I have arrived to the land of the Moken people, or the Sea Gypsies. "The land of the Sea Gypsies" is a bit of an oxi-moron and for them even a bit bitter-sweet because, historically, the Sea Gypsies have never had a land of their own. For centuries the Mokens have been nomads of the water, living off of the sea. They traveled, worked, played, ate, lived and died all on their boats. They are true masters of the seas, nomadically roaming the seas of SE Asia. Traveling the seas to follow their livelyhood of different sea organisms, they would stop at ports only to sell some of their catches in exchange for anything they would need that the sea did not provide.
However, especially in the past 50 years, the countries of SE Asia have strenghtened their national boundaries, moving them out into the sea, creating problems for a travelling peoples with no nationality. The Sea Gypsies have no papers, no passports to be stamped by coastguard. The Burmese say, "you must stay out of our waters, you are Thai." But the Thai say, "You are not Thai, you have no proof." Mokens all around SE Asia have had to settle on islands and abandon their centuries old lifestyle.
We stayed on the island of Ko Lao for one week, working to help a small community of Sea Gypsies. There are many, many small communities of Mokens, not only spread out on Thai islands but also on those of Malaysia and Indonesia. The Mirror Art Group--the same group that works with the hill tribes of the north--in the past decade has begun working to gain citizenship for the Sea Gypsies, in addition to aiding in numerous other projects.
The Moken of Ko Lao have it particularly tough. While aid money flooded into SE Asia after the Tsunami of 2004, Ko Lao has only now begun to see a small amount of it. With such a large scale catastrophe and so many different aid organizations, some families and communities received too much and took advantage of it while others recieved nothing at all. Little record could be kept of aid in the chaos after the tragedy, so this sort of hole in the system unfortunately was able to occur. Recently they have received more aid, but that doesn't necessarily mean it has been helpful. Many disheartened Mokens talk of corruption in the aid organization, who often try to involve the community very little in the decisions being made on its behalf. Also, having numerous different aid organizations with different focuses is not always good either. Christian missionaries built a big, beautiful church to be used for the children. Not long after, MERCY, an organization that helps communities with childcare, preschool, prenatal care, and basically anything concerning children, built also a very nice daycare. They at least seem to be doing well for the community: they try to have meetings with the villagers to include them, they feed the children, and the villagers seem to give positive reviews. The missionaries, on the other hand, keep their big, beautiful structure locked up save when they are there on Sundays to sing Bible songs with the children (but at least they let aid orgs. like us use it as a dormitory while we are there.) The point: different groups, instead of working together, are wasting resources building the same thing twice while other necessities are not being built at all.
Interesting Fact:
While 225,000 people died in this earthquake, not a single Moken from Ko Lao was killed, and very few elsewhere. Why?
Because they knew it was coming. Very few Mokens have any sort of formal education, but they know their sea and the signs it gives. Mokens all over packed up and sailed North or went inland before the Tsunami came.
While there were no casualties, everything they had was swept away. Since the Mokens of Ko Lao recieved little aid, they had to fend for themselves. Their boats were ruined. Even once they could fish again, fear that the ocean's fish had eaten their dead relatives kept many Thais away from seafood for years after the Tsunami, greatly hurting the fishing industry.
What an intense, experience. The more time you spend on this island, the deeper you realize their problems run. There are no easy solutions. These Mokens have only been on Kao Lao for 34 years, and it is their first time living permanently in one place. There is a great deal that they never learned.
TRASH
The island is absolutely covered in trash. Nobody has a trash bin; the ocean is our dump. Broken glass, plastic bags, and food packaging litters the landscape...34 years of it. They have taken the western world's "gift" of packaged, store bought snacks, but have not had the benefit of the West's efficient waste removal knowledge. While I would walk around in shoes noting the numerous broken glass pieces every square yard, children would come running past me, shoeless. Because while living at sea it was not an option, they have NO agriculture. They grow nothing. This is the first real generation not brought up in boats: can you blame them? Unfortunately, any sort of agriculture cannot begin until after the trash situation is fixed. And believe me--I had to shovel as we worked on the housing project--the problem, quite literally, goes deep.
FOOD
Luckily, finally the Mokens have received small amounts of aid. The children usually get at least one rounded meal per day, grazie a both the MERCY foundation and Pee Now, a Thai woman who stays in their village, looking out for and cooking for the community. Otherwise, the main staple of their diet is shellfish. Only shellfish. Women sit on their haunches hour after hour scraping muscles out of their shells to feed the family. They have little money to buy any variety from Ranong (the closest city on the mainland) so this tends to be their staple. And (as I said the problems run deep,) much of the money that their families DO see is drank away by the men. The reason becomes clear when you look in their eyes and realize that the people of this village have very little hope; they are very, very jaded. This is perhaps the biggest problem and steepest hill to climb for any benevolent soul or NGO who would like to help, because it almost seems as though these people have lost the will to care.
OUR ROLE
During our time here, we have helped with numerous projects, but much of what we hoped to accomplish fell through. Perhaps our biggest accomplishment came from playing with the kids. The island is tearing at the seams with shoeless, often bare bottomed children running about. But while the adults all seem to be jaded, the children still laugh and see the world as children anywhere do. Many of these children stopped attending school because they had to leave the island to attend a Thai school and after their efforts were treated poorly by the Thai children and not understood or taken care of by the Thai teachers. For them to feel loved and even adequate is important for them to continue with a positive outlook as they grow into adults. At best, we gave the children hope, and maybe even also a little to those jaded parents as they watched their children line up behind us as we airplaned them around with smiles on our faces.
I have SO many wonderful pictures, and SO much more to say about this island, but I do not have time!!
Tomorrow we will be in Bangkok, and then off to India! Woohoo! I am incredibly blue to leave Thailand because I LOVE THESE PEOPLE!--but I'm sure I will have an equally rich experience in India.
No comments:
Post a Comment