More about the Karen village

The Karen village was a lot to process. I can't even begin to put it into words. I felt the feeling that I didn't want to leave at the end. It wasn;t so much a genuine feeling, but I at that point had hardly dove in. I was justbeginning to breach another layer and feel safe enough to go in more, interact with the locals, be present, make an effort to speak another language and have intercultural communication and really see what opportunities were there. I hardly know anything about the people, I just touched the surface and they hardly know anything about me. There is so much more that could have been exchanged.

 

The women seem to have different sounds to get animals away, and sometimes they seemed to yell at the kids a tiny bit more than I wondered was warrented. It was their tone more than anything that surprised me, their strength and the temporary deviation from their quiet, compassionate demeanor. hmm, their publicbreastfeeding and their compassionate childraising.

 

The kids are very loud and very alive, constantly discovering the power of their voices. Their playful screams and their anguished cries fill the village from morning until night as they learn their own inner strength.

 

I did at one point find myself throwing a stick at a rooster. They get going around 3:30 am and carry on all morning, making sure to get as close to you as possible. They stop several hours after sunrise and seemed to briefly resume again in late afternoon, making sure no one stays asleep after the afternoon lull.

 

I at one point witnessed an old woman carrying a huge bundle of sticks suspended fromher head across a river with quite a heavy current. Their ideas about bodies are so rooted in what they have to do, and what they have to do is so tied into where they are, and serving the basic needs of the community as dictated by the enviornment.

 

Bamboo foot bridges, pinky toes coming out of sandals, squatting, spitting, beetlenut, red stained teeth, power of the old women!, beautiful handwoven textiles, pounding flour, woman somewhat isolated in the house all day, soccer and that weird hackysackvolleyball game and how all the kids completely kick ass at it!, the extreme politeness of the kids who whenever they saw us would stop, put their hands together and say Sawadee ka (Thai for hello, thai is not these kids native langauge). Everytime. Just how fast information travels, kids carrying smaller kids on their backs, motorbikes on almost any surface, thr animals fear of humans, the dogs absolutely know the meal schedule and are always on time, intense calf muscles, that old woman's haircut, momma dog barking at me, orion's belt.