Dalama Adventures Tale of two corporate types ditching their jobs and traveling the world for 14 months... check out all photos, blogs & interesting tid bits at http://www.dalama.net

Today we met more beautiful people in the villages- I continue to be blown away by how welcoming, selfless, and generous the villagers are - despite their impoverished living conditions. They light up when we see them, their huge smiles, bright eyes, beautiful faces beaming with pride for their families and communities. Our guide was great - he got us out into areas that a 'canned tour' would never do... we got out into the fields and sowed the soil alongside the strong men and women tending their fields in preparation for the rice season, using their homemade farm tools, trying to balance and stabilize our own bodies on the steep slope, while simultaneously hacking up the earth on the slope in front of us. It doesn't quite work so well for us, wearing shoes - bare feet are required to keep your footing and the scorching sun and high humidity made fools of us. We couldn't even handle this job for 10 minutes. We were equipped with unnecessary material goods like shoes and western clothes - again "material things" weighing us down, and rendering us pretty useless to the locals in helping them to farm their land. Defeated, we left the fields, heads hanging low, but with a tremendous appreciation for the rugged, physically enduring lifestyle these villagers live each day. There were even 60-70 year olds out there, happily chewing their betel-nut, smoking cigars and chipping away at the fields. We passed small boys swimming naked in rice paddies with water buffalos, having the time of their lives. This is the playground children have here, and they certainly take full advantage of it.

We passed through areas of protected reserve, where lush and bushy mountainsides thrived... And then through heavily logged areas, where beautiful teak forests had been depleted, and where re-growth of trees will probably never occur again, as the farming techniques of slash and burn each season kills off any substantial growth, but making way for low fresh new growth to be grazed on by animals.

Myanmar is a country full of natural resources, and natural beauty, but they are quickly depleting them away. Bengal tigers and elephants used to roam in large numbers about 50 years or so ago, but farming and hunting have caused them to all but disappear. It's hard, though, to turn a harsh or critical eye on the locals practices, who have from a western perspective perhaps mismanaged their resources. A country with such a closed political and social regime, isolating itself from large parts of the world, perpetuates the at-risk state that resources are put in through the customary ways of managing resources. The locals are needing to survive, and using the methods they and generations before them have used to survive. They need to live for today, survival of self and family. Closed boarders and isolationary policy lead to closed minds and limited resources and external investment to make progress and positive change for all.

The end of our village visits brought us to the tribal medicine man, who was well respected throughout the villages. Locals would regularly seek him out for his natural powders and remedies. As we were sitting, having tea and discussing village ailments and treatments, a group of young monks came into the small home clinic. They were here for a special accupunture ritual performed by the medicine man on each of them, to foster strength and luck. It was an interesting, but unhygienic process of using one dirty needle repeatedly on each boy, pricking their skin on their head, face, tongue and hands, embedding red powder/dye under their skin. Which brings me to another same, same but different topic, recycled needles, AIDS and lack of education. There's a high percentage of HIV here in Myanmar - as in the rest of South East Asia, which faces increasing problems. Again, with such a closed society, the government keeps vital information from freely flowing into the hands of it's people. The thought that maybe the "medicine man" shouldn't reuse dirty needles doesn't even cross a mind here. But this is a man who could be part of the solution and education process, planting new behaviors among the local villagers. Again, with limited resources, funding and clean sterile needles, he's doing the best he thinks he can do, and the risk of AIDS is overshadowed by the cures he feels he's bringing about through his treatments.

We trekked another 7 k's back to the town, through brilliant green and shimmering wet rice paddies, colorful women and men with their bamboo hats peeking out of the fields to say "mingalaba" as we delicately made our way on thin rows of land in between the waterways. The sky grew dark, and the monsoon rains flooded down on us, we were coated in red mud... A slippery trek back, but well worth every minute.