Glimpses of the People

Let me give you just a small glimpse of the dear Karen people living in the poorest isolated villages deep in the mountainous jungles of Thailand.1.   A lady was very sick in MooDooKey village not far from BYT.  Her lungs were dreadful, and past what I could do for them, so we agreed that the next day we would take her to the hospital.   A man in WahSueTah (Village 2.5 km from our house),  had a heart problem.  His color was bad, his chest hurt and felt heavy his breathing labored, his color was bad.  He too needed to go to the hospital and we arranged with him to go the same day.  As we went to pick them up the next day, the man could not come with us because he had run off somewhere to find some more opium!  The woman could not come with us because her pig was going to have babies that day and she must be there with her pig!2.   We had hiked to a far away village, (NelleKwee).  It seemed like the dirtiest village I ever saw.  The people packed onto the small porch of the hut where we were treating patients.  For several hours we inspected and treated each patient.  As the crowd dwindled a middle age woman was given a bar of soap to scrub her dirty body twice a day before applying ointment.  She turned to Blet Jaw after he had explained how to use the ointment and held up the bar of soap saying,  "Do I eat this?"  She had never seen soap before and did not know what it was.3.   3 nights ago a man died in a hut very close to our house.  He had unfortunately abused opium to the extent that his stomach was full of bleeding ulcers.   We had begged him to let us take him to the hospital, but he had refused to go.  He still wanted to continue the use of opium.  The Karen people take the bodies of the dead into the jungle, burn and bury them.  Since his death, this entire village is scared.  They think that the dead come back and follow them.  Wherever they go they imagine they see him and are filled with terror.  At night several people sleep together  in the kitchen part of the house.  They keep the fire going in the center so that it is not dark.4.  When looking for a place to build our clinic here, we found a place near a rice paddy that could be leveled enough for a clinic and a house.  We asked the person that owned it if they would consider selling it.  They did not want to sell it because everyone thought that a clinic to treat the sick, that close to the rice paddy would put sickness into the rice.  No one in the village wanted it in that spot!5.   An older man in one of the villages we visited, looked very disturbed.  Later I found out what the problem was.  I believe I was the only white person he had seen.  He fearfully asked Blet Jaw if the white people eat the Karen children.  This is a superstition handed down from many generations ago.  He is the only one I have heard this from in the 3 years I have been in Thailand.Please pray for these simple people so far from civilization.  They need so much! -an education, a better way to live.  -They need Jesus!