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.