Akha Hill Tribe in North Thailand
Akha Hill Tribe in North Thailand
Our most recent - and best ever - project took place in November 2008 and was with the Akha Hill Tribe Volunteer program in North Thailand. The other volunteers who came from 9 different countries were all hard working, interested in the local culture, friendly and fun. The host organisation could not have been bettered. We were given excellent initial orientation at their centre in Chiang Rai into the culture, history, language [yes, we needed to learn Akha phrases and were given a vocabulary sheet] and village life. We worked in two different remote hill villages up near the border with Myanmar, staying in pairs in traditional village homes.
The work was very focused and obviously useful and ranged from clearing jungle to enable an adult education centre to be opened; clearing the mud fall from a water course; helping with the rice harvest - threshing, flailing winnowing and loading into sacks and shoveling a whole lorry load of earth to make raised vegetable beds.
Our hosts made sure we had time to relax and took us, among other things, to a night market, the full moon festival where we floated lighted candles down the river on banana flower boats and the top of a mountain to see sunset. The locations were exotic; the weather was hot by day and very cold at night. The food was plentiful, eaten using chopsticks and particularly welcome after a day of physical work. Above all, we developed friendship and understanding between people.
Henry and Pinky Wrigley