ELL: Akha Weekly Video Journal Dec 11, 2000

[Matthew McDaniel]

Dear Friends:

This is the **FIRST** Akha Weekly VIDEO Journal!

On the new combined web page for the Akha Weekly Video Journal there are
now the following files in Qucktime video format .

The Swing Festival
The Rice Harvest
The Harvest Festival

Enjoy!!!

Akha Weekly Video Journal Page:

http://akha.org/akha_video.htm

It is the end of the Akha year, in some villages the year end festival
is already going on.  "Gah Tauh Bpah" is the name of the festival, and
it is the highlight of the year, the end of the harvest and work for one
season.

All the rice and other foods are safely in their storage, corn cribs and
rice cribs.

Melons and squash stacked on shelves, the new fields being cleared for
next year.

Pah Nmm Akha doesn't have much reason to celebrate, but they do never
the less in this video segment. They got half the rice crop this year
since Thai Forestry has taken so much of the land away from them.

So what will they eat the last half of next year?????

Maybe Forestry will feed them?  Guess again.

They are still having to do the three hour walk to the fields back and
forth every day since the Thai Army moved them off their old village
site some 9 years ago.

Course neither do they have anyone to complain to who will listen and
has the power to do anything about it.

Never the less, the festive village was filled with top throwing, a top
is called a "Chauh".  The point is for one man to spin his top down into
the square, and then others throw their spinning tops from a start line
and try to knock his down.  It is quite an intense sport with spinning
wooden tops of good size and weight striking the other tops hard and
shooting down the road, banging into the bamboo fences as they go, the
men running after them, checking to see whose top stops first to
determine the winner.

The children play a game of bowling by pitching large brown seeds with
their feet down a hill, trying to knock down one of four waiting seeds
lined up at the bottom.  The seeds are large and bulky, coming from a
pod in the forest, rolling like fat little boys to the finish line.

The dances start the second night of the five day festival, going all
night, they were still going this morning when I got up to come down off
the mountain and I heard them all night long, the drums and cymbols
reverbating off the forest.

During this festival, in a statement of Akha solidarity, all the Akha in
the village turn a year older collectively.

This village has one of the toughest diets there is, nothing but sparse
rice and greens, there are few fruit trees and getting the vegetables
into the village from far away before someone else gathers them is very
hard.

Squash and melons, common in some villages, along with other fruits, are
not common in this village.  In villages I visited this last November in
Burma, squash was common, many saved on the porches.  I saw maybe only
one or two per hut in Pah Nmm Akha.

I could not live on rice and greens, neither do the Akha live well on
them.

We would like to be able to do a whole lot more for the Akha.

Please consider that these PROJECTS runs solely on your donations:

1. NUTRITION project:
Such as the baking for the village children, we now have all the ovens
and need baking supplies like flour, etc.

2. The CATFISH project:
We still need a pumping system and additional tanks.

3. The TRUCK continues to be parked until the $1800 bill is paid. The
engine has been replaced. Very difficult to get help out to the villages
with no wheels.

Help make a difference for the Akha this winter season.

We hope to have our regular site, Akha.com, back on line soon.

And last but not least, we are happy for the addition of "The Akha Way"
Video to the Archeology Channel as noted below.

Thanks to yellowcat productions for all their hard work.

Cheers and Joy,

Sincerely,

Matthew McDaniel


"Friends and Members:

Now appearing among our video offerings on The
Archaeology Channel, our streaming video website at
www.archaeologychannel.org is The Akha Way.  Driven southward from their

original homeland in Yunnan, China, the Akha of northern Thailand today
face
an uncertain future in the face of threats from forced migration,
Christianization, money, and drugs.  This video, created by Yellow Cat
Productions of Washington, D.C., brings into view the dramatic and often

destructive cultural changes taking place today, under the code name
"globalization," among indigenous peoples around the world.  As fellow
human
beings, we should pay attention to what is happening to the Akha and
other
marginalized cultures. "

http://www.archaeologychannel.org

http://www.yellowcat.com


http://www.akha.com

http://www.akha.org

Donations by check or money order may be sent to:

The Akha Heritage Foundation
PO BOX 6073
Salem OR 97304  USA

By Visa Card Secure Site:
https://www.givetocharity.com/cgi-bin/give.pl?CODE=10956

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