The Karens

Estimated between four and seven million people, the Karen population is divided between Burma and Thailand. They are divided into many subgroups, among which Sgaw, Pwo, Karenni, etc., to related languages. In the Tak region of Thailand, along the Burma border, most of them are Sgaw karens.

 Presumed origin of the Karen people

 Historians agree on the alleged origin of the various Karen tribes of Burma and Thailand: originating from the Tibetan highlands, they would have slowly descended to the South under the Han Chinese demographic pressure to settle along the rivers in Burma and Thailand. The Burmese wars confined them to the mountains beyond and beyond the Thai border. The Sgaw karens of our area of ​​Ponouaipou-Poblaki probably settled in the Moei valley about 300 years ago. Settled for centuries in Thai territory, they are Thai citizens in their own right.

Young karen girl. Credit: Jean-Luc Delle CRK

 Way of life

 The karens of the Tak region are mountain people and forest people: small, stocky, enduring, they have no equal to evolve in the jungle and are tireless walkers. The karens were formerly semi-nomadic: the villages and cultures moved according to the exhaustion of the resources. The setting of borders and the arrival of modernity has definitely settled them. They are farmers: the cultivation of rice, by the technique of burning, ensures good year to year their subsistence. To generate some income, they have adopted the cultivation of corn for ten years, not without serious ecological consequences (deforestation, pollution of water and soil) ... The clearing of the plots, the sowing, the harvesting, made entirely by hand, the particularly pronounced relief not allowing mechanization. The profits are therefore very thin, for a great expense of work. Due to lack of irrigation, planting takes place at the beginning of the rainy season.

Rice fields in water (the majority of the crops are however in the ground)

 Challenges

 For centuries, isolated Karen villages have lived in a self-sustaining logic: we consume what we harvest, and the small profits were enough to pay some tools, the essence of the bike, etc. The arrival of modernity has exploded this fragile domestic economy, creating new needs that low income families can not meet. You have to generate additional income: you plant corn, the product of which will make it possible to rebuild the house, buy a television, change the batteries ... or send a son to work in the city for a few months. The rural exodus is a reality in our villages, which emptied their young people for the benefit of cities, where they work in factories, pompists, caretakers, etc., a few months before returning to the village to participate in the harvest and , again, go back to town ... The real challenge is to allow the karens to live from their work in their mountains. The improvement of the agricultural tool, the mechanization (plowing, harvesting), the search for new outlets, the opening up of the villages, must allow to generate sufficient income so that the karens can enjoy this fundamental right: to be able to live decently in his own environment. The agricultural projects of the mission (launch of a distillation laboratory of essential oils, construction of a cooperative) participate fully.

 

For more information about karens and their history, visit the facebook page of the Center for Research on the Karens (C.R.K) in French and English.