Staying in the Akha villages

Back in hot Bangkok. The flash card of my photocamera is accidentally erased, so while i’m recovering it gives me some time to write a new item. I’m writing in english now because, well, there are some people that I have met that do not speak dutch and I still want them to be able to read my blog. So as a true cosmopolitan I decided to switch to English, I expect this will be no problem for the dutch readers.

Because what have I been doing the last weeks? After working a lot in Chiang Rai building a dormitory for the schoolchildren of the Akha tribes in the first two weeks it was time to spend more time in the villages in the mountains. So we spend about 10 days in three different villages, working and most of all integrating and getting to know how the Akha people live.

All the villages were located in the upper North of Chiang Rai, the most northern provence in Thailand. This means close to the border with Myanmar, (or Birma). The first village was located near a small city. Although near is relative: it is still half an hour driving on the sandy mountainroads.

You can see differences with the last village we went to, which was very far and high in the mountains. The road is well-paved and even constructed by the government. The government provides the funding, because the village has connections with Birma, and plays a role in providing access to Birma for the government.
For example transporting the Thai army, or even trading. Other differences are that there are little shops providing beer, and even icecream, retrieved from the nearby city. This village was wealthier and less independent than the first village. You can see more tv’s and radios here!

The work we did in the village was again quite hard work: harvesting! In october and november the yearly harvesting of the rice takes place. Here people of the village help eachother by working on eachother lands. A single land of rice belongs to a single family.

In the Akha villages the harvesting is all done by human labour, no machines are used. The rice straws ares first cut and collected in a single pile of straws. After this the riceseeds are smashed of the straws by means of a wooden stick, kind of a hockey stick. The rice falls down in the pile and is collected on a big plastic sheet. When all the rice has been seperated from the straws the pile of rice is cleaned by blowing wind through the rice which removes the dust, bugs and leftover straws. The leftover clean rice is put in bags and transported to the village.

All of the harvested rice is used as food for the village itself; nothing is sold on the market.

Although the harvesting was heavy, for me personally this ment most of the time carrying the bags with rice, it was a fun experience. We ate our own harvested rice
that night in a ceremony to celebrate the harvest, and ofcourse that goes with a lot of (Akha) whiskey.

Strong stuff.

Other work that we did in this village was building a waterline. Actually it was more digging in the jungle where the pipes transporting the
water are going to be.

The second village was even more up north, touching the border with Birma. This village fully independent and self-sufficient. According to our coordinator we were also the first foreign people in the last two years. The remoteness makes the village a good hidingplace for refugees from Thailand, Birma or China. A lot of people in the hill tribes have no ‘ID card’ and are actually illegal in Thailand. Without an ID card you can
not travel or work in Thailand, or you will be fined severely. This is a big problem for many people in the villages and a reason that they remain in the villages, never leaving the village. Especially the elder people have sometimes never been outside of the village.They learn the thai country via the television, I suppose.

In this village there was no work planned for us, but we did trekking in the jungle across the border with Birma.

In the jungle they prepared our lunch using all the tools and food in the jungle: bamboo, bananas, bananatrees, wood, leaves, spices. It was fun to see how they could make a good lunchusing only a single big knife and the natural resources:

• The big bananaleaves from the bananatree are used to sit on and as a kitchentable. Ofcourse the bananas themselves can be eaten, but also the inside of the bananatree can be eaten, if cooked first.
• Bamboo is used a lot. You can use it as a cooking pan, burn it in the cookingfire, use it as a serving plate, use it as chop-sticks, eat the bamboo worms inside, and much more.
  The leaves are cooked.
• The leaves do not give much nutrition in itself, but they are nice to eat with the rice. Minted leaves are used after eating; as a kind of chewing gum.

The result was actually very tastefull and gives you an idea of how to survive in the jungle!

In the last village of the project we stayed at a central house, not with families. Here we did some cleaning around the area and in the garden. But actually this was very light work. We went to the waterfall to take a shower and at night we cutted and cooked our own dinner. This village was one of my favorite villages, because of the beautiful nature and the quietness. We stayed here only one night however, after which we went back to Chiang Rai. The city where the base camp of the organisation (afect) is.

Wednesday was our goodbye ceremony, following the Akha tradition. As a special night we cooked European food, and we had a Thai bbq. We ate together with the schoolchildren in Chiang Rai and watched meanwhile pictures of the last month on a big screen. The Akha goodbye ceremony goes like this:
You get a little bit of rice, a piece of chicken a half hard-boiled egg in your two hands together. You eat this. Then you get a white friendship string wrapped around your wrist. Which I actually still wear today. The meaning of the ceremony is to bring you luck and to hope that you will come back some day. The Akha hill tribe has many of these traditions, ceremonies and rituals.

The night ended ofcourse with drinking a lot of whiskey and ending up in a night club in Chiang Rai :)

So .. the volunteer project is over. And it was a good experience! I enjoyed it very much and the last month went by very quick. I traveled to Bangkok to meet people from the first month, some of whom are leaving by plane in the weekend. After Bangkok I want to go traveling in the south of Thailand, where I
have not yet been. But how exactly I haven’t decided yet. The global plan is that I go travelling untill the full moon party at 5/6/7 december, and after that to go to Cambodja.

Wow that was a very long story, I hope you didn’t get bored too much :) I uploaded some pictures of the last weeks in the photo album, so you can get an idea of how it was like.

I hope everybody back home is doing allright!

Bas