Livin' with the Karens

During our trip through Thailand, Marie and I had the chance to spend some days with our friend Jim. We met Jim two years ago in Indian, USA where he teaches anthropology. Lucky us, Jim was traveling across South East Asia just when Marie and I took some days of! He offered us to join him for his field trip in a tribal village near Chiang Mai, northern Thailand. That’s how we got to meet the Karen people and share their lives for some days! Thanks again Jim, for this unforgettable experience and unique opportunity.

Let’s start with a short background reminder: who are the Karen people?

The Karens are one of the 20 ethnics groups composing the Thai Hill Tribes. With a population of about 400,000 the Karens are by far the largest tribe in Thailand. Those ethnic groups migrated from Tibet, China and Laos in the 19^th century and settled in the mountains at the Myanmar/Thailand border. Most of them are Buddhists. They are self-sufficient and live a very simple life, mainly unchanged since decades (well, until recently at least...) The Thai government recognizes them and tries to respect their culture, while prevented them from some traditions like growing opium poppy for instance.

We meet Jim at Chiang Mai airport. To reach the tribal village, it takes a 3 hours ride on the back of an old pick-up through a desert and bumpy dirt path climbing across steep mountains. At this point of the trip, I realized that I had definitively left the beaten tracks!...

But the first view of the village confirmed that it was worth the journey and that the coming days would be unforgettable! The little village is composed of about 20 to 30 small bamboo houses built on stilts. The ground floor below the house is used as a storage area and for poultry and pigs farming. The alleys between the houses are made of beaten red-clay, which combined with the setting sun light made a perfect landscape! The most surprising thing was the silence! With the next TV being probably 50 miles away the village was surprisingly calm. We slept in one of the bamboo houses. The inside structure is very simple: only one main room, with the kitchen in a corner and with the fire pit. Yes, they make fire inside the houses… Cough, cough!!

We woke up before the sunrise and climbed the pick above the village and the view in the morning mighty mist was just perfect! On the way back we had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the morning routine of the villagers: the elders start the fire to warm the house up and cook the breakfast. The kids go pick up the traps they left overnight and are very proud to show us how big their catch is… Hmm, makes me hungry! I actually tasted this rat, and not surprisingly I didn’t like it!! The taste is really strong, almost disgusting. The closest I can think of, taste wise, is wild boar.

The mothers get their child ready to go to school. The daily life is very laborious, whether it’s in the rice paddy, at cloth making or to prepare rice seeds… Almost everything they need (food – shelter – cloth, etc…) is provided by the nature.

The Karens traditionally practice slash-and-burn agriculture, which turned out to be very bad for the environment. Therefore the royal government took action to prevent such practice. But in order to preserve Karen’s fragile culture a committee was created to interact with the Karens in a non-destructive manner. Purpose was to teach them how to evolve their habits while maintaining their culture and their self-sufficiency. Lot of pedagogy was used and it took time, but the outcome is pretty satisfying as most of the hill tribes accepted to change their way of cultivation. Well, that’s the official story. Some Human Right association mentioned that those tribes traded their nomad way of life against a sedentary one… That was the condition imposed by the Thai government to grant full citizenship to the tribe’s people. It’s true that some traditions are lost, but on the other side, thanks to educational programs, chance is given to the Karens to adapt to modern life and to continue to exist… What’s right, what’s wrong? Dunno!...

Another outcome of the official tribe development policies is the school system. The government sponsors parents who send their children to school. We visited a nearby school. A particularity is that the students bring food for their teacher. Kids are the same all over the world when it comes to school playground.

The next day we took a walk on the mountains. This is just a perfect area for trekking! Nature is good and there is almost no threat (except for some snakes). Villagers are shy but very welcoming. It’s extremely quiet and the landscapes are just breathtaking, especially in the morning mist!!! I’ll be back some day, that’s for sure!

This trip in a tribal village was really a memorable experience. It’s good to remember that life can be (and should be?) much simpler than it is in big cities, working for big worldwide companies…

Next hop for Marie and me: short layover in Chiang Mai for some days and then en route to Cambodia!

[to be continued...]



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