on saturday morning, we headed off early to our respective hill tribes. I was headed to the PangDeng village, only about 10min away from Makhampom.
The village is a Dalla-ann community, who migrated to Thailand in the 1970's after begging the king to let them stay here. However they are not recognised as full citizens, are unable to own land, have equal rights or move about the country freely. the land they live on is government owned, and they have had to move about a number of times in the past 30 years.
The area they are currently living in is very cramped. there are over 200 people living in a very small maze like village. the whole area is very dirty, with animals running around the place and it all smells like poo.
they are currently going through a court case wich has the potential to risk the land rights of a further 2 million tribespeople in thailand. 3 years ago the village was raided at 5am and the majority of adults arrested. they were accused of land clearing which is illegal here. however, these hill tribes are just a scapegoat for any problem in the area. although they have all since been released, they are still waiting on the final verdict. they do not know if they can stay or have to move on.
we were told that we would be working with a group of 20 local youth theatre company children, although there are around 70 kids in the village there, and as the space we were working in was the local "hall" if you will, everybody soon gathered to see what was happening, so we ended up entertaining the lot.
the day began with them teaching us a local song that they had written about the arrests and court case, they showed us bamboo stilts that they used, and we made paper cutting flags to hang in the temple later.
At lunchtime we broke into pairs to meet our host family where we would be spending the night. we were staying with a girl who lived in a house with her sisters, brothers, mother, and another women. there were no men in the house. the house was very simple, one large room, with a fire in the middle. there was no chimney, so everything was pretty smokey.
we had been told that they did not have much food, and that although they may say that they have already eaten, the family will always eat after us, so we made sure that we ate mainly only the rice that they gave us, taking only a little bit of the dishes presented to us. after we left, i came back in to get something, and sure enough the rest of the family were eating what was left.
it was interesting food. fish, chicken, all spicy and a fair bit of bamboo cooked in a variety of ways.
that afternoon, we ran our workshops. we taught them some acrobatics, which they picked up very very quickly. most of the kids were between 5 and 12. the oldest was 14, and she was already married.
next up, some of our group went through some stage combat skills with them. we were a little hessitant about this, as we werent sure how the parents might react. meanwile, there were younger ones milling about, so i put down a sheet of paper and textas. within a minute, there were kids absolutley everywhere, going crazy over it. i had to get more and more paper. they all just wanted to draw something. they mustnt get paper and textas very often.
the village was on the way to hiking areas and elephant camps, so there were a number of tourists stopping in, and tourism has become important income for the village. there are a lot of women selling traditional wares that they make themselves. it always felt a bit odd when tourists arrived, as the hall we were working is was directly down from the main entrance. they would stand around watching us interacting with the kids, taking photos, it felt like a zoo. one lot arrived with a bag of lollies for the kids. this did not impress us at all. not only did it totally stop our workshops, but the kids were being treated like animals in a zoo, being fed so the tourists could take their photo. and the damage being done to them also, they will come to expect it from all tourists, and will develop into begging. seeing the children in a different way, you realise that they are just the same as every other kid in the world, they just wear dirty clothes and dont have any fancy toys. meanwhile the tourists leave thinking they have done something great. why not just buy some of their goods, so money will go directly back into the community, or spend more than 5 minutes there and interact with the kids, play a game or anything. they are so keen to try anything and are entertained by the most simple things. I was sitting with 3 boys aged under 10 outside the shop, and we were entertaining ourselves with an empty fanta bottle and two bottle caps for over half an hour. we had a great time, and did not need language to communicate. flicking the caps at the bottle, trying to smack them or hit them with the bottle, and they were loving it. they even shared some of their chewing gum with me. i thought that was great, as here they are with next to nothing, yet they want to share it with me.
back to the workshops, it was so hot and we were all buggered, so we finished by teaching them the kookaburra song.
that night there was a performance by the local children. some of the elders had seen what we were doing, and decided that they wanted to perform a traditional dance for us. it was not planned or anything, so it felt really great that they wanted to share this with us. there are probably few foreigners who have gotten to see it.
That night franky and i hade to share a one man mozzie net that was designed for one one thai person. so it was a bit of a tight fit.
it was hard to sleep well with so many animals around making noise.
In the morning i had new bruises on my bum from the hard floor.
I wasnt game enough to try the bucked shower, along with everyone else. So by the end of the day we were all absolutley filthy and stank to high heavens.
we went and cut bamboo shoots to eat, visited the temple and hung up our flags, then hiked to the local primary school. there was not much in the way of playground equipment. there were 5 seasaws, but only 1 had both seats, and there was a crawling thingy, which was a 44gallon drum but the bottom had totally rusted out. it was pretty bad.
then we hiked all the way to the top of the mountain/hill thing, and enjoyed the view from the top.
that afternoon we spent some time with some of the locals, teaching them english to help them when dealing with toursits. it was great to give them something that they could use to improve their lives.
that night i think i lost about 5 kilos in the shower with the ammount of dirt that came off me. we then went and undone all the cultural enlightenment of the past 24 hours by going to the cafe and getting drunk.
