To Everything there is a Season

About three weeks ago we heard of an Akha woman in a village near our home who was very ill and had not eaten in seven days. We went to her home to pray for her and were shocked at what we found. We had never seen anything like it before, except in a National Geographic or war documentary. She was very small and very cold. We prayed for her, encouraged the family to keep trying to get any kind of sustenance into her body and left. It was most probably the very end effects of AIDS.

On Monday afternoon she died. One of her sons came to our village and communicated that his mother had died and he wanted me to come to his house... immediately. There followed such a sequence of events as I have never seen. Most of them are flashes of memories, moments that I seem to remember apart from the hours we have spent with the family since. I arrived in the home to find a casket and a body. It became obvious that they thought I knew how to conduct a preparation for burial. I could only pray and be a presence as mourners came to mourn and villagers came to see what had happened.

In America, hospitals and funeral homes have so separated us from death that it has become surreal. In an Akha village death is part of life, and however difficult it might be it must be dealt with by the hands of those who love the deceased.

Most of the next 48 hours were spent sitting beside the closed casket in the home of the family whose mother had died. Many times conversation was disturbingly light, or villagers would laugh at crying family members. There are so many coping mechanisms and cultural differences that we often felt like we were just in the way. However, we have begun to realize that because the Akha have such a great fear of death, they really just wanted us there to show them we were not afraid. And the truth is we weren't. As it is written, Where, o death, is your sting? This woman had given her life to Christ, and has entered into a life where pain no longer plays a part.

For those of us who remain, however, there is great loss. I have not yet begun to feel the pains that life throws in our way, but I have just begun to see the peace that comes when our final pain has been suffered.

Yesterday many Akha from many villages gathered and we walked to the top of a mountain for the burial service. Whether there were tears or jokes being made, everyone suffered except the guest of honor, for she was free.

Tags:

• Akha
• culture

We made it!

Hey, everyone. Well we've made it through our first two weeks in an Akha village. It was amazing! We've just returned to Chiang Rai for a week or so to help with an Akha Youth Camp and to rest a little from the rigors of village life. We have so much to tell you about our time, but we don't want overwhelm you with an enormous blog, so I've written several shorter blogs. That way, if you're in a hurry, you can pick one or two to read instead. Also, we've put new pictures on our Photos page, so be sure to check out those as well.

Tags:

• AOF
• ACY

A Hill people...

The Akha are a people of the hills. We came to understand this fact intimately during our first stint in an Akha village. One of the first bits of language that we learned was how to say “good bye”. There isn't really an exact equivalent. Basically, the person leaving says one of two things: “O iˇ ma de” (I'm going up.) or “O le ma de” ( I'm going down). And the person who is staying responds with either : “O la loe o iˇ de” (Go slowly up) or “O la loe o le de” ( Go slowly down.) We found out that there really isn't a word for “go” at all. It's either “go up” or “go down”. And boy is that true! We walked up and down so many hills that even though our Akha Mom (Lydia) was feeding us near to bursting three times a day, we didn't run the risk of gaining any weight!

Tags:

• Akha
• language
• culture

The Art of Having Dirt Floors...

Most Akha villages are built directly on the side of a mountain. They compensate for this in two ways. Either they build the floor out of bamboo and suspend it like a deck on bamboo stilts. Or they use retaining walls to level the ground and build directly on the dirt instead of on stilts. At first, I really hoped to get a stilted house. I thought “Yuck, I couldn't stand living on dirt floors!”. Well, sure enough... we got a dirt floor. Luckily, after a day or two, I found that it wasn't so bad after all. And when we saw how they build the stilt houses, we decided that we're glad to be on solid ground! But, I digress, what I really wanted to tell you about was the art of having a dirt floor.

After we'd been in the village about 4 days, my closest neighbor, Bu-saw, decided it was time to treat the floors. In order to keep the dust down, the Akha wet the ground and pack it hard... so hard in fact, that after a while, you can actually sweep it! So, Bu-Saw and some village boys started trekking the 200 meters down the hill to fill up their water jugs and then proceeded to make a mud pit out of my living room! Now don't misunderstand me... the “mud pit” wasn't a negative thing. In fact, quite the opposite. We had a wonderful time stomping around in the mud and getting thoroughly dirty. After we finished, she told me that I'd have to let it dry and then do the whole process another 2 or 3 times before the floor would be finished. Phew! Who knew dirt floors would be so much work! But in the end, we're so grateful that God has provided new friends like Bu-Saw who are willing to teach us all the ins and outs of village life when we don't have a clue!

Tags:

• Akha
• village
• culture

Learning the language...

When we arrived, we really couldn't say anything (or understand anything) in Akha. Well, actually, we did know how to say “Hello” & “Thank you”, but we found these two phrases woefully unhelpful in most situations. For about the first 48 hours, people would speak to us and our eyes would glaze over; we had no idea what they were saying and didn't even know how to say “I don't understand”. (We didn't have any translator with us... this really was “immersion”!)

By the third day, one of the young men (A-Go) decided to take us under his wing and tutor us. For the next, few days we spent 3-4 hours a night drilling Akha words with him. Now, there is no such thing as an Akha primer, so we used a book that the Thai schools use to teach English. So, the three of us would huddle around this book and A-Go would point to a section. We would read the word in English and he would see the word in Thai, then tell us the word in Akha. It was quite a process, but we finally started getting familiar with the basics. After a few days of evening sessions, A-Go had to travel to another village, so our lessons ended for the time being. But it was just as well.... our brains were sufficiently full and we were ready for a break and ready to practice what we had learned.

Thank you for your prayers for our language. We really feel like we've accomplished a lot in the two weeks that we were in the village. However, keep praying because we are keenly aware that our current progress is just a “drop in the bucket”. We still have many years ahead of us before we can actually “minister” in this language.

Tags:

• Akha
• language