This has been an interesting week. A lot of stuff has happened that I guess I'll tell you about which means I don't get to tell you as many boring old details as those get lost in the fray.
The rumors started last week, or maybe even the week before, when Phii Naw told the Moken on Koh Hlao that I gave each household on the Thai side of Koh Hlao B4000 ($110). This rumor was spread first to falsely raise the hopes of the Moken, and secondly to make them think that I was holding out on them. I did my best to quell these rumors when I returned, I think with success. The other rumor, also perpetrated by Phii Naw, is that I had taken See (my consultant) as my “wife.” Most Moken dismissed this as quickly as I did. While we do necessarily have to spend time together to do fieldwork, it is always in the open, never behind closed doorss, and there are always people around in the neigboring houses. Not to mention the fact that See has a husband and a child.
Anyways, I learned also that Phii Naw has a history of violence with the Moken, having slapped four women, one just yesterday, hit one man with a shoe. All of these people were small and slender. She also has family, some who I know, who have had second jobs as essentially pirates, reportedly pillaging small Burmese boats, stealing their money and raping their women. I didn’t realize until late last week the level to which the Moken are actually terrified of Phii Naw, that she is their biggest problem and most formidable oppressor, and that I stayed with her for the first week, listening to her insistent lies and strange faith (e.g. she puts the Bible under her children’s head when sick), and only slowly growing suspicious that my money, not the Moken were her main concern.
I’ve done my best to undo the damage I did to my own reputation by staying with her, and in the meantime have made a rather formidable enemy. Phii Naw now refuses to talk to me--will not meet my eyes. The Moken all seem to like me more than ever, though they have on various occasions begged me not to go have a heart to heart with Naw, feeling than any anger stirred up in her will most likely be taken out on them.
Two basic actions were taken this week on my part which widened the already considerable gap between us, though this doesn’t really bug me. The first thing I did arose relating to my little gift to the Moken earlier this week: after consulting some friends, I distributed 15kg bags of rice to every household on each island as a small thank you for being good hosts and also to help them in the particularly difficult rainy season. I fail to give enough money to ‘charity’ as it is, and I wanted to do something to express my appreciation and make them feel like I wasn’t keeping all of my western money to myself. Maybe I did it out of guilt. I don’t know. Consult last weeks post for additional extensive rationale. I did decide, rather trivially to me, to distribute the rice only the the Moken households, thus leaving out the two Thai denizens of Koh Hlao, namely, a certain Acarn Vichay and Phi Naw herself, who incidentally hasn’t slept on the island for even one night since I’ve been here, and only started opening her shop during the day after I distributed the rice and was on the island (confirmed by surprise trips back to the island to check). Phii Naw has since made hay of this fact, claiming that she and Vichay feel hurt and neglected, and that I am horribly inconsiderate for not also giving them a bag of rice, never mind the fact that a) their not Moken b) the Moken are afraid of them and c) they’re not nearly as poor as the Moken.
Acarn Vichay is a former Thai pastor, former best friend of Acarn Sien (pastor of the church in Ranong), former UN diplomat of some kind, and current sketchball. He is small, probably 5’6”, thin, over 70 years old, and is currently sporting long, stringy white hair on a mostly balding head, a new addition since last year. Acarn Vichay has a past of having affairs with women, then remarrying, then repeating. When he was assigned as some sort of pastor to Koh Hlao after the church in Ranong began their outreach there last year, he decided he wanted to move to Koh Hlao for life, to live with the Moken, in order to help the children and distribute medicine, according to his own noble claims to me at the beginning of last summer. Anyways, his wife at the time refused to move to the island, Vichay refused to compromise by moving close to but not on the island, so he felt justified in not worrying about that wife anymore I guess, and in a matter of three or four months had his very own Moken wife, of some approximately 40 years. She is a very small woman who has always talked very little to me.
This year, when half the Moken village moved to Elephant Island primarily for fear, helplessness and frustration with Phii Naw herself as I now correctly understand, she went also. The Moken have on numerous occasions referred to this event as Vichay's ‘throwing away of the wife.' I have no idea what actually made her want to leave. Anyways, Vichay evidently has a long history of inviting young girls, usually teenagers, into his house for reading/writing lessons, coffee, and snacks. Usually it has been a single girl (that is, one girl at a time), making repeated visits. See (my consultant) was once one of these girls, and learned to read Thai from Vichay, but now is afraid of him, saying most Moken women don’t trust him, are worried he might rape them. She tells of one incident when she was with him in his house, drinking coffee, and he shut the door, and just looked at her, but she says nothing happened though she knew what he wanted to do, because he was a coward.
I know he did sleep with one younger girl, how young I’m not sure, but she became pregnant, and gave birth to his child, but the child died, and the girl was sent to live with her family in Burma.
About three weeks ago, Acarn Vichay asked the oldest sister of a three orphaned sisters if she would give Vichay her youngest sister, Honey, as his wife. Reports of Honey’s age range from 15-18, she claimed to not actually know her age when I spoke with her, but she looked 15 and said she was 13. Vichay was offering B3000 ($90) and a cell phone to her oldest sister for facilitating the transaction. Many Moken were very upset by this turn of events, largely by the 60 year age gap, though they did seem to think it was good that he had money (he receives a monthly pension from the U.N.).
See, my consultant, was among the most outspoken in her opposition, and last Saturday night her opposition came to a verbal exchange with Phii Naw, who was supporting the Vichay purchase, possibly (hearsay) on account of a substantial loan Vichay made to her last month. I imagine that this initial event made Naw feel even more uncomfortable with my presense for two reasons. First, See being my consultant and coming to verbal blows with Naw basically shows my implicit acceptance of her position, and secondly, I stated very clearly to Naw the week I was staying with her that I thought Vichay’s behavior on the island was plain wrong, so she knew by coming to his defence she was in a sense putting herself at odds with me.
Earlier this week, as concerned about the situation as the Moken and myself, a western couple who have been doing some reasearch for NGOs on this Moken group contacted a couple Thai NGOs to inform them of the situation. They (the two westerners) were informed that something would be done. I called Acarn N. in Bangkok the next day, who also said something would be done. I waited for two days, and nothing happened. Meanwhile, See said that Honey had already told her that she would like to leave Koh Hlao, and go live with a group of Moken in the province to the south if possible. Then on Thursday, I met with Honey and her older sister, the middle of the three, who also opposed the union, and asked her if she had the money, would she leave. She said yes, her sister agreed to help her leave, so I gave them the money, and they left yesterday.
I don’t know if this sort of aggressive intervention was ultimately good or bad. I don’t really want to think about this anymore. By Friday, Naw was spending considerable time on Koh Hlao, stirring up any kind of trouble she could, and I just got sick of it, and was basically done with my fieldwork anyways, so left. On Monday I’m going to Krabi, hopefully going climbing, and hopefully doing my very best to completely forget about the whole situation for a couple days. I’ll probably come back next week for just a couple days to say ‘Hi’ again, and maybe do some followup.
This whole story has taken so long to tell I don’t know what else to say. Despite everything, my relationship with almost all the Moken on the island, besides the close confidants of Naw herself, is better than ever. They all want me to come back, they say they’ll miss me, etc. At the same time, I’ve been having a rising doubt as to why I even came here in the first place.
When I first started studying linguistics, fieldwork seemed to me to be the ultimate life and academic experience all rolled into one: living with a native people group, trying to work out complex linguistic patterns while seamlessly integrating into their lives. “This is pretty Indiana Jones for a linguist," Jude, the female member of the western couple, said to me on our way to Koh Chang a couple weeks ago, and I shrugged it off but beamed inside.
Still, a lot of questions have been coming up lately that I don’t have good answers to. Like maybe I just don’t belong here--maybe these people really just shouldn’t be seeing white people at all? Am I anything more than a reminder of Western patriarchy and wealth, and while there’s humanity to meet beneath it, and that’s meaningful, do I add anything to their lives that someone else couldn't add just as well? (Does love need to travel?) And is there really a pressing need to understand the complex inner workings of every single language under the sun? Maybe there are just some things we shouldn’t know.
And then there’s me and my life. The Moken live in such close community, brothers, sisters, children, cousins, parents, everyone is around, sometimes under the same roof, often next door, at most a couple islands away. But we are so spread out, and we live through lines and screens, and wait in enormous shiny buildings for the people we love most to come walking out a big shiny door, but we ignore the people on the streets, because we choose our community. Please don't take this as an accusation against anyone, just an observation, and me trying to share a sense that I'm feeling that despite how much we have in a country like America, maybe there's just as much that we don't have.
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