Every community, Im sure, has its issues, but Mae Chung Cow a Karen (tribal group) village in the Chiang Rai province of Northern Thailand certainly has ALOT going for it!! I am travelling there to stay over night with a group of around 20 delegates from China, The UK, Lao and Burma, who are taking part in an environmental conference/training with an international aid agency.
The road is pretty windy and red clay, apparently its not much fun if it rains so we are hurrying to the village in the dark trying to beat the rain. The man driving my car says as we pass through another village. “Okay that’s the end of electricity and phones, we are now at the end of the world”, with a tongue in cheek smile.
THE ROAD INTO THE VILLAGE IN THE MORNING.
THIS GUY TOTALLY LOVED THE CAMERA. CAN YOU TELL?
The village is nestled between the mountains and is surrounded by forest on one side. Some of the forest is under Government jurisdiction and some is protected by the community. We walk up into the forest with the ‘Head-man’ of the the village. This area is protected by the Karen people. They are allowed to hunt and gather food here and use wood for their own village but are not allowed to commercially exploit the forest. This apparently sits well with the Karen world view as it relates to the environment and water hygiene. The head man tells us that without the forest his village would not have such a healthy water supply.
AN AREA OF KAREN MANAGED FOREST. CRYSTAL CLEAR WATER AND BIRD CALLS.
The forest is beautiful and I could have stayed in there all day. Another Karen man was telling us about the different plants and their medicinal properties, the Karen are really into the herbal medicines that grow in the forest and have been known to teach the other tribal groups this knowledge. The guy shows us a place on the trunk of a tree where people have been scraping off the bark and I find it very amusing as he says in broken English “ H1N1” which is the vaccine for influenza I think. I could have saved a lot of money at the travel doctor with that information.
THE HEADMAN OF THE VILLAGE FOUND THESE MUSHROOMS WHILE WE WERE WALKING.
We sleep on the floor of a big wooden house. I sleep like a baby and am woken by the sound of someone feeding the pigs downstairs in the still pitch black morning. The village has one farmer who is quite a green renegade who is anti mono cropping slash and burn and cash-cropping and shows us his fish farm, his piggy bio fuel production facility and his gorgeous multifaceted fields planted with many different types of fruit and food crops growing at different rates.
Mae Chung Cow is certainly a place I would like to return to during my time in Thailand.
SOME KIDS AT THE DAY CARE
