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Tue May 18 10:17:57 UTC 1999

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			Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 10:17:57 +0000
			From: Matthew McDaniel <akha at loxinfo.co.th>
			Organization: The Akha Heritage Foundation
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				Subject: ELL: Akha Weekly Update
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			Dear Friends:

			Well, they haven't exactly been coming once a week but
			here is an
			update.

			For the language project we are in the process of
			having a binding punch

			made for sewing the Akha books together.
			The machine shop is pretty backlogged so it is taking
			some time and some

			refitting of another device or two to get the job
			done.

I spend most of my time in a more remote Thai Akha village in the
mountains now, come down to do email, that and put in work with the
Culture Center, which has a lot of grounds work to finish, plus a very
large well to dig for feeding water for irrigation to the village.

Living with an Akha family, helping them with the mountain farming,
gives plenty of new insights into their lives.  These people, even in
the stable villages, would seem to live on nothing and any shred of new
resource seems to disappear like a drop of water on a red hot griddle.

Everything circles around the mountain rice crop and other crops that
have to be planted.  Farming mountain land is very steep, you can hardly

stand up, and the weeds are thick and must be cleared a number of times,

finally with a hoe, just before the traditional planting of the rice.
Each family has its own fields and does weeding and planting plus work
on the slope to protect from erosion.  If the village is in a stable
situation, terracing will begin to appear at the bottoms of the canyons
and work their way up as the labor is invested.  The older villages
generally have more than the newer villages.

We just finished planting rice, and are now planting corn, corn for
pigs, corn for people, melons, peanuts, and a host of vegetables.  One
couldn't ask for a nicer place to work, the wind coming frequently to
cool even in the heat, the view of the mountains below spectacular, and
the whole place above the clouds in the morning as one hikes for an hour

or so with hoes, food, seeds and cooking pots to the mountain field huts

to work.  The work is back breaking, bamboo feeds water down for
drinking from a spring in most places and this goes on day in and day
out.  Several people from one family work on a mountain slope field,
then finish weeding and planting and move to a different field that is
at a different stage of growth.  Snakes are common visitors as well as
every biting and stinging bug you can imagine, along with no shortage of

mosquitos. Remnants of bamboo that one has to chop out are like trying
to dig up a buried phone cable, no end to it.

One begins to understand how the entire life here surrounds the planting

and growing of the rice, the involvement with the forest, water, rain,
and the trails that are hiked.  From mountain to mountain friends and
family are scattered, toiling away in the fields, singing, the songs
long and trailing out across the ridges folled by the occasional
question which gets past along from ridge to ridge on what we call Akha
Telephone.  Huts are scattered out, on the slopes and there we cook the
food and sleep briefly or shade the small children.  The woman on the
next hill is dancing one way, everyone else the other way and it is soon

apparent that they are being chased around the slope by a large bee.
Hats and arms swing this way and that in distant slow motion it looks
like they all had too much sun.

In the evening one woman can hardly see out of her completely swollen
face.  A big black and orange hornet has stung her under the eye.

Snakes are common visitors which also get dispatched with speed, the
warry hand looking for movement when clearing the piles of brush which
are carefully stacked and burned.  Soon the new rice is sprouting under
the cool rains of spring.

Looking carefully at a grain of rice one can see one sprout from the
germ heading up, one heading down, the kernel the battery for the whole
thing.

Even in the best village the situation is incredibly tight.  There is no

money to spare, if any at all, resources are scarce and one wonders how
these people make it on their diet and the incredible amount of work
they do, getting up early as 4 am and working till late, hiking home to
the village.

*******

In the mission village that had the two suicides so far this last year,
they just had their third, a 14 year old girl hung herself some fifty
meters from the mission building.

******

The Akha Way, the villagers like it, have hauled a tv and the tape out
to villages which ask to see it repeatedly.

I am working on plans for a second video, will take a while, about Akha
Indigenous Knowledge and what is at risk when it is deleted from the
lives of the people. Living in the village it would seem hard that this
could ever happen, but it does.  The results are no less than tragic.
Course the people who cause it to happen don't stay around for that.

******

Matthew McDaniel

--

Matthew McDaniel
The Akha Heritage Foundation
386/3 Sailom Joi Rd
Maesai, Chiangrai, 57130
Thailand
Mobile Phone Number:  Sometimes hard to reach while in Mountains.
66-01-881-9288

US Address:

Donations by check or money order may be sent to:

The Akha Heritage Foundation
1586 Ewald Ave SE
Salem OR 97302
USA

Donations by direct banking can be transfered to:

Wells Fargo Bank
Akha Heritage Foundation
Acc. # 0081-889693
Keizer Branch # 1842  04
4990 N. River Road.
Keizer, Oregon,  97303 USA
ABA # 121000248

Web Site:

http://www.akha.com
mailto:akha at loxinfo.co.th

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