Karen New Year

We arrived on the Thai-Burmese border a day before Karen New Year, the biggest festival of the year for the Karen people. The festivities were happening “over the river” in a Karen village in Burma. So within a few hours of getting to the college we were crossing into Burma on a small motorboat! The border is very porous, with people passing across regularly (but not usually foreigners).

It was very significant for the Karen to be able to celebrate the New Year across the river, as this is the first year in decades that the area has been under a ceasefire. The Karen have been fighting an insurgency against the Burmese government (and a group of Karen that support the government) since 1949. There’s an alphabet soup of different military groups here, and there were lots of soldiers from different groups walking around at the festival. It was quite bizarre seeing both dancers dressed in bright traditional outfits and soldiers carrying rifles, RPGs and grenade launchers.

It’s a long and complex task to explain all the history and politics, so we’ll move onto the actual event. Apparently we were the first white people ever to visit the village (not sure if this is true), and they treated us like VIPs. Like in India, the kids were very curious to see us, and a crowd gathered around wherever we were. They had the most gorgeous smiley faces.

During the day there were tournaments for football and caneball (an impressively acrobatic sport which we’ll write about in another post). Sadly, as you can see in the photos, rubbish was simply thrown on the ground.

The main event of the evening was a dance contest between 21 groups dancing the done (a long dance and song that describes the history of the Karen people). The dance is energetic and intricate and involves huge numbers of dancers in each group. The college had a group competing, and it was great to see them perform. With so many groups, and the done lasting up to 45 minutes, the dancing was certainly a marathon event!

From what we can gather we stayed the night at a house-cum-malaria research centre funded by Bill Gates! The place was a flurry of different activity - when we woke up in the morning there were even some people being treated for malaria beside where we were eating breakfast! That morning, Karen leaders gave speeches about the need for unity among the Karen people.

Being there for Karen New Year, in Karen State, at such a pivotal time in their history was a very special thing to be a part of. It was also quite an overwhelming introduction to our time volunteering! In a good way, that is. We crossed the river back into Thailand and started thinking about the weeks ahead.

Karen New Year was on the 12th of January, so we’ve been at the college for two weeks now. There is so much to say about being here, but that will have to wait for another post.

Comments from WordPress

• Robbie Lane 2013-01-27T08:35:35Z

  Good to hear that things are going OK. Yes, the history of the mountain tribes people in Northern Burma and Thailand is an interesting one both from a geopolitical, religious and cultural reason! Stay safe and continue the good work! Cheers

  Robbie

• Leanne 2013-01-27T08:50:49Z

  I look forward to more posts :-D Take care you crazy kids.

• Jude Logan 2013-01-27T15:20:05Z

  Great blog - take care and stay safe xx

• Michael Markham 2013-01-27T19:27:25Z

  Great work guys and well done on such interesting posts. Look forward to catching up with you soon. Take care. Mike & Liz

Written by Craig Drayton and Sally Robertson