Here is my report on the Akha in the far north of Thailand. Following it 
is a newsletter by the man who is helping the Akha.

Jan 20 - 25, 2001 Maesai, Thailand 

Today I met with a very interesting man, Matthew McDaniel. Matthew is on 
a self-guided mission, started 10 years ago, to save the Akha from the 
killing of their culture, prostitution, prison, loss of land, herbicides, 
and even genocide. 

The Akha, (if they were  left undisturbed), practice a sustainable way of 
life that would be a good model for other people, even Westerners, to follow. 

He and I see eye-to-eye on many things. We don't quite agree on population 
being a pressing problem, but we both agree that human greed, large 
corporations, the rich, and corruption contribute to the problems of the 
world. 

We both follow the 'die-off' web site (www.die-off.org) and believe that 
petroleum will be less and less available. Water is becoming scarcer. We 
also talked about global warming and how it will bring in malaria and 
lessen the land mass in Bangladesh by 18%. 

He says that the man who started Cabbages and Condoms and the PDA in Thailand 
is connected with PTT, a petroleum company. He also sponsors questionable 
means of birth control for the hill people. Also, his company is planting 
pine plantations which displace Akha land. 

Matthew believes that the rich Thai are displacing the Akha by taking their 
land. 

He says the UN has a plan to try out the Tetnus Toxoid vacine as a way to 
reject the fetus in a woman resulting in a spontaneous abortion. He knows of 
Akha women that have been given this vaccine when pregnant. Generally, women 
are not supposed to be given vaccines when they are pregnant. In one Akha 
village there have been 9 miscarriages out of less than 50 pregnancies in two 
years.  All the women were given this vaccine. Women who do not want the 
vaccine due to religious reasons are told that it is mandatory or they will 
not get an ID card for their child.  He also believes that the hepatitis 
vaccine mimics HIV.  Polio vaccines used monkey tissue without full verification 
of all the other virus's which may have been passed along. Considering the use 
of fetal tissue and the growing controversies Matthew no longer believes in 
using vaccines. He also says that the women are given inappropriate methods 
of birth control such as the IUD or the arm implants. Matthew has hard evidence 
that in the early 1980s, sterilizations were forced on Akha women. This continues 
in some cases, which he has witnessed. 

Matthew has recently obtained 3 bakery ovens, with which he plans to bake 
bread and take to the villages for nourishment in the poorer villages. One 
village, that has been in the same location of nearly 80 years, does not 
need the bread, but he takes it anyway - to show he cares. In one of the 
re-located villages he has built some fish ponds out of concrete. This is 
a source of protein for the Akha who do not have enough land, or who live 
too far away from their farms to be able to put in the hours necessary to 
grow adequate food. 

Matthew says the the Christian missionaries take the children from their 
parents, and thus rob them of their culture. When the villages can no longer 
produce enough food, or if they suffer a shortage of men, the women go into 
cities and become prostitutes to provide for themselves and their children. 
They have no other skills and many do not know Thai.

Matthew is also obtaining a printing press, with which he plans on producing 
educational books in the Akha language. The Akha do not have a written 
language, but they need one to protect themselves from the dismissal of their 
language by the missionaries. 

Matthew is looking more and more into the drug war - he thinks it is driven by 
the CIA. He researches the Internet extensively and has contacts that will 
back this up. The Akha are pawns in the drug war. Some of them, if they have 
not had a chance to build up a sustainable agriculture, need to grow opium 
in order to survive. The British introduced opium to Burma and then forced 
the hill people to cultivate it. The Japanese are rumoured to pay the Akha 
not to produce opium, but Matthew says this is not enough to make them stop. 

He says the hill people are being forced out of the hills away from the 
Burma-Thai border. But they are not being given enough lowland property 
in return. Forests of pine - monocultures -- are being planted in their 
place. The lowlands to which they are moved are hot and are sources of 
malaria, insects, and funguses such as ringworm. Humans and their livestock 
- pigs, chickens, ponies, do not seem to fare as well in the lower villages. 
The old lands contain the terraces and the new lands do not; thus the new 
lands are far less sustainable. In addition, the new lands are being squeezed 
by pine plantations planted by the Thai forestry department. 

Matthew's new place is a big storefront type of building with three 'garage 
door' openings and upstairs apartments. It backs right up to the Mae Sai 
river and across the river is Burma. The ground floor has three big ovens 
and the bread from it is wholesome and delicious. Matthew subsists entirely 
on donations for his project. 

He is here in Maesai with his Akha wife and son and the wife's sister and a 
sister-in-law. His family wants to go back to the village, but they are stuck 
here while the truck is being repaired. Matthew has his 4-wheel vehicle in a 
repair shop. It is a re-inforced with big iron bumpers and other welded 
materials because he travels on very rough roads. The truck isn't quite ready, 
but should be tomorrow. Matthew is interested in a much larger truck, a sturdy 
military truck that will serve his purposes. It will haul concrete or up to 
40 people. It has a huge winch for extracting the truck from bad situations 
when the roads are muddy. Matthew is also interested in getting a Humve - an 
all-terrain vehicle that will not tip over and will take the huge ruts in the 
road much easier than his truck does. He wants to be able to take patients to 
the hospital as village people do not have an ambulance service. 

Matthew is an excellent writer and has extensive written material on his 
website and in an email journal - well worth reading.His website is attractive 
and also contains videos of the Akha and his project. He has also written a 
paper in the book - Tai Culture -Community Rights in Thailand and Southeast 
Asia ..Rangsit Univerity Thai Studies Program. 

Matthew says that the typical crop rotation for the Akha is rice the first year, 
then corn, and then a native grass is allowed to grow, which is harvested for 
broom straw. It seems that the Akha supply most of the broom straw in the 
country and that the price is getting very high because the Akha, with less 
land, have been unable to complete the crop rotation and produce the broom 
straw. Of course, this also means that their land is less suitable for crops 
and the crop production is lessened. 

I learned something from Matthew about women's health and self esteem that I 
didn't know before - women need inside toilets - when they avoid going to 
toilet outside at night because it is dark and lacking in privacy - get bladder 
infections. 

The Akha often practice polygamy. Usually only one wife, or two if there are 
not enough men to go around. Life in the village for a woman is difficult if 
there is no one to take care of her, so if she cannot find a husband, she may 
be forced to turn to prostitution. Women have free choice about who they marry 
and also can divorce a man. Akha people are usually not adulerous and sex 
between even distant cousins is strictly taboo. In a typical Akha house, the 
women sleep in the rear partition and the men in the front. The women use the 
toilet in the back and the men go out the front. This ensures privacy for the 
women.

One day we take the motorcycle out to a village displaced by a reforestation 
project. Matthew has built the fish ponds are here. The people have been moved 
to lower ground where it is hot and humid. We visit a home in the village. Two 
women here wear traditional garb with lots of silver on their hats. In this home, 
the man has two wives. We were served rice whiskey and tea and sat on really 
short stools. The occasion for the gathering was to have a special meal to help 
heal a baby with ringworm. At one point the little girl scratched open a sore 
and there was a lot of blood. 

In one village that has been displaced, families must walk 2-1/2 hours to farm 
their land, and then back again, leaving little time for growing food.

The reforestation project is sponsored by the royal family, particularly by 
the Princess Mother (now deceased), who also favored helping the tribal folk. 
But it looks like the roryal family's brand of help did not include preserving 
the Akha on their traditional mountain top lands.
 
Another day, after we get the truck back from the mechanic, we go up into the 
mountains. In one village, Matthew has purchased a bit of land for a widow, 
where she will run an Akha school. Up until now, the Akha have not had their 
own schools. The Akha want their children taught in the Akha way, which 
involves teaching them the ways of working on the land. Matthew envisions night 
schools where the children would learn to read the Akha language and then 
perhaps some counting and other skills. 

The next day we go out and visit three villages. Matthew visits up to 300 
villages that are in his area. Typically, he may see as many as 10 villages 
a day. Some villages are as high as 5,000 feet, and are close to the Burma 
border. The Thai military has moved some of the villages off of the ridge 
that is on the border. Matthew has succeeded in stopping the moving of a 78 
year old village by drawing international attention to it. This is one of 
the very sustainable villages! . People here are well fed, the rice is a full-
grain, hearty rice, and the hills are terraced. Matthew would like to get some 
tourists out to a selected few of the other villages to keep them from being 
moved from their sustainable lifestyle 
In two of the villages we visit, the children, babies, and adults are suffering 
from scabies - an itching disease caused by mites. Fortunately, Matthew has 
stowed away in his truck, a gallon size jug of benzene benzoate - the topical 
medication for scabies. 

Matthew is most interested in maintaining healthy babies and preventing infant 
death. He has seen many deaths in the villages. Some of them were babies. Some 
of them were acts of violence to bad people in the villages. 

We pass a wedding party - pickup taxis bringing back guests and bride and groom 
from a wedding. When we get to the village, we are offered some wedding food 
served on a banana leaf for a table cloth. Rice whiskey and some tea are poured. 
Foods like gingered fatty pork, fried vegatables, and chilis are offered. 

Here the Akha ladies wear skirts low on hips - upper hips and cheeks show. Many 
chew beetle nuts. And the children wear hats with silver coins sewn on. 

Matthew jokes and kids with the Akha. He tells me that their religion tells them 
when to plant the rice and other crops. They have 13 religious festivals, each 
of which is geared to tell them the cycle of life. It is a beautiful life and 
life on the ridgetop is amazing, almost spiritual even to a Westerner. With the 
world at their feet, why do the Akha need the greedy material world that the 
Westerners are trying so hard to push on them? 

-------

From:  Matthew McDaniel  
Subject:  Akha Weekly Journal:Truck is Back Jan 24, 2001 
Date:  Wed, 24 Jan 2001 23:40:16 +0700 

Maesai Thailand Update, The Akha Heritage Foundation.

Dear Friends:

Well, it sure has been an exciting week.

My friend Karen came from the states to see the project. We were able to
get the Truck out of hock and start getting out to the villages and
taking a look at what was going on.

I haven't been in the villages much for two months, so my heart leaped a
little with this.

As mentioned, one of the local ner do wells, an American, with nothing
better to do, put sugar in the truck when it was parked out in front
here.

So we got a new engine now, still not enough power (as in hummer) but we
are rolling.

So that is fantastic, just absolutely fantastic, but not just that, but
because it just so happened that when it rains it pours.

The ovens are turning out bread and have gotten two batches out to the
village children so far as I work out recipe sizes, etc.  One firing of
the ovens makes over 200 loaves and I run two firings in two hours for a
single shift.  So now I got to get a roof rack to haul these bundles of
loaves of bread to the kids.  Thai army take away rice land, well, we
got news for you.

The Bakery Video is at http://www.akha.org/akha_video.htm  2.4 meg I
think.

And to make matters nearly unbareably joyous, the printing press is
coming this week, to its waiting berth, here at the building.  Well a
few people still haven't paid their pledges on this baby yet, but that's
ok, I can wait, and since the other fellow said he could too.  (so come
on now, lets not make this guy wait forever) But the press is still
coming.

But as if that was not enough, great joy, heaped on hope, and then
another load of joy dumped on top, well along came fantastic news that
the fish project pump and well work will soon be done also, so that the
test tanks can go into full cycle.  They got filled up with water by
last years rain, have had catfish in them since, and then a nice bloom
of water hyacinth has kept the fish cool.  We wondered how long the
catfish could survive without changing the water, we found out, nearly a
year. But of course with the pump and fresh water coming in we will be
able to boost the count quite a bit.

So there ya got heart stopping hope and joy folks, Fish, Bread and
Books, rolling to the villages anytime now.

This year will be our no holds barred year, full on service to all 282
Akha Villages in Thailand along with all the village fragments and
displaced Akha in the urban setting. We got into 250 Akha villages last
year.

Karen was really cool, she brought vitamins for the villages, went we me
to Huuh Mah Akha to see how they were doing.

Been a real nasty case of scabies in all the villages of late.

By the way, in a continued focus of this project I am working to put
together a formidable effort to stop infant death in the villages.
Seeking one pediatrician with third world and infant experience, with
emergency care would be good and with tropical disease experience would
be good too.

This is really the greatest gap here in available services.  There are
few doctors or clinics or hospitals with good infant care capabilities.
So even if I do find a sick infant in time, getting them to the hospital
guarantees a big bill, but not always their life.

By the way, any of you who would like to help us and the Akha by joining
in our Anti Drug War effort and our Anti Militarization of Akha
environment and border villages, please contact us to help support
poverty alleviation, not guns.

We figure there is going to be enough war here this spring as it is.

Now the final good news is that with the completion of all the
infrastructure projects, the smallest donation now goes directly into
fish, flour, paper, meds, vitamins, for all our projects.

Lots of bang for the buck folks.

Ok,

Happy Chinese New Year

Matthew McDaniel
>From the Big Bubble Bread and Wide Eye Pie Publishing Company
Maesai

Yeah, we make some kick butt apple pie too!

--


http://www.akha.com
http://www.akha.org

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