Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) Tourist Guide


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OFF TO SEE THE PAKERYAW AT HOME

Text : Tachyon and Terryl
Images : Tachyon

WELL, WE WERE TO START NICE AND EARLY of a brisk winter morning, from the home of Ajarn Thepsiri Suksopha, the famous Chiang Mai-based artist and writer - a bunch of Northern artists and this member of the team from the Tourist Guide. Off out of town for a trip to Huay Ee Kang village in the Mae Wang district where there was to be an exhibition and 'event' staged by a Chiang Mai-based organization called the Artist Alliance and participated in by the pakeryaw people themselves, Otherwise known as the Karen.

Time is pretty flexible in Chiang Mai and when you're dealing with artists and the like, you're pretty much trafficing in the Never-Never or perhaps eternity itself. That's where artists live, after all. So it's no surprise that that early start turned out to be a leisurely, more or less ten o'clock taking off. But get away we did. Drove on up the road out of the city, having first dickered about where we were going to sit, a remarkable reluctance to be by the driver, for a start. "Impossible to appreciate Nature from such a position," the stated case, though there were one or two more honest souls who admitted, "Don't wanna get car-sick". (Besides, though no-one mentioned it, next to the driver is front line if there's an accident).

There we were, anyway, driving north, seventy klicks - beautiful weather, and nature at its (his/her?) best - the streams still flowing bravely, the trees in spite of the cloudless skies and dry weather in their brightest, freshest green. And fresher, brighter, more fertile the further we went, till we were at the village of Huay Ee Kang, being greeted by our pakeryaw host, Kaewa Salaithorplerd. The word pakeryaw, by the way, means ‘I am a man', and as you might have heard, these people are among the best guardians of the forest there are. Their practice of rotational farming - slash and burn in the old idiom - far from damaging the hill environment the way they carry it out, enhances it, and when you look at the forests around their villages, you understand why the Karen have the reputation as custodians, not consumers, of the forest. "Where there are pakeryaw," they will tell you, "there you'll find the forest." And that's the way it was around Huay Ee Kang, the forest in better shape than you'll see it in a lot of national parks.

It was about noon when we got there, dumping our gear where we were staying the night, and having a little something to stay our appetites - always keener when you're out of town, have you noticed? And while the organisers busied themselves getting the exhibition set up, the rest of us strolled around, taking the chance to get some pictures.

A few minutes' walk out of the village and we were among small green rice fields, neatly terraced up the hillside. And there we found some small springs still gushing cold clear water that the villagers evidently held in a sort of awe - we were in a sense on holy ground there. We noticed too that while the villagers have a pretty good sense of their proprietorial rights to the land, the springs belong to everyone. No-one claims them for themselves - they belong to the community, the village.

By the time we'd poked around in this way, it was getting on for evening, but we had another visit to make - to the local cave of Doi Ton, about ten kilometers out of the village. No, reader, you don't see us manfully striding out along the rutted tracks and under the paling sky. We'd like to have done it like that but - well, time, you know. We took the pick-up. Outside this impressive cave, tall and venerable trees: stalactites and stalagmites in their sparkly glory inside. And some Buddha images too - something of a surprise to us, since most of the Karen here are Christians. The images though looked as if they had been there in that silent place of rock, sand and silence, since time immemorial. The perfect place for meditation, even with us there the quietness absorbing our breathing, footfalls, occasional comment. A place for rest, reflection, self-renewal. Too bad that time itself intruded again, because we had to make our way back to the village. When we got there, the villagers were strolling back from their fields, heading for the exhibition.

Our artist had been readying himself. His purpose was to advocate the importance of hygiene, to promote environmental awareness regarding waste. He planned his exhibition to be an extravaganza for the local people, who rarely if ever have a chance to go to a gallery. That night, the gallery for him and the rest of us was the entire village. The exhibition was his walk around the village, in a weird costume that creatively was made up of - well, trash, garbage. If he'd meant to attract and hold attention, his strategy certainly worked. The locals all stared at him, yelling to their kids to come and look at this barmy bloke walking around seriously, clothes full of garbage. Everybody was laughing, happy. Not many people could ‘read' his message, perhaps, but the most important thing was they were all happy. And after this exhibition came a real happy meal. Each household prepared their own food, most of dishes alike, with enormous quantities and exotic tastes. We'd been warned beforehand of the fabled hospitality of the pakeryaw, how you'd be plied with food, urged to eat your fill. However, because every house invited us in and insisted on us eating with them, we had to go sparingly, eating a little here and there, but it was still quite an event. Some of us rather overtaxed our systems, perhaps, but we could console ourselves by the assurance that we were behaving as a guest should in this situation: eating all we could of the proudly presented dishes - a main course of rice, chili paste, boiled vegetables, and nam pu, which was a kind of black sticky dip made from local crabs, boiled, ground, and them simmered. Vegetables dipped in nam pu tasted real great (especially when eaten by hand, not fork and spoon).

While we were having dinner, one of the pakeryaw men played a traditional instrument called the te-na. It was a simple string instrument with only seven notes, one on each string. For all its simplicity, though, it delivered great acoustic music that went perfectly with the meal. Te-na might be a too timid, too reticent instrument to play in town, but listening to it in a really tranquil place where the night sky was filled with stars was a terrific experience.

After the meal, the artist and the villagers met to exchange opinions on the exhibition. As far as I was concerned, I couldn't see the exhibition having sufficient impact to change or affect the people much. But that didn't matter. They are the pakeryaw, who for hundreds of years have proved to be more environmentally conscious than townspeople. It was their protection of the forests and the tiny springs that had fed water into the river that ultimately benefited us lowlanders. These are the pakeryaw people, whose name means they know who they are: ‘I am a man.'