NZPhotographer Issue 27, January 2020

y a young 27 year old who would be our guide
and interpreter. He told us that as a 7 year old,
he had to flee into the forest with his younger
siblings when the Burmese Army came and burnt
the houses and destroyed the crops. They had to
survive for 5 days in the forest, can you imagine!
Myself and my photography tour guide were the
first Westerners the villagers had seen in nearly
3 years. They were curious yet shy. It was mainly
young Mums and the elderly women in the village
that day, as every able person was out harvesting
the vital crops located a two hour walk away, with
no vehicles or machinery to help them.
The usual raft of puppies nipped at our heels as
we wandered through the village. The houses
are all built on high stilts, totally wooden, with the
cool underneath used for storage of livestock ie
cattle and pigs, this also being the place where
they thresh the rice. All the precious grain is stored
away from the houses, also on stilts, to keep the
rodents at bay, but also to keep it away from
potential fire - The cooking is done inside the
houses in a special ‘pit’ in the floor so there can
be the accident of a house catching fire. A house
can be rebuilt but food cannot be replaced.
We observed two women who were threshing rice,
it was steaming hot, so I could understand why
it’s done under the house. They have found an
ingenious method of getting the job done quickly
and efficiently, with the added benefit of feeding
the pigs and hens at the same time.
The women were wearing their traditional
clothing, which is worn daily and often handed
down from Mother to daughter. All the tribes
have their traditional dress and their unique style
of beauty. Here it was long earrings, threaded
through plugs in the earlobes and copper coils
on the lower legs which are never taken off. One
theme that ran through the three hill tribes we
visited, was the beauty of ‘fat knees’ which the
copper coils emphasised (I thought I fitted in
well!!).
The first member of this tribe that I got to sit down
and talk to was a 74 year old widow. Her house
just had the one room with a thatched roof, open
windows with one window draped with a cloth
for a curtain. She lived in the barest of conditions,
aside from a mattress on the floor as her bed, the
only piece of furniture she had was a wooden box
that held her worldly belongings, this also doubling
up as her seat and bench.
I discovered that she had been made to move
three times in her life because of the Burmese
Army… If a husband dies (life expectancy is 58
for men and 64 for women) the widow must then
THRESHING THE RICE
F4, 1/320s, ISO500
A HTEKHO TRIBAL ELDER
F4, 1/40s, ISO3200
40
NZPhotographer