An Akha Village at Dusk

Lately I've been on a photo kick; something in me is just yearning to be creative! So, despite our less than cooperative camera, I've been snapping pictures more often than usual.

A couple weeks ago, everything in the village just seemed especially beautiful, so I set out to capture all the little things that I love about the village.

Of course, it's just not an Akha village without multitudes of children about! And since I'm trying to show you the "all little things I love about the village", it seems appropriate to introduce you to a few of the munchkins in our village. The first picture is baby Ma-li who was born last December; hasn't she grown?! Next is sweet little A-nm carrying her babydoll strapped to her back, Akha style. Next is A-paw, A-ga and Sopida climbing a tree like the three little monkeys they are! Finally, a herd of toddlers chasing a grasshopper.

Tags:

• pictures
• children
• animals
• landscapes

Akha Village :: Dentistry and Clinic Pictures

For the past week a dental team from America has been visiting Akha Outreach Foundation doing the annual check-ups and cleanings for all the orphans. While this is quite a large task in itself, they still made time to haul all thier equipment up to a village for a day to pull some teeth. Preventative dental care is a fairly new concept in Akha villages, so although most of the children and young adults brush thier teeth, many of the older adults have never brushed thier teeth and live in constant pain. It is very common for adults to chew betel nut which helps to numb the pain temporarily (and makes for the blackish-red teeth that are so often seen among the Akha), but in the long run it causes much damage to the mouth & gums. You can imagine that Dr. Luce and his two dental assistants had their hands full that day! They saw over 40 patients and pulled over 100 teeth in just 6 hours! Good work, guys!

The village they visited was about 20 miles east of the village we live in, so we drove over to help out if we could. We certainly weren't much help in pulling teeth, but we were able to set up a mobile clinic and treat some minor non-dental ailments. The open-air school room we were in felt like a three-ring circus at times, with everyone in the village either straining to watch in sympathetic agony as the dentist pulled teeth, or curiously crowding around to see the two white people "who speak Akha" give out medicine.

Here are a few pictures of the day, courtesy of Joe Rutledge.

Tags:

• pictures
• clinic
• dental
• medical

Northern Thailand Countryside

I count myself lucky to live in such a green country! I'm constantly amazed by the beauty all around us! This month we've seen quite a bit of countryside as we've travelled around the North to Chiang Mai, Fang, Thaton and of course Mae Salong. Right now the ricefields are especially breathtaking; they cover the all valleys with a patchwork of fresh green growth!

Tags:

• pictures
• Thailand
• landscapes

Moon over Mae Salong

I know it's been a while since we posted some pictures, we've been having problems with our Olympus camera and one out of every three or four pictures we take is ruined. This, of course, has really frustrated us and so we have been relying heavily on our phones for day to day pictures.

The other day, however, Lori decided to just force the issue and use our camera whether it ruins pictures or not because she wanted to capture some of the Northern Thailand rice fields before they are harvested later this year. She will post some of the pictures she has taken when she gets a chance, but for now I want to share a few of the pictures I've taken recently, and I am even posting a video!

We've had a lot of cloudy, misty days up in Mae Salong and the full moon this last week just made for some spectacular views of the Akha Swing in our village. Unfortunately, we missed the swing festival this year (we were at a wonderful conference in Chiang Mai), but these pictures are still pretty cool ::

Here are a few pictures from last July when my parents were here and when the Foursquare Team from California came to our village to do an outreach project. You can see the Akha women scraping bark for the savory Akha Minced Pork, the Akha women playing "Dress Up the Pala" with my mother (note the fake hair sewn into the Akha Headdresses), and an elder from our village giving out snacks that the team brought for the kids ::

We are also leaping (ok, stumbling) into the 21st century with a video post. It's not much, just an incredible rainstorm... everyone in the village holes up at home when storms like this come. You can see our waterfall, our moat and a real cutie waving hello.

This is a DivX encoded file, if you have problems viewing it I recommend downloading the BSPlayer (it's the best media player for all your video needs).

Right click on the picture and choose "Save Target As" (Internet Explorer Users) or "Save Link As" (Firefox Users) to view the movie ::

*** Update. Just click on the image link and then click play ***

Tags:

• pictures
• video
• Akha
• festival