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The Jungle Twins

A Mother’s Watchful Eye

We found the village!

Mae Jum Sam village is at 18° 39.818’N, 98° 8.899’E

It has a rare road sign.· Don’t get used to signs; there are very few.

We drove into the village where it was obvious, as in the other villages, they don’t see many outsiders or palefaces.

Mr. Maearhae.

There he is!· I remembered Mr. Maearhae’s face from a Thai newspaper that identified him as the owner of the elephants.

Mr. Maearhae’s Thai was not great, and then his Thai was translated to English, and so there is some wiggle room on facts derived from our conversations over the next almost three hours. I asked some questions repeatedly to pin down impressions and try to get to the truth, but there are no guarantees.

iPhone4.

We sat down in the village center and people began to gather around.· I figured the story of the elephants and the story of the people are entwined like a rope through time.· To follow one strand is to follow the other.

I asked Mr. Maearhae and others many questions about their lives.· They are ethnic Karen people originally from Burma and don’t know how long their village has been here.· They guessed about 100-200 years. As our conversation unfolded, more and more villagers came around squatting in a semi-circle.· According to villagers, there are 76 houses with about 700 people.· They have running water (there was a blue pipe just by my feet), and their meager electricity comes from solar which runs small fluorescent lights in the houses.· Some cooking is done with fire and some people have televisions.· They also have a school with two teachers who instruct Thai and other subjects – one kid tried a few English words on me.

The villagers grow or raise much of their own food and also sell rice and corn in the market.· Chickens, pigs and dogs roamed freely in the village and one group of people was squatting with a piglet eating just in their circle.· They have cows and water buffaloes.· They like to eat monkeys and rats but the monkeys are far away.· I asked if the monkeys come steal their crops and they said sometimes, but the monkeys are mostly far away because they taste good and so do the wild pigs.

The nearest doctor is 94km (58 miles) away, which I thought must be the driving distance to the paved road, but one must be careful with distances given by the villagers.· All along the way, as we stopped to ask directions while coming here, villagers would say things like, “It’s 10 kilometers more,” when in reality it was more like a hundred.· We heard that about ten different times.· It became a joke.· Same often happens in Nepal – never trust a villager to give the right distance, or time.· They often just pick a number out of the air.

Mr. Maearhae knows who Michael Jackson is, but like some Afghan villagers did not know he is dead.

She made lunch for us.

The villagers say they have opium but not much because they stopped growing it about twenty years ago.· You could see in getting out here that eradication likely would have led to war – just as the King of Thailand believed – and alternative crops was the solution, along with these dirt roads, and later paved roads, to get crops to market.· It would have been hell for an Army to fight in these vast jungles with people who live here permanently.· The Thai government puts much effort into teaching the villagers better farming techniques, which obviously are in use in each village we had driven through.· The Thai counter-opium project was wildly successful.· (There is much to learn here that can help us in Afghanistan.)

Michael Yon

Michael Yon is America's most experienced combat correspondent. He has traveled or worked in 82 countries, including various wars and conflicts.

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