Missing Persons

When visiting shopping centers in Thailand, it’s hard not to notice the plastic-like sheen and pastel colors that make everything seem a bit artificial, like it was all popped out of a mold that morning.  Standing in the food court of the Thai equivalent of Walmart, it’s hard not to be slightly put off by that notion.  

We were heading to a village 100 km from camp, and we needed to pick up supplies.  For us that meant sandals and snacks. 

The upcoming village was again part of the Akha tribe.  However, the auspices of our visit were a bit extraordinary. 

Dr. Mar Naw was on a mission.  He had been contacted months previously by an American businessman.  This fellow had visited this village previously, and met a 7 year old girl from the Long Neck Karen tribe. She, like many Long Neck Karen, had been, effectively, shipped from Burma to Northern Thailand to participate in what was essentially a human zoo, one catering to tourists interested in seeing the signature enlongated necks of the Karen people.  Her group had been settled in a camp next to the Akha village. Unfortunately, her mother died of illness while in Thailand, and her father was killed when he attempted to return to Burma.  

As an orphan, it appeared as though she was being drawn further into that human trafficking ring. Realizing this, the businessman wanted to help her; he decided that he would support her financially and put her through school.  So he contacted Dr. Mar Naw, pledging to donate to WTIND, so long as Dr. MN found and took care of the girl.  Dr. MN agreed.  Since then he had visited this tribe twice, but had failed to find the girl.  It appeared as though the traffickers were one step ahead of him.

This put Dr. MN in an awkward situation: he had promised the villagers that he would build them toilets and run clinics in their village.  He couldn’t renege on his promise, but, having failed to find the girl, he was faced with losing the businessman’s funding.  Luckily, after a short back and forth, the businessman agreed to pledge a fraction of his original offer, and Dr. MN pledged he would continue to search for the missing girl.  The business man promised: if he found the girl, Dr. MN would receive the rest of his original offer.

When we got into town, MN set off right away, flashing a color photograph of the girl to the villagers, trying to find if she’d been there.   

We waited in the car.

After a fruitless few hours¸ it appeared that the trail might have run cold once again. 

But then he got a tip.

A village about 30 minutes away was home to another Long Neck Karen camp.  She might be there.

Unfortunately for Dr. Mar Naw, night was falling, and we had to get settled in. 

A long tribe meeting was called wherein they decided where we would sleep, who would cook for us, and which 2 families would make the best use of the toilets we would be building.  We were overjoyed when the meeting ended because we were getting eaten alive by mosquitos at this point. 

I’d also like to mention that it was a little bit before the tribe meeting that we a villager that we would be interacting with heavily during our time up in that hill village.  His name was Kite, and when we met him, he was smoking a cigarette out of a bong constructed from a piece of PVC pipe with a piece of bamboo crudely epoxide into the side.

We didn’t know it then, but he would be watching us, every day, as we worked on constructing two toilets in that village.

I digress.  We ate dinner, and hit our beds.  Unfortunately, the guest house we were sleeping in did not lend itself to mosquito nets well, and the first night looked like we were sleeping in a mosquito net shanty town.  Zhou was not happy.

Soccer and Sand

For the first time since our excursion to the Lisu Village, we were woken up by sunlight instead of roosters.  We got ourselves together, and back into town we went to buy rations and other supplies.  Base camp is built on the outskirts of Chiang Rai, and it takes about 20 minutes to drive into town.  Some of us sit in the main cab of the car, the rest sit in the pick-up bed.  Is it safe? No. Is it effective? Yes.

The location in Chiang Rai that we typically head to is a series of market booths selling vegetables, fruits, meat, and things which straddle the line in between.  All the vendors are very friendly, which is indispensable when you’re staring at food you’ve never seen before and don’t know how to eat.  In other words they give us free samples.  

Other than rations, we also bought long-sleeved pants and shirts.  After being eaten alive by mosquitos and who-knows-what-else in the bamboo jungle the other day, we decided that we’d rather be hot than food.  Also, the novelty of doing heavy manual labor while wearing Calvin Klein was strangely seductive.  We bought our clothes from an open air store at the side of the road that sold clothes that had been meant as free donations to the poor.   

With our new clothes packed up, and a new idea of what kind of equipment we should bring, we began our trek out to the next village: Pa-Kue, home of the Akha tribe.  Along the way, we met up with a group of kids from the village that had been sent to find us by Dr. MN.  They were packing sling-shots, and as we walked down the trail to the village, they took time-outs to try to kill birds to bring back for dinner.  They never managed to kill one, but they were surprisingly good shots.  At one point, they stopped me to ask for my machete.  One proceeded to cut down a sapling, and began to poke around in the branches of a tree with it.  I couldn’t see what they were doing. I was about to ask when my question was cut short by a beehive falling out of the tree; the kids scrambled in all directions. Needless to say, I was a bit confused as to why they would want to randomly destroy a beehive. It was then that they picked a stick with a honey comb on it off the ground, and started sharing it with us.  It was the best honey I’ve ever had. 

We got into the village around 5.  Not long after, a bunch of the kids invited us to play soccer with them, we accepted.  The field was a dirt hill in the center of the village.  In the middle ran 3 trenches carved by water flowing downhill, and here and there were patches of rock.  The kids were playing barefoot.  On the edges, male villagers with no shirts on were giving children haircuts.
 

The kids set up one beer bottle on either side of the field as a goal. Scoring required that you knock the bottle over with the ball.  We played for about an hour and a half.  Halfway through, we were joined by some older villagers, maybe around 17 or 18 years old.

 By the time we were done, our clothes we soaked, we were exhausted, and dinner was almost served.  We cleaned up, and ate. 

Dinner that night consisted mainly of vegetables.  

 Dr MN said that this village ate many more vegetables than the other tribes.  He accentuated this point in clinic that night, showing us the patients’ blood pressures.  On average they were 100/70.  Some were even lower.  Clinic was held in a mud and staw building built to the side of the soccer field. 

We found out that night that many of the villagers suffered from parasitic worms.  In this region of Thailand, there are 5 main worms that most villagers suffer from: trichinosis, round, tape, and 2 others.  The worms live in water and lay their eggs in the dirt.  Apparently, it’s not unusual for children to come to the clinic coughing up worms 6 inches long or longer.  Other times, the worms present themselves by coming out of people’s anuses at night to lay eggs. This in turn leads to itching, which leads to scratching, then whenever the people eat, they ingest the eggs stuck beneath their finger nails, restarting the cycle.  Ultimately these people end up suffering from malnutrition.  It was after that speech that we stopped walking around barefoot, decided not to drink the water, and started washing our hands with bottled water.  

After packing in clinic for the night, we split into 3 groups and head to bed. Greg and I roomed together.  Our room was a supply shack.  There were spiders everywhere.  Our beds consisted of a reed mat on the floor, and 4 blankets.  I used 2 as a mattress, one as a pillow, and the last as an actual blanket.  It wasn’t so bad, really. 

The next day Dr. MN filled us in on our project for the day.  We would be preparing for the construction of a fishery.  We needed sand for the cement.  So off to the local sand supply we went: the riverbed.

We spent the next 8 hours moving 30 pound bags approximately 300 meters from the river to the village.

We entertained ourselves by playing a game Greg showed us called GHOST.  It was basically categories, where the thing you named had to start with the last letter of the thing named before, mixed with HORSE.  The finals found Ilacqua and myself in a showdown, the topic being “Food.” 

It was a close match.

After a long day of sand moving, we ate and passed out.  The next day we did the whole thing over again.  We did the calculation, and we think we moved over one ton of sand.

 

We finished up at 10AM, an early day, and headed back to base camp.  Dr. MN told us a new volunteer was coming that day.  His name was Ray.

Ray is a 25 year old dude.  He studied at Penn State, and now goes to a small college in Pennsylvania as a premed.  He actually just took his MCAT.  He probably aced it.

At 5 PM today we all got together and headed into town.  This time we were checking out the Evening Market.  It was a lot like the Weekend Market.  We spent time eating crickets and such.  Tim actually broke off a piece of a filling and needed to see a dentist while we were there. 

You know how much it took to fix it?  $50.  Speaking of Tim, his birthday is June 22^nd.  I hope you all wished him a Happy Birthday.  If not, now’s your chance.