The road back to Mandalay.

When I’m not writing, I’m reading From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey by Pascal Khoo Thwe. It is an autobiography of the first part of his life in Phekhon, Kayah State and his incredible journey taking him eventually to study at Cambridge University. It is poignant to drive through Phekhon as we start our long road back to Mandalay. Cont. myandering.blogspot.com

We leave Loikaw in Kayah State and drop down to 4,800 feet toward Pin Laung in Southern Shan State. The vegetation changes as we drive. Pine and Teak are everywhere, along with yellow acacias that form arches of gold over the roads. Men with bullock carts loaded with rows of cabbages are throwing them up one by one to waiting men in trucks. The cabbages are stacked one by one, making pleasing patterns both in the bullock carts and then in the trucks. Some plants climbing over trellises remind me of grape vines, but they are chokos, which are fruiting prolifically.

Pin Laung is to be our overnight place to cut three hours off the drive that Win Kyaing would have to do in one day. But we arrive at 10.30 am! As it’s still early, we drive on to Aung Ban.

The soil in Kayah State and here in Southern Shan State is a rich chestnut colour. It is beautiful in places with no flowers, but even more so with scarlet Salvias and red Poinsettia lighting the way. Lower down, Marigolds splash orange and tall Asters bloom blue. We reach Aung Ban and as it’s still early we decide to try to reach Kyause where last year we attended the Elephant Festival.

Every road we take both in Kayah State and Southern Shan State are being improved. And there is plenty of room for improvement. On the roadside, stacks of boulders are hacked into smaller stones, by women as well as men. The old ‘made up’ part of the road in the middle of these huge piles of boulders, rocks and gravel is full of holes so we jolt along. Perhaps the road improvement is being undertaken so that the government can shine in the November election.

I did wonder if Kyause would have a hotel in which foreigners might stay. If I stay anywhere that is not licensed to take foreigners the owners or managers (or both) could be in a lot of trouble. I faced this once years ago and after a tiring drive, then showering and unpacking it was a pain having to pack up and move out. I don’t want a repeat.

Thiri Mingalar Taung Taw Pagoda

Before we leave Loikaw we have to visit their spectacular pagoda Thiri Mingalar Taung Taw. The paya is not more spectacular than usual, but it is built on the top of a precipitous jagged outcrop of rock high above the town.  It is 387 feet from the bottom to the summit from which we can see nine smaller paya grouped on the next highest points. The view over the town is panoramic with the Shan Mountains away in the distance. 

There are many huge trees in the town: usually development has removed them. We were delighted that there is a lift to the top of the paya. It is the first we have seen in Myanmar. When it was time to return to the ground we read a notice telling us to ring a mobile phone number and the lift man would come up to collect us! That was a first for both of us!

Tomorrow we drive on the road back to Mandalay.

Totems and Rituals

At the end of Thadingut the villagers erect tall bamboo and short Eugenia totem poles. They decorate them with bamboo symbols of the sun, moon and stars, below which are bundles of rice with their roots and earth still attached. Right at the top strips of bamboo are woven into an umbrella or hti, which is very similar to those on Buddhist paya. Although some villagers have become Buddhist or Roman Catholic over the years, they still hold animistic rituals. 

The villagers sacrifice pigs and chickens to pray for good rain, freedom from danger, unity and peace and tranquility. We enter a field where many totems have been erected over the years. At festival time, a fence is erected to separate men from women. Inside, the men dance, sing and play musical instruments: flutes, brass cymbals, bronze drums and gongs.

Below is a table for the offerings.

Daw Thu Mgu village

We ask to meet another elderly person in the village: she is a lady of 93. She remembers pounding rice for the Japanese army in World War II. She sits beside a very smoky fire because the smoke keeps away insects. It obviously works because we couldn’t see one insect! She tries both pairs of glasses. Either made her sight clearer, but the reading glasses were the favourite. Beneath her cardigan, she is wearing traditional dress including silver drop-earrings that are so heavy they have elongated her ear lobes.

Daw The Mgu a Red Kayin village near Loikaw in Kayah State.

We ask to meet the oldest person in Daw The Mgu to see if he or she they would like to receive the glasses from Raksha. Daw Phye Myas thinks she is about 95. Her children, she has five, would like her to go and live with them. She won’t because she likes her traditional house and can continue looking after one of her daughters, who is about 65, and who has mental health problems. She tried the glasses but said they were not clear. We then found out she can still thread a needle! 

A surprise awaits us: it is a one-day festival when each family visits the others. They take food and drink to share and they include us. My shake is bad, so I wonder how I will go with the rice wine. It tastes delicious and has no ill effects though I don’t drink much – just in case I couldn’t write. Win Kyaing samples the non-vegetarian array and I enjoy sticky rice wrapped in pandan leaves, which are boiled or steamed.

Great grandfather passed away recently. The women wore traditional dress and there was dancing to honour him. The body lay in the upstairs room for two nights then was buried in the cemetery outside the village.

Later, we enter a house where we are invited to view the guardian nat of the kitchen. In one corner stand nat wooden poles decorated with dry teak leaves and next to these stands a gun. The surrounding forests are full of wild pig and deer, which the Red Karin hunt.

Hanging from a beam, and smoked black over the ages, is a basket that once contained choice morsels of pork as well as the pig’s skull and giblets of chickens. On an auspicious day, the pork and chicken is put into a pan of water along with wine and turmeric and then boiled for 15 minutes. The shaman, who is similar to a nagadaw in that what he says they have to do, then makes pronouncements, for example when the next festival should take place.

Daw The Mgu, a Red Kayin village near Loikaw in Kayah State

Today we visit Daw The Mgu, which is a Red Kayin village of 100 families near Loikaw in Kayah State. The Red Karin are animist and believe they are descended from two large birds that fly over mountains. The male bird is Karin Na Ye and the female Karin Na Yar. 

On the way, we pass fields of the villagers' produce. They are fortunate to be near one of the seven lakes that lie along the bottom of the mountains. They grow onions, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts and sunflowers for making oil, soybeans to dry into crispy biscuits and their staple: rice. 200 species of bamboo grow here. Along with Sri Lanka, these are the tallest: many growing to more than 30 feet. We pass plantations of teak trees that are under the management of the Ministry of Forestry and Environment. Along the road are spikes of yellow blossom and in front of the villagers’ houses orchids are blooming purple, white, yellow and pink.

There are eight groups in Myanmar: Kachin, Shan, Mon, Rakine, Chin, Bama, Kayin, Kayah. Within these are 135 races. And within those are many sub groups. Kayah State has at least eight sub-groups: Kayah, Kayan, Kayaw, Gaytho, Gyaba, Yinbaw, Yinthale, Manumanaw. Each has their own dialect and often cannot understand another, even though they might live quite close. The Red Karin are within the Kayah group.

Many of the women no longer wear traditional dress, but one young woman dons hers to show us. This takes a long time and involves three helpers. As well as the red scarves wound around their head their capes are also red. They have twists of emerald and pink cotton around their neck Silver was once plentiful around here, but today we see necklaces of silver coins, some of which depict England’s Edward V11. They choose silver over the Padaung’s brass, which may, in the olden days, have been gold. Both have tattoos of the rising sun on their back or shoulder. Each wears long silver earrings, the favourite style seems to be a bunch of (scaled down!) sweetcorn cobs. They wear a beaded belt around their midriff, and a long white scarf reaches from around their neck to below their knee. Their black blouse is off one shoulder and is open from the waist down revealing a red skirt that ends just above the knee. Below the knee they wear coils of cotton threads dyed black with lacquer. This is wound round and around forming a huge black bundle.

Pampet village Kayah State

In each of the open sided houses we visit Padaung women welcome us. Many are back-strap weaving. They tether one end of the ‘loom’ to a horizontal bar that is part of the house. The other end is tethered to a back-strap that is fastened around their hips. Various coloured thread is wounds around long slivers of bamboo. When the pattern demands a change of colour they pick up another bamboo sliver.

One woman is weaving the white tunic that all Padaung women wear over short black skirts. In each of their houses were the fruits of their labour in terms of multi-coloured scarves and little shoulder bags. We bought Win Kyaing a tiny bag, which he hangs around his neck as a perfect size for carrying his mobile! Also for sale are rings, bracelets and bangles in the same material as the neck rings.

The chief tells us much about the neck rings. Girls of about five years start wearing a few at a time. Gradually they build up over the years. The woman with whom we are sitting wears 17 rings joined together. She also wears six more that are joined to each other but not to the others. In all, she wears 23 and they weigh enormously heavy at 12 kilogrammes. How they can work in the fields and carry produce on their backs to the market demonstrates how incredibly strong they are. While we are there a tuk-tuk tractor arrives and the woman lifts a huge sack of produce into the back despite the rings around her neck.

Happy voices herald the primary school. Inside, there are 65 children and two teachers. There is much bustle, action and noise as well as lessons. We give the two-dozen exercise books and pens to the teachers, but are pleased to see that the children are working with writing books, so ours will come in handy later.

Three little girls, one the daughter of the chief, come to show us their neck rings. Each one has about five. The teacher tells us an amusing something. One little girl has a set of rings that can be opened all down one side so, as the teacher says, she wears them if she wants to and not if she doesn’t!  Another child finds a decorative way of carrying his pen. It is on top of his head and clipped to stay put.

They invite us into a large wooden house. In the middle of the wood floor there is an enthusiastic fire burning tended by a man. The room is full of smoke as there is no chimney. The smoke that does get out does so through cracks in the wooden walls and gaps under the eaves. When my eyes accustom to the dark room I see more than a hundred corncobs (of the sweet corn variety) Presumably the smoke adds flavour. The man shows me the pumpkin pieces he is boiling in the pot and while tending the fire he snacks on pieces of cucumber marinating in a doubtless delicious sauce.

Eventually the obvious questions come up of when and why the women wear neck rings. There are three versions. The first is that long, long ago, if a tiger leaps at their throat it will not kill them. The second needs more research on my part, as I can only understand the word ‘dragon’.  The fthird is more prosaic. Long ago, when the different races moved down from the north through Burma, they had to wear all their valuables so they would not be stolen.

I must now find out more about the dragons.