From South China Morning Post
It’s a chilly early morning in Thailand’s Mae Hong Son province and the forest-covered hills and mountains, now wrapped in misty cloud, seem relatively untouched for a country eager to develop. This area has long been home to hill tribes that live off the land, cultivate crops and preserve age-old customs as the world around them changes.
Our four-wheel-drive van ascends along narrow, winding, slippery and steep mud roads, with sharp drop-offs and no rail guards. Through the occasional clearing, valleys of emerald-green rice fields can be seen far below.
These hills are home to Thailand’s largest minority ethnic group, the Karen. Their distant origins are unknown, but they settled in Burma (now Myanmar) several centuries ago and later migrated to Thailand, where an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 live, mainly in remote, closely knit villages scattered along the Myanmar border.
Mae Hong Son has a raw natural beauty; towering mountains, spectacular waterfalls and virgin forests that are home to hornbills, drongos and rare barking deer. But it is also Thailand’s poorest province. Many Karen villagers struggle to be self-sufficient yet are trapped in cycles of rural poverty. Cut off and marginalised, many families live well below the global poverty line.
The majority of Karen make their living as farmers – growing mainly rice, but also soybeans, onions, garlic and corn for animal feed – and the climate in northern Thailand can be extreme: too much or too little rain destroys yields, forcing young men to look for work in cities, as cheap labourers, and children to withdraw from schools. Only one in four manage to complete secondary education.
http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-maga ... aren-tribe
