to the time that it presents itself. Now have several people interested in books in the
village with the thin girl, as soon as the books are ready. The bulk of the children’s book is now done and
as I get it organized on computer the last bits are being finished up. Jim Goodman's Book The Akha: Guardians of the Jim
Goodman’s second book about the Akha will be coming out late this
month, an overview of their lives in different countries. His first book about the Akha was
“Meet The Akha”. More when
I find the title and the publisher name, suppose to have lots of pictures in
it, should be pretty nice. Trip with Ah Surh I went down to Fang with Ah Surh from Nyeeh Pah Moeuh Leh's village is way back in a canyon
and she is a huge tall woman. She
always yawned when she was doing rituals.
When I first went there I met Boeuh Maw, with the silver teeth and he
was drunk and really talking and later he moved to the flat village. The Nyeeh Pah's village had been divided by the
missionaries too. What an odd thing to do. Beauty - Ah Ah
Surh Paw All sound the trees, plants, bamboo construction,
like temporarry compromises with the dirt, animals, soft sounds, good
light. Nothing built much to intrude,
the absense of things the greatest situation to note. I ate some field sweet papaya, looking at the coals,
a broken egg shell, a corn busk, long ears hangng in the rafer, a blackened
tea pot. The old egg shells got used
for baking meat in, since they broke only the ends open with a spoon. The woman held her hand up, ilttle finger uplifted,
someone with a bad heart, and almost immediately the sort of headman showed
up. Something. I wold have to hear it later, but their
sense of the people around them was keen. Grandmother She could give an excellent back rub, once when I was
busted up particularly, and she was always quick to bring tea or soured
greens for me. Always I brought her
tobacco and caught her pleasant smile. The boy and the girl grew up slowly, the water
flowed, the rocks stayed where they were and the view down into the valley
remained. The bridge village The bridge village as I called it was at the Rimkok
river where they built the new bridge. The
village sat back on a small hill, fragmented, a small church, abandoned, the
old women coming to the river edge to try and sell their hand made cloth
bracelets and jangles to the tourists in the long boats. One girl in this village had a large fist under her
eye that I drained for her. No
husband, she left her child and eventually went to where ever to work. She gave me a very old song book put together by a
missionary, from which I copied Akha words. At
the sand village a little girl got fever and lost her eye which had to be
removed at the hospital. Nyeeh Pah Nyeeh Pah Moeuh Leh was the mother of a woman in Ah
Surh's village. I
went there once or twice, a very bad road in from the sand village and the
backside of Fang. Myeeh
Pah Moueh Leh was a big tall woman, reminded me of an elk, and she had a way
of yawning very large when she performed any ceremony. eye village river
boats, old hymm book 3. Ban Seeh Lang twins
resulting in church gettin built by presbyterians That
was Nimit’s story Abaw
Leeh Gaw lived here. Pah Meeh Ah
Gah and his brother The
shootout incident at Bala Akha. Pah Heeh I
went there once, once only, looking for a horse. The horses were very small. Som Pah Sak A
real messed up village Som Pah Sak was a good example of a real messed up
village. The Catholics made everything backwards in order to gain
control. To reverse the natural in
order to create the weakness needed to make dominating people easy. Making them slaves to the mission and the
mission agenda which needed them but did not need that they need themselves. Som Pah Sak had a long history of drugs and drug
related banditry and killings. It got so bad the government took out the
phone booth, half the guys went to jail. A good percentage of the women became hookers from
this village. There was a big
catholic church, always closed in the center of the village except particular
days. Ugly architecture, without sense
of where it was built even. It was noticeable in this village that the women had
big mouths and were unruly, often leaving their husbands to go and sleep with
another man, and on one particular occasion to get pregnant by the local
monk. But that could be fixed, she later left and remarried to the neighbor,
still not sated. In good fashion the men of this abdicated village sat
back and mostly said nothing. The women went around telling everyone what to
do, the men were submissive. The houses were crowded together and in the center of
the village below the church there was a big pond like sump that filled with
run off water from the pigs, chickens and trash thrown down the hill. The church was built but no care was given
to the village to guide anything as that would really have been in contradiction
to what was being done. You don't
disband a people and then by the same logic try to reassemble them using
components like the truth. Som Pee Akha Verge
McClure has kin in this village next
to bala, ah zeeh’s village the head of the militia who built the akha
market, in burmese army too, drug money one would say, som pee is a big
village, well known for that. Bala Akha Bala Akha Amazing
the solitude. Can’t match it in
maesai. The mountains engulf
one’s soul in a calming way .
Great vistas. Great mountains.
Spending time with one Akha family. I miss the mountains. Family
of five. Three before died. One girl and two boys. Before not too long ago house burned down
while they were in the fields. The
fire hearth or something. They said
that they could see it from the fields but before they could get back it was
gone of course. With all grass roofs I
wonder how one hut could go and not the rest of the village. The woman is busy cooking rice candy and
pig feed of corn on two different fires.
The people don’t much stop working here. The man holds the candle for me to write,
the two small boys look at the mystery of my pen scratchings and all it must
mean. Asaw
is trying to solve some problem from when the two Akha’s from this
village got into a tangle with cops and one got shot. They grabbed the wrong man when the others
fled. He was still in jail. I don’t think the Thais care much as
long as he was from this village, not their problem they figure. Some said it was a sting, some said it was
a heist. Inside the hut is peaceful. They do get some spare time, maybe more
than us in the west. The old boy has
time to smoke opium and it isn’t always the case that the woman is
apposed to this. When you add it all
up there may not be all that much more to look forward to, same as for city
folks, just that maybe Akha’s don’t have to cut down the whole
world to find out. The concept that
they would if they could is not necessarily true, certainly an easy
justification for those busy doing it
though. He takes a wad of stuff that looks like green yellow
gum and pulls some loose which he mixes with chinese aspirin, he says Thai
aspirin is sour, and then mixes it in wiht the ball of black tar he already
has scraped from the bowl of his pipe, reinvigerating it, and goes back to
the bubbly noise it makes as he heats and smokes it, the tar rolling in
through the tine hole into the bowl as it gets hot at the flame. The smoke is pleasant and sweet, but I
would hate to see his lungs. The smoke
rises gently through the small hut. Bala Akha 2 When I think of it there isn’t really much one
need to ad to this original culture of the Akha. It has lasted for years. No computers and no cars. The
overproduction based economy of the west has lots of speed and toys to offer. From an Akha porch there is always a mountain to
view. The woman sings to me her
daughter sewing nearby. A breeze
strokes my face. I
must come here to write, here in the mountain. Easy to arrive. Three
of her kids died, no money for a doctor she knew was below. The only thing might ad to their life was medical
attention. But that is no excuse for
all the rest of it and so often even the medical profession was just another
form of exploitation, the politics, the cost of it all. The disproportionate amount spent on those
who live to excess over those who just want to stay alive. Maybe this world needed a consumer tax and
the more you consumed the less medical credits you got. Horses work their way up trails on the far hillside
down below going to their daily pasture.
A bell for a guide. The
beginning of the rice planting and new year.
Drumming and dancing all night, the cymbol cadences. Today will be last of five days of this for
Akha Zauh. Learning the language and culture of these people is
most important. The best stories will
come from the village. That will be
the source of any Jacob’s ladder for the ones already living in the
city. This
village where the Thais can’t over run it is far better and traditional
than ones on the Thai side which have had so much confusion and evil. To be able to travel by horse in These
people do far less to destroy the world than the rest of us and in reality
they are not so interested in doing so or these would have moved to town long
ago, so they have a different definition of developement than we. We always see development as more and
better. Consumption
of anything on a daily basis seems quite low.
The things nature delivers them on a daily basis seems quite
high. View, air, cool, peace,
quiet. The needs and events for those girls down below in
town are far different than for those here in the mountain. The Shoot out Bala Akha May 97 Maesai is getting bigger. Big road to the border now and obvious
pressure and push to get to Will be manyh changes for this regioin. But
business in Maesai is not good with all the cheap goods coming south, but Gob of opium snot in the hut. 70 baht.
Same stuff south is 100 Akha
man smokes it, mixing the new with the old tar he rolls from the pipe
head. He adds chinese aspirin powder
that he says isn’t sour like the Thai kind. Goes through about 70 baht a day, wonder
where the cash comes from. Cop got shot busting some guys from Bala. Glad I didn’t come around the corner
earlier. They say he died. The other guy shot in the arm. I saw the car and that cop when he came
back without getting treated from taking his friend to the hospital. The shooters came from Bala Akha. A passerby fellow from Bala Akha got
grabbed and hauled to jail. And one
fellow from Pah Meeh Akha on the Thai side got hauled to jail as well. He was the interpreter. When the deal went bad at the road near the
end of the village driveway, the cops tried to grab the meth and run and when
that didn’t work they grabbed the interpreter instead and he ended up
in jail. Bala Akha 3 Opium
Heads Machine Gun March
18 Was taking medicine to an Akha village just below the
ridge on the dir Doi Tung back road from aMaesai. I had bought some dry opium heads there
earlier for Attur’s boss. When I got back there was a Thai medical
personell’s land rover there in the village at the landing at the top
end. And I parked my bke nearby. Then I discovered according to my
suspicions that I was in I
made my way down through the village until a bumrese soldier motioned me back
up through the vilolage at gun point. But by the time I got up there other
sodiers had figured out what I wa about and came for medicine. Just the same I made it back to my
motorcycle to go. The thai team was
supplying condoms. They offered me some grass and drink which I passed
on, eager to leave, but we did pose for one photo. May 97 The Shoot out Bala Akha Maesai is getting bigger. Big road to the border now and obvious
pressure and push to get to Will
be manyh changes for this regioin. But
business in Maesai is not good with all the cheap goods coming south, but gob
of opium snot in the hut. 70
baht. Same stuff south is 100 Akha
man smokes it, mixing the new with the old tar he rolls from the pipe
head. He adds chinese aspirin powder
that he says isn’t sour like the Thai kind. Goes through about 70 baht a day, wonder
where the cash comes from. Cop got shot busting some guys from Bala. Glad I didn’t come around the corner
earlier. They say he died. The other guy shot in the arm. I saw the car and that cop when he came
back without getting treated from taking his friend to the hospital. The shooters came from Bala Akha. A passerby fellow from Bala Akha got
grabbed and hauled to jail. And one
fellow from Pah Meeh Akha on the Thai side got hauled to jail as well. He was the interpreter. When the deal went bad at the road near the
end of the village driveway, the cops tried to grab the meth and run and when
that didn’t work they grabbed the interpreter instead and he ended up
in jail. And through that I met the
interpreters brother, a real nice fellow, Agah. He went to school for english. I asked him why he didn’t do drugs
and he said that he spent a lot of money learning and didn’t see why he
should fry it all now. Bala Akha burmese
machine gun bala later
killing of two villagers in night by army Bala Meeh
smm she
is at bala, has a bad ear on her one side, hard working but her mother is butt
ugly, who just had a kid, her mother, a boy I think. Her
father was clearly in love with the woman. They
took care of me after my motorcycle wreck. The
old man said his wife had the best there was. Lay
there right next to me, I unable to move or roll over, smoking opium and I
not a clue that it would have fixed most the aches in my body. The lawyer money at bala motorbike
wreck, hwy, family at bala 4. Wavi Loi Chiang Ah
Jay trying to take over Abaw
Leeh Gaw and the death of Ah Jay and Yos's father Abaw
Beh Ah Baw Beh Ah
Baw Beh is a traditional Akha man in Loi Chiang Akha village, his house is
just across from Ah Jay's father's house where some missionaries are lodged
now. Peeh
Zeh is his son in law who came to my wedding. Abaw
Leeh Gaw is from Bahn Seeh Lang. Abaw
Boeuh Suuh is Doeuh Loeuh's father, Doeuh Loeuh is married to Leo in
Chiangmai. One
of the three girls who came to the flat village, the nicest one, ended up
married to his house laborer. Ah Baw Beh's son Peeh Zeh Peeh Zeh said that why he doesn't want the christian
system is that from what he can see the traditional Akha way is much richer
and fuller. They both ate rice. But the Christian families had a much more exploitive
attitude towards the chickens and pigs, the food, while those who were
traditional cared for each animal carefully because they were going to need
the animals. I had myself noticed this. In fact, christian families often had far
less animals, far less food, far less protein as a result. Nov
97 San
Jah Luen Village A rainy morning.
I had come down here on the spur of the moment. On the way down we had hit a motorcycle
that shot out into the road without looking.
We had to do everything we could to not take him through the
windshield and if I had been driving I would not have been going so
fast. Despite the obvious marks on the
road the police did nothing. I
wondered if race was involved. An
older Thai man, the motorcycle driver was luck to be alive and for
appreciation he lied to the police saying he got hit while driving normally
down the side of the road. Now I can
see why people don’t stop after an accident. The whole thing is a corrupt farce. The police either don’t have the
skill to determine the cause of the marks
on the road or don’t care, but I go with the race issue on this
one. San Jah Luen Maesuai On the way to San Jah Look village near Maesuai we
hit a man on a motorcycle who shot up and onto and across the highway without
looking. We almost took him out
completely but then just clipped the end of the motorbike and spun him around
and down into the grass, smashing our right front fender as well. Then when the police got there he told them
that he was traveling with traffic and that we hit him. The police laughed it all off and nobody
paid. These are crimes of
machines. Expensive to own and no one
wants to have to fix his and the other guy’s as well. 4A. Chiangrai Area Ah pay Akha village A Champu First Village in from the jct Chiangrai river at Huai
Khom off Rimkok, go up to Champu, 1/2 Akha, then to Ah Yoh, moved two years
ago by forestry to lower location, but zero land to farm, trees everywhere
but no land. Lived at upper location
for 30 years. Came from Chiang Saen
area back then, but the Thai Army forced them out of there also. Head man's name was Ah Sauh. Very clear cut case of the loss of land and land
rights and army morals. Last move was by the Chiangrai Forestry Office. Besides Ah Yoh, there was a third small village
actually moving, and a second village that had been moved for a year. No land, always the same story. Huai Sahn Luka's
Village 5. South Ban Song Akha This
was the only village in Tiny catholic Akha remote,
alone and hot houses
burned by fire There
were three villages like this actually. Ngaoh Ah Surh Brother's Village This
was in the Maesuai cross over road to Fang region. There were several
villages here. Pah Lah Kah
Gaw
Jaw Akha chopping
tree in grave yard sparked forestry incident Joh Hoh Akha
Afect told me about this village down south called
Joh Hoh Akha and how they were being forced to move. I went out there right
away but it was already happening. I
took pics. There were tourists in the village, staying the night, they didn't
know the village was being torn down right then and there and that the people
were being forced to move. And they didn't care.
The guide got 4500 baht from each of them and gave 200 baht for all of
them to the village, they didn't care about that either. Seven houses are left, I hear they were forced to
move now to and have to go back and check. Beautiful location, forestry "banned them"
from farming and taking care of some 3000 fruit trees they already
planted. Joh Hoh Akha
Forestry
Eviction Police
raid Lack
of leadership at Afect Huai Knott
Mooser
influence, Lisaw Who
sold out? Twin
girls in one hut. Water
situation was bad and the headman was a poor leader, always asking something
for himself in a very foolish kind of way. Ah Yeh Akha
This
is the remote Akha village out of Wiang Pa Pao. Not
far from it there is the end village way out in the rocks of the mountains. 6. Interesting Villages The tiny forestry camp village This
one was above Chiangrai (north side of river) and the Rimkok river, was only
six huts. The Forestry Camp village remote south near Ngao This
village was down in a sort of canyon on a bad road, not far from the upper
big dirt road that ran along the ridge. Akha near laos border, Agaw works with are Muuh Sah
Akha Agaw
works with Akhas near the border to He
pastors some six or more villages. He
wants a camera from me to take pictures.
Course they all do. 7. A few Burmese Akha Villages Nai Yoh Akha is on the bald hill on the way to Gaw Bpeh Kah is where sala Yah Doh used to be, it is
a road village near crest of hill before dropping to From Gaw Bpeh Kah I went down to Nai Yaw Akha (missed
the trail again). I could see the
fields that I wanted to go to on the far mountains of Loh Meeh Shaw, yellow
rice in the sun, but far to go. I
could feel the effect of the elevation as I walked. Then I met a guy there, golden heart tooth, same guy
I met on the road earlier, but he was hunting then, and he said he could take
me to those fields with a raft to cross the river, but it would take three
guys. So we went back down to the head of the flat valley
to a shan village, then turned up past the monestary to the fields past a
village called Joh Bpah Akha. Small, A
church, catholic. Ah Kauh was the village on the west side of the road
on the curved part where the road stop is, on the way to Gaw Bpeh Akha. Law Leh Akha (Below the big tree on the ridge) was
the place where I would sleep for the night.
20 houses about. Probably where
I got blessed with the malaria too, despite how cold it was. It would be one day to the mountain top they told me,
after crossing the river, where we would stay the night in the village of the
Ah Boeuh people.. I could feel the altitude here burning my head and lungs. The Old Man's Stories, Keng Tung The old man in the house where I slept told me
stories of life here. He could
remember 50 y ears ago when the Thais came with many elephants in brigades of
16, and drove the Chinese north over the mountains again. Then the Japanese came up also, many
soldiers marching. His great
grandfather helped to build the road for the elephants. 58 years ago, so about 1942. In those days 6 airplanes came and bombed Keng Tung,
debri shooting in the air, machine gun fire, the old ma at this village could
hear it well from here. The airplanes would circle high, then one would drop
out of the formation strafing and bombing. A truck up at Gaw Bpeh Akha, a chinese army truck,
there on the road was bombed. Ah Zeh
told this of Ah Shauh Gooh. He is 70
years old this Shot The Dude's One fellow of Law Leh Akha shot a Tai Yai man's
buffalo because it tried to gore people and came in his rice paddy. Not welcome. He didn't have to pay the man but the army
came and took him to prison for 3 months.
He would have to sew while there, so to avoid that his parents padi
1200 Kyat for the 3 months he was there , 1200 kyat each month. While he was in prison he saw the small cell outside
that James Mawdsley was in, with bars and twice he saw The man said there was about 867 men there and in
seperate prison 70 women. All there
for either minor infractions like his, for a couple of months, or longer for
more serious crimes, every different reace, no prejudice. From what I could see, for whatever graft, the
Burmese army was maintaining and buiding an orderly social situation, with
very obviuos development of institutions on every level with the attetative
personell. Many people told me that before when the Shan were in
control they were very bad to the Akha people. Now the Akha could come and go
as they pleased. Plenty Sore Next morning I got up plenty sore from all my hiking
sans trail. My body stiff. All I could attirbute it to other than that
was the altitude. There needs to be an
altitude drink of oxygen water. I talked with Ah Seh's family at great length. The only reason we didn't go over the hill
today was because they wanted a greedy and rediculous price, five times the
cost of flying to There was a church in the village of 15 years or
more. The swing and gater were fake,
and there was selling the self but sure no festivals or dance. One girl, Ah Buuh, with an unquenchable smile, wanted
to go to wrk in Maesai. I gave her
enough money for an ID card and told her that she and her brother were free
to come and stay as the building was big. Back to Town I took the first Shan motorbike to Nang Tharing and
then on into town on the long road.
The Burmese were endlessly industrious, paving much of the road
already with a tar top. At Gah Tai, Beetle nut The man with three wives always had sweet beetlenut
so I asked him to mix me some. It
quickly made my h ead spin, I chewed it too fast, much more potent than other
stuff I had tried from him in the past.
In Ah Seh's mother lives in Loh Meeh Shaw Huuh
Loh Kah. He
lives in Law Leh Akha off the Catholic for 20 years At Law Leh Akha they are catholic for 20 years, the
missin people only come once a year.
North end of Gah Tai Gah Taw valley, I think the place on the right
that wanted the water pipe. As of 2000 they had not carried the Akha way in the
village for 19 years. It is hard to tell what role the catholic church
played in the elimination of the traditions.
That they are gone, and a Church is here be obvious. The people seem embarassed that it is gone,
uncomfortable. The army's fought much,
pushing them this way and that, but the church seems to have great residual
influence regarding their lives. In this village the gate, with three crosses and then
the swing is there, but doesn't appear it is connected to the August Festival
in an way, just there. It is obvious that the culture was eliminated, a
pastor or catecist installed and a church built but hardly any other
care. This could be also that the
emphasis on all things is at the mission, not to the village churches. Really, like the others, they are very selfish people
these mission people, taking much of what people have, giving them little
back. Wah Leh Akha Wah Leh Akha near Keng tung, out the Tapin rd near
the Shan village there is a large church building with a convent and then a
boys side. The whole place was called "Nah Hah". There were 32 plus Akha houses there, no culture
left, just catholic now. They
really dominate the people. Couldn't
they help the people without dominating them like slaves? I asked Akha young women in the Keng Tung market what
they thought about Akha traditional culture and they told me that it was bad,
though they couldn't tell me anything about it. This
seems to be the chief accomplishement of the mission. Murh La Bpah Pah Is
the Gaw Bpeh Akha Out side of Keng Tung on I think this is the crown hill village seen from the
forestry camp road. Naih Yoh Akha on
bald hill, that is the name of it, and the Tapin road used to have a forestry
office there, and you could look down and see this bald hill with an Akha
village on top. Akha villages were
easy to pick out because they had a tall gable on each end. Mallipaco Mallipaco
was the Meh Joh Akha - Doi Som Soon Doi Som Soon is the mountain west of Meh Joh
Akha. Father Paul TSai Kom (Mr. Gold)
Thai Yai. Three
years . He is at Mong Tsat. Mong Tsat is over the hill from Som Soon.
His parishiners Akha at Meh Joh dispursed after the Pah Luang (regional
headman) was killed three years ago.
Ah Yeeh was his name, a tall man.
Later someone caught his wife in the fields and cut
her throat with a knife. Some say they
were trying to find where she had money if at all. Meh Joh Akha is only a couple of kilometers from the Meh Joh Akha was attacked and burned Gong Gung Akha I was walking up the trail to Gong Gung Akha to see
the old man Leeh Pah and his divorced daughter. She had been there less than 13 days and
got remarried of course. As I went along the trail to the Shan village first,
there on my right I heard a noise in the forest and looked to see a Mooser
man working. I went and he was
building a second bee gum. The first
one he had there at the tree and now was starting a second one under this
huge banyan tree, its arms outstretched as if to hold up the sky. Gohng Gahng Akha I can't recall how I first ended up at Gong Gahng
Akha, I think someone told me that there was an old man whoo still new the
Akha Zauh in the villge, yes this was the case. So I went there, with an Akha man and
woman. We visited a long time but
there wasa so little I knew of the langauge at tistime and the laws that it
was very frustrating. For me other
than to note how much I must be missing out on. High on the back of a ridge to the west of Keng Tung
there was a catholic village below and a catholic village above, and above
that there was a Wa villge. To the
south were a number of lahu villages. So this time I came back two years later to visit
Abaw Leeh Pah. Now only he, his son,
his younger brother and their children held the Akha Law and traditions while
most of the village had b ecome catholic as well, the death of the traditions
as it were for them at least. The old man was lonely because all his friends had
died. He was 76 at this time, about
2000. So the catholics were still at it, knocking village
by village, the traditions to fall down.
Actually it was good news for me to know this because it was a
thermostat of what the catholic mission was up to, otherwise very silent they
went along. Till now it had been hard
to figure out if they were still doing this.
Now I knew. The house was big.
I had stopped first at the son's house by error, came in on a bunch of
Wa just about headed home for the night.
Then made it on to the father's place.
We ate , drank, and the ather got a massage for his
aching bones while people wandered in and out of the dark. Now they had a little electric but day
before it fell in the creek and so none today. Outside some of the young drummed and played the
cymbols in a 3-1 cadence that was beautiful, calling for help to distant
lands, giving an exclamation, what be it. The Old Man's Story I had slept well, having hiked so far to find this
village. First two Akha villages then
a Mooser village with a few Akha in it.
Then a couple Mooser villages in the distance before I cleared a ridge
and spotted the village where the old
man my friend lived. When i got the
the bottome of the trail after crossing many creeks and sodden rice fields, I
pulled the juice apple out of my pocket and ate it in a kind of celebration
of the victory. There was a trail to
this village but trails to villages you find on the WAY OUT, not the way
in. On the way in you often find the
village by line of sight unless someone can tell you how to get there or take
you on the trail. In this case a
motorbike would have been good. I had lost the tiny piece of loofa that I had put in
the small teal green glass jar in my
pocket. The jar was ok though, no more
than an inch tall and across, bubbly crooked glass, I really liked it. The morning was cool,
not cold, which was nice for waking up. I found my writing book and took it to the
fire where I separated the wet pages.
Yes I had sweated that much crossing rice terraces. My mind drifted as I looked into the coals, the old
Akha women in their head dresses joking.
The old man dropped coals on his foot trying to light his
cheroot. But it was the long talk I had with the other old man
far across the valley in another village that pulled at my mind. Both he and his grown son talked about Akha law and
how it was scattered, and they were trying to collect it, thta some people
used to have it all and then it had real power. This was Mooh Dzurh's father and older
brother. A man new the eight
ceremonies to make something happen but taught only six to his son, and so it
became lost. People spoke words with
their lips but their hearts did not give out for real and they had no power.
I wondered about this, or if maybe it wasn't that the mere willingness
to believe in it all that gave it power. Shah Mah, that was the name of rare children, rare
adults, who from the time they were born knew who they were. They had the ability to see things
happening before they did, people coming before they got there. The old man knew several. But now they were dead. He didn't know of one living any more. But he thought that not enough people cared
for the law so that was shy the spirits go longer gave the power to people,
to children especially. Words but the
heart not coming out. In times past a Peeh Mah could go to a river and do a
ceremony that would bring out the b ody of someone who had drowned and tell
the people where to find it down the river.
As the Zauh diminished it appeared that the need, the
impulse to save it, to gather the law
in, was growing stronger. As I wrote this all down two men came in, stood in
the backlight of the hut door for a while, before the old man received them. They came in and sat down on the old smoothe worn
planks with the bamboo worn mats. One man was sick and bought a small amount of rice
from his village, an egg, some string and a small amount of money for the old
man to perform a string ceremony and blessing, by wrapping it around his
wrist. Seh Kauh Pah Urh they called
it. The egg was placed partly into the
small mound of rice in a bowl. Cowry shells were for a Nyeeh Pah, not a
Peeh Mah so he put theose back in his b ag with the old man's instruction to
do so. Another young married woman of the house brought a
handful of banana leaf packages, these always caught my eye, as they always
had something different and surprisingly wonderful in each one of them. Meat cooked a special way, herbs, or some
kind of flavorful bean paste. One
friend of mine knew how to get these fantastic red thorn vine sprouts when
they firt grew in the spring and steam them.
They had such a fantastic fruit flavor. Would make a fantastic wine or jam. Wine I think. The man took out a special red handled ceremony knife
and cracked the egg into a white porcelain bowl, and looked at the pattern of
the now broken yoke. Sitting in the corner of the porch the sunlight
caught the old man's face, the handle of the copper wire wrapped knife then,
his h ands motioning, and picking up the bowls to look at the egg again. All the people came around to assists, yes
the Akha collective mind. They spoke in low voices, as if not to scare the
egg, I caught only part, someone sick. Another old man sat in the corner next to the
railing, a black hat and coat, the early sun streaming through his glass of
amber tea like a beacon. Steam rolling
up over the brim of his hat. The old man said a blessing, breathing on the string,
which wasn't for the man but his heart sick wife. He would take it back and tie it to h er
wrist. She was not able to come. A man cut up the last of a cow, left over from Gah
Tauh Pah ceremonies. A man stood in the trail, a basket on his back, and headed off for the
jungle, the old woman here had a bunch of ah nay, strips of bamboo used for
binding everything. You wrapped them
around something twice then took the took the two ends together and kept
twisting them by holding the end till a knot formed up and then you tuck the
ends to the side. You have to moisten
them first, but once they dry they never unravel and are very strong. The old man continued to tell the younger man not to
worry, the prescription for a wife with a sad heart so she woudn't run
away. (this would come in handy) The sun moved and caught the light on the surface of
my glasses. Cutting Trees So instead of growing opium they resorted to cutting
trees for boards and fire wood to get their cash. The firewood was used in the brick kilns
near to Keng Tung in the valley bottom.
The new sugar refining mill took fire wood too. Of course this was horrible for the
environment and not sustainable. The trails were filled with grooves from the lumber
being skid down the trail to the first road in the Shan villages. That or the big pieces might be hauled on a
rickety ox cart, which was very loose, wooden wheels with steel rims over
wood, banging along, no one bothered to build a real road. Nyeeh Pah Flat Keng Tung The Nyeeh Pah's name was Meeh Nah, well I had seen
her in I was sort of taken back by her clarity and view on
the matter, how it appeared to her. Burma
Side, there were a couple of villages, like Attur's that did nothing but turn
out beggars and the Catholic church was not very involved or responsive to
this situation. Was I surprised? Boober's sister gets shot in hand Burma Akha, Lacey's Father - Water Buffalo money
stolen The girl who denied she slept, but then admitted it
to Yaw Goh Ali gets kicked out. Deaths of babies and children Haen Taek Region Ah Dauh Hua
Mae Kom Rolls Over The
Chinese Baptist and Lisaw The
school we didn't build, with the people from Nyeeh Pah Moeuh Leh She yawned like a big moose when she did her
ceremonies, was her trait. She
was a very big and tall woman. Abaw Leeh Gaw the Dandy From
Loh Mah Cheh, they burned his house down because he wouldn't give them the
high ground I
felt so bad for his old sister and mother Ah Seh and I butcher a pig there Huuh Mah Akha Huuh Yoh Akha Ah Zeh Mother Father Bah Jeeh Older Brother Wife Mae Chan Luang Head man Ah Bauh The
village split Booh Dzmm Booh Dzmm was this really nice girl at Mae Chan
Luang. I didn't know what happened to
her. She got into some deal with the
Thai school teacher, maybe got
pregnant by him, then entered into a number of deceptions that didn't work
out to well for her. When that didn't
work, she and her father said that they would go Christian rather than admit
to the village what had gone on, and this was the division that the chinese
baptists from Keeh Seh Thai needed.
With the help of a young man quite brainwashed called Boh Tah, Keeh Seh Thai: This was where the Huai Krai chinese baptists first
got their start. They were really
racist agains the Akha and demanded a complete departure from culture. They were Taiwanese supported. It wasn't so much the theology, it was that
too, but it was that whoever came, demanded some huge change of some kind,
didn't matter so much what it was just as it was symbolically very
disruptive. Meeh Chooh Below The Table Outside
room 61 Abaw Leeh Gaw and I met her family at Keeh Seh Tai
and then one day I came home and seemed like someone had messed with my
flowers. Then I went back out and
turned on the light and looked and there she was hiding in the dark under my
table. She later married a man from The snake and the frog There were only a few huts there, in the curve of the
small dirt road in the mountains, but already the forestry department had
taken much of the land. The few
families were busy packing up their few last goods, the huts already looking
abandoned. I was only trying to find
if the road went through but it didn't.
Forestry is making us move they said.
I asked them about their fields, if they had any. They said that they did but that it didn't
matter, they had to move and leave all behind. I took a few pictures and offered a few of
them a ride with some of the bundles back down to the other village down in the
creek cut where they were moving, no view and no land to be had there. As I waited about a little, I heard great squeaking
and out from under some bamboo matts on the ground came a small frog, leaping
for all it's life, and a very skinny but long snake chasing him, biting,
grabbing, loosing him again, the frog never loosing a beat and leaping
on. But before I could do one moment
an evil eyed chicken raced over and grabbed the frog up out of harms way only
to dart away, drop it swiftly on the ground and strike it fiercely over and
over with its beak before gobbling it in and swallowing it, eyes of cold
yellow glass not blinking once. The Personalities of Ah Surh's Village The pastor and his secnd wife The water incident The wining old man The Bushy Eyebrows The land, the wife and the handmaid The Ooh Log girl from Ah Surh's village Nyeeh Pah Moeuh Leh's daughter Ah
Surh's brother and brother's village, the forestry problem there. Chiangrai Luka, the Ajay, Yos, Dapa triangle, brian Barney,
Paul Lewis, Peace Corps, signs Selling
the Akha down the river, Yos gets promoted. He was a Christian Akha man who ran a drug rehab
center, married a girl from Pah Meeh Akha and sent her to Christian Wife
training in What Brian said and what he said his wife thought
regarding ACT and such. Church Luka Barry
fellow preacher giving out 100 baht notes, 2 wives and opium Problem
of getting Bibles. Ajay has a save the girls center House
of Grace Did Yot have visitation
rights? Ajay married an american , in your face for jesus Adjay
married an American with baby now, or two Ah Pay Hill House A foreigner died there. The Thais and others tried to
blame it on Ah Pay. Richard
was this bastard white fellow who had taken over the village, a perverted
kind of missionary of some kind. Ah Pay set up a tour business with a small office in
Chiangrai. He
drove the guests out and back each day. The
driveway into this village was hand paved and was the steepest driveway into
the village I had ever seen. Ban Song Akha, The old woman She was Ooh Loh, had the dearest old face. It was sad. I would meet and remember these
people but over the long time it would take me to get back they would die. They had no well in this village, only a tiny sump
hole, I wanted to dig them one with concrete liner put in but had no money
for it. Mr. Ah Meeh He was from San Mah Keeh
Akha village, worked with some of the children near the bridge for a Thai
project. Loi Chiang Ah Baw Beh's house Loi
Chiang He had a speech impediment, but was a good hearted
man. He invited me into his house, his
son a good fellow. The worker at the
house was married to a girl I knew, I remember when she was single and came
through the flat village, with two of her friends and aunt. People in the impoverished catholic villages Down
South Abaw Leeh Gaw He was the retired head man in Ban Seeh Lang village
near Doi Tung. He
knew the culture well and was a wise fellow, well spoken and understanding of
many problems related to the interpretation of the culture. He could call the right shot for the right
situation and why things went well or got messed up. Ooh Loh Akha. He and Mooh Jurh and I worked on Akha books, a
project long delayed due to lack of funds.
He prefered a good beer when in town and I always bought him one or
two, whatever he liked. He often went to Som Mah Kom but knew they weren't up
to much. Much opportunity was being
lost the way he saw it. He was right
about that. He
was a small man. He used to have a
monkey at his place and raise pigs there down below but says now that he got
too old for it. His mother was there, a very nice old Akha woman, she
only lived on wiskey, so I always brought wiskey or beer when I came to the
house. Abaw Leeh Gaw and Mooh Jurh had
worked together at Leo's place in Chiangmai on some projects but they quit
over some dispute or lack of progress. Missionaries had fought to get into his village and
finally he let them. This time the
Presbyterians. They built a concrete
church and it sat locked and empty most the time like all the others, a big
locked closet if you will. So funny
that people should land a space ship in your village, lock it, and walk away. The come back and ask you to all come inside for a
talk, kick you out and lock it again.
What exactly was the point of such a matter? Akha I have come to know and their
lives I think many times about having stayed in The projects were about providing the Akha with more
choices and say and hope for their own survival than they have. From books in their own language about
their own culture to protein and vitamins and land rights in their villages. I have had to work my project out among the Akha
people, it is not something that I intended to do independent of them, in
fact had it not been their wish that I had continued on I would have had no
reason and surely no reward for doing so. In order to understand the needs of the goals that I
was trying to accomplish, to tune them to the very needs of the Akha, I have
had to work through people. And these
Akha people whom I have worked through have been in the Akha villages of These individuals provided me with specific design needs
to the projects and goals as well as insight into the reality that they found
themselves and the reasons for it. Some people whom I know contribute directly to my
knowledge regarding a specific project, while some people contribute greatly
their perspective to the background of my work, to the understanding of their
story, if only a word, a brief exchange, an anecdotal meeting or as in many
cases a whole story. There were many initial ideas that I first had about
events which were going on, that they were either events that were as they
appeared, or that there was some story behind them. Was there poverty in the villages because the people
were just poor? Or
was there another story that explained the poverty? A
more sinister story about the actions of others? I found out that stealing the land, and then lying
about it goes a long way toward making people poor. Powers that be don't lie so that they never get
caught, they lie so that they feel a step or two away from hell's corner
themselves, so that THEY can believe in the lie, regardless if it convinces
anyone else. And if no one else
believes the lie, that is fine with them, long as the events they set in
motion with the lie continue on.
Therefore it is important to not just understand what the lies are but
to fight for their reversal. It has been my experiences with the Akha people which
have helped me come to see these facts, these events, and these stories in a
collage of life and visits to their villages. Certainly I have not remembered to write down all the
important interactions that I had in this writing. Akha Personalities These are the people I know, some a little bit, some
very much. In the villages, partners
to my work to help them. Without them
I would know nothing of their lives or the functions of their villages, their
economics, their difficulties. These
are often the people who hold the villages together, who are sometimes the
leaders and sometimes not. It is sad
that so much of what I have wanted to do has taken so long and so much is
still not done. They hope with an
endless hope, sometimes it makes me sadder that they do, as I feel I
disappoint them in that I am not the fundraiser, I am not the campaigner, the
champion of their cause. I don't know
that I came here to do that. I came
here and then I just tried to help where I could, maybe someone else could
have done it better but they never came.
I wish that I was all of the above, but it appears that I am not. There are many people who I don't mention here, I
know their faces, not so much their names, I know some of how and where they
fit in their villages and what life is like for them. And there are also many people who have died, died
away so that I didn't see them any more, people who were close and present
when I got deeper into this work, that I hoped I would cross paths with them
again but the time dragged out into long years and I moving as if in slow
motion came by again and they were dead, gone, in prison. And this makes me
very sad when I think of it. Intention
failed. I have regretted most of all that I have not been
able to do more for these people, to give more to them, so many people take
away the little the Akha have with a big smile, then want to tell you who the
Akha are. I have seen more in the villages than I could have
hoped to be in touch with in a life time in my other life before I came
here. A beautiful endless dance, a
tragedy, an opera, moving, never stopping, as the Akha try and survive with
the events that life has handed them, turning, dodging, rising again. Sometimes I wouldn't see someone for years, then
stumble upon them in another distant village and catch up on old times. But it was usually not happy as many of
their children, brothers, sisters had died and this they would relate all to
me. I can not explain how much this
happens. Great that we are alive
together, but there are so many tragic bad stories here. This alone, has motivated me to work on when more
often than not I had nothing, no hope, no sight of help, and not even the
fuel to get to a village. The Akha people are a beautiful people, the more and
more you know them the more and more the ugly that is sometimes perceived
goes away, least to understand motives and events, generally they were very
honest very good people. They showed you what they wanted to show you till
they knew you better, letting out a little at a time, always revealing
themselves in tiny revelations. Always it has been sad when the children died. I
find it sad when any of the Akha die, even the "bad" ones. The longer
you can cheat that evil seed of death on any count the better. Conditions in the
villages
This is the trip up the mountain into the Akha
life. A trip off another mountain in a
far land, across other mountains and flat lands and other cultures and
centuries to now where it meets the Akha in the mountains of their southern
Journey from Tibet. A mountain Scot come
to the mountain Akha. The
trip is back into their lands, their fields, their jungles, their villages,
their huts, their minds, their songs, and the soul of their collective
people, as in an ode, to celebrate it all with them as they allow. And
to that I owe them thanks. This is my
quest, to have seen them as who they are, who they say they are and what I
can surmise on my own, continuously getting closer to the origins of their
present time. I come to the task with two kinds of pain and sadness, pain and
sadness at having grown up without a culture for a cradle and pain at having
to see in detail how their culture is being destroyed from all sides around
them. Yet all is not yet lost. In part I also work to turn this tide. For some westerners who never had a culture this may
seem trite, like crying over nothing, like missing what is best lost, things
people say who didn’t look back when their history was thrown away,
when they became orphan. But this is not something all are likely to say as
they witness the events in either their own lives or the lives of friends. This trip into the Akha world has gone through very
hard times but somehow I kept on the journey to find out who all the players
were. It becomes quite clear that the story that now exists is not the end of
the story, that the trip is not over, that the destination is not had. In this effort I have met Akha people who were at the
fringe of their world, headed out, who assisted me as I passed deeper into
the ranks of the Mountain Akha. And
so it has become a race against time, to record as much as I can, to learn as
much as I can and to save as much as I can. As time passed and I learned the language and what
was going on in many villages my work became more involved with efforts to
find resources for solving problems that I saw in the villages. Naturally very sick people needed medical care,
competent care, and I worked on finding funds to pay for that. There were some conditions that I had very
good reason to not want to take the Akha to a particular hospital for. Medical personnel either failed to take
action or adequate action to solve a medical problem. In numerous cases if I had failed to note
this the person would have died, particularly in cases relating to children. I took a motorbike at every opportunity to new villages,
met more people, and observed what I could. I realized early on that
understanding the economics of Akha communities would be crucial to finding
solutions to the problems I saw. Even
with the most negative of experiences or pictures drawn for me of the Akha, I
deferred that there was way too much I did not know to yet cast judgement,
and would put each "item" on the "shelf" till I had more
information. In reality, this unraveled many an accusation as
evidence mounted as to what precipitated many negative events within the Akha
community. Most people were not
willing to look this far, much more satisfied to just dislike the Akha and
insist that they be changed, dispersed, assimilated. I worked for years with a motorbike then was able to
get a four wheel drive truck. One of the most comprehensive preventative solutions
for village health was good clean water. After
that came issues of land rights. If there was not enough land to farm because
of action on the part of local government people, then how could the Akha
have good nutrition? Moving of
villages reduced pig and cattle count as well as removed the Akha from the
fruit trees they were accustomed to.
Warmer weather at lower elevations led to greater sickness. Buying
polished white rice instead of eating their own heavy rice led to beri beri. Along the way I did my best to develop strategies for
good advocacy, summed up in this word. Care. I discovered that there were even more remote Akha
villages in I remember one particular village that I found
relocated on its way to somewhere else soon after that again, because now it
is gone. The army there said that the village was made up of Lahu and
Akha. I stopped in a few houses. I noticed how Akha and Lahu made houses
different. The Akha more
pronounced. The Lahu roof thatching
very heavy, the ends of the grass bent over lattice, whereas the Akha wove
big grass shingles and stacked them.
An old Akha woman was leaning on the porch of one Akha hut, near the
door, she could barely breathe, and the heat and dust did not help. Her middle aged daughter in law was
there. I wished I could have done
something for the old woman. She had
long beautiful grey hair, her breath coming in short gasps. I am sure she died in the flux of it all,
not even a witness to what was being done. The village was near the old crossroads of Huuh Yoh
Lisaw north of Doi Mae Salong. I came
on motorcycle and the road was bad. More recently I went up to the mountain to one family
and we went out to the rice harvest.
This is a village that has been badly relocated nine years now. They must walk one and a half hours to the
fields, work all day and then back again.
I went with them many times, they are really great people and I wrote
about Eden, Road Back To Eden. Everyone in the village is harvesting rice in a mad
rush. There were five us that first day, and the heat was just a cooker, but
the joy was that you could see for ever, other villages, other fields. Anyway, long long hours with a cycle,
cutting rice, wrapping a few stems around a handful of stems, and then
binding it with a twist and laying it gently on top of the stalks that remain
for it to dry a few days. All
day. And then a measly lunch of soured
mustard greens, salt (yes, salt and chili are main items on the menu here,
not just flavor enhancers) and rice, and steamed greens and a cake made of
soybean and chili hammered together. Then back into the rice we went and worked feverishly
to try and get the one field done, but we couldn't. I
came back to town the next day because of a meeting, but they went back
twenty strong the next day to the upper field to finish it. As I thought about it, Maesai is the backdrop, sort
of like a kind of hell, where angels fall, and then the real story too is the
mountain, where all these people are like on tentacles from the higher
mountains, trying to survive what keeps being done to them, wave after wave,
and hold their culture and all that they know together, and farm and the
brutal conditions. And so it really is
about the detailed survival of these people.
While we were in the fields they told me one girl, Meeh Tmm, had a
miscarriage in her ninth month and the baby died. This is twenty one in three years for this particular
village. Hardship the result of army
forced relocation. So many details
like this, and that is really the story with this death and prostitution
carnival going on in Maesai, where the unlucky ones fall, and soon become
nothing that resembles much a human being. I saw the need for overcoming the despair in the
village. But so important to
understand the reasons behind the despair in the village. The villages got insufficient representation be it
legal, political or along the lines of human rights. Health
care services were of low quality. Often simple illnesses go untreated by
health service people at the clinics and hospitals. Or if they are treated they are often
treated improperly and are not cured.
Many times they are just sent home to die. The rough treatment, laughter, ridicule and
disregard was readily visible in many visits I made to hospitals with Akha
people. Many Akha died. Infants and children suffer from malnutrition and die
of ill health. Much nutrition is lost
as a result of forced moves of the villages from higher to lower elevations with much more restricted land
plots. Yet the land that they are
forced to leave is not returned to jungle, but used for other things by
people more rich than themselves who never lived there before, are not
related to anyone who lived there before.
These are the robber Thais. These
mountains were given to As the Akha got pushed off the land they lived on and
forced into a total poverty the rapid drop in nutrition then led to increased
infant mortality. With the loss of
their land, their way of life, and hope itself many Akha ended up in prison,
die of ill health, get recruited into prostitution or increasingly began to
use the more dangerous drugs as compared to the old traditions of smoking
opium. In the west we throw all drug use into the same category, but the
realities are very different here. Many villages were burned by police, army or during
war, both on the Thai side and the The US backed the village moves at that time, though
this was hardly the reason the Thais were busy doing it, they wanted the
mountains for development, and if they could get rid of the Akha in the
process of making the US happy about drugs, then so much the better. With the mission involvment in drug traffic
for decades, it was the height of hypochrisy. By 2001 the drug problem had not gone away, not
hardly, it had increased multifold.
Yet the relocations had seriously effected the Akha and damaged the
enviornment. With the destruction of their villages and wealth the
Akha young people get seperated from their culture to work far away from what
they know and are most familiar with. This trend means that there will be
less and less Akhas having a normal village and family life and this in turn
means a drop in the population of their genetic group. The missions have done their best to speed
rather than slow this process by taking as many children as they can to build
their mission establishments. But most
significant of all was the mission practice of taking teen age girls that the
Akha boys normally would marry to.
There was very little moral about the missions, and even less to do
with God. They were a franchise, a
business, that anyone could start and hope to use to get money. The franchise method was always the same. Traveling was hazardous for the Akha with many police
and ID card checks. The Akha endlessly ran a travel gauntlet, the police
robbing them as they traveled through check points or requiring the girls to
sleep with them. Girls who wanted ID
cards had to sleep with immigration officials and then still didn't get a
card. Police and army night raids were common in Akha
villages, heavily armed, beating men, old men, taking old women off to
prison. People got shot in the dark
when the shooter couldn't even see what they were shooting at. When you are oppressing a people, when you
are mistreating them, it really doesn't matter what the damage. The poverty that the Akha experienced didn't just
happen. As one investigated one
discovered the mechanisms, the events of poverty. And often big and silent players were well
engaged in the exploitation of the poor.
The rich needed the poor, shamelessly. The situation of the Akha was no different. They didn't happen to be poor by accident.
Many villages had been burned over the years, war, going back nearly a
hundred years that I knew of.
Predators on this side and that. Missions needed the Akha to build big
mission compounds, to build community around the mission. Wouldn't due to have a mission and no one
there, so you needed people nearby to prove it attractive and successful
wether it was or not. If the lives of
these people did not advance, that was not important, the weren't at the
mission to be helped beyond the superficial, they were around the mission FOR
the mission and its needs. The fact
that people in the church had a need for power, for buildings and
institutions that they could claim they had built, was something the church
wasn't about to admit to. Tourism and the promotion of
handicraft did not replace ID cards or land rights. And for much of the case, the Thais
exploited the images of the hilltribe for their own benefit, seldom giving
anything back to the Akha themselves.
Images of Akha could be seen in almost any promotional material for End Have a comment or question? Like to know
more? Send me an email at akha@akha.org |