Visit to Paguay village near the Burmese border

This week I visited a Red Lahu hill tribe village in the north near the Burmese border. If you look at the location using Google Earth http://tinyurl.com/2e99el it shows the village in Burma!

In fact when standing on one side of the village you can see a flag on a hill across a small valley that is a Thai military camp, and then down that ridge is a clearing that is a Burmese military outpost, and then a little further along another Thai military camp. This village is situated where it is because the Thai military want it to act as a buffer to the Burmese. It is on the top of a fairly big hill so water is a problem and it has no electricity either.

http://www.hilltribe.org/lahu/ is a site that does a good job describing Lahu culture and beliefs.

I was there on behalf of Kids Ark to help a development group from Australia called Aliamos. I was asked to assist Paul and Theresa from Aliamos who want to help the villagers with sustainable permaculture, water and, possibly, electricity. I helped translate from Australian (English) to Thai, and then Sila, a Lahu, who is employed by Kids Ark, translated to Lahu. Sila is also organizing a Lahu federation of all the tribes so he is a wealth of information. The water situation is very interesting as right now the villagers have two sources of water which is piped in from about 1 mile away from a spring in the jungle. We walked to the beginning of one of the pipes, scrambling, slipping and sliding through bamboo thickets and jungle plants down unbelievably steep inclines to the spring. The return trip was an interesting exercise in pulling ourselves up the hills using vines and bamboo.

The trick is to find a spring high enough up a neighboring hill. At present both springs dry up during the dry season so then the villagers need to go down a VERY steep hill to a small pond, or walk a mile to another spring. Recently a Korean Christian group built a church in the village and gave the villagers 3.1 miles of PVC pipe to connect to a spring that runs all year. The villagers say that once the rice harvest is over they will lay the pipe in 10 days! We hope there will be enough water to run a small generator so that they can at least charge batteries. At this point they use large 12 volt batteries to run fluorescent lights and some TVs etc. When the batteries get low they need to take them to Thaton, a town 1.5 miles away to get them charged.

The village itself is quite clean and so are the houses. The floors are flattened bamboo and are full of spaces to sweep leftovers to the chickens, pigs and dogs that wait below. It makes cleaning up quite easy! Most people raise chickens and pigs and some have vegetable and fruit gardens. This time of year the village is quite deserted during the day as the villagers are out harvesting rice. Once they get back to the village it is quite dark and time for dinner. We had a village meeting at one home which started at almost 8pm to discuss the ideas that were put forward for Aliamos to work on. Sila was very good at encouraging the villagers to be honest about what they really felt was possible, as opposed to being polite and accepting offers that were not feasible.

So, Aliamos will plan to resuscitate the school garden which the chickens destroyed because the fencing did not keep them out. They will also do a small fish pond to show the villagers how to raise cat fish. The villagers committed to fixing the fence and bringing rice stalks for creating mulch. Also, Aliamos will provide local seeds for garden plants. Aliamos will buy some 4' high plastic fencing which keeps the chickens out of the garden, buy some cat fish for a trial of the fish pond and provide some plastic and cement to line the new spring source. You will see some pictures at the end....

The nearest town to the village is Thaton. It has a huge temple with 9 levels called Wat Thaton. It is a VERY wealthy temple and you will see how fancy and large the statues are and the new pagoda in the pictures below.

I have been very impressed by Kids Ark and all the programs they run to help these villages. It supports a teacher for the school in Paguay, in another village Ban Pong Hai, a weaving and handicrafts project, a health center, a womens' health program for AIDS information in the Lahu language, and many other programs. The foundation has been very successful at getting funding through Swedish agencies and individuals who see all the wonderful things Kids Ark does. Of course it is a constant battle to keep the funds flowing, and to meet the needs of the villagers. The goals of Kids' Ark are to educate and equip the villagers and their children for the coming generations. Being able to speak Thai and go to Thai schools allow the children to enter into the Thai educational system. Like it or not the semi-nomadic ways of the villagers are no longer feasible for them.

Click on the triangle to play a slide show or click anywhere else to see a larger version.