Living Harmoniously with the Wa

The day after we arrived at the Wa camp at San Lou Yong, Win Maung and I moved to the school, where we would be staying for the next few months. The school was about a 10 minute walk from the headquarters atop a hill that had been leveled so that the classrooms could be on a flat surface.

Each of us was given our own room with bamboo beds in the annex building next to the classroom block. I thought the accommodation was a big improvement over Manerplaw or in my old camp, where all of us slept next to each other in a hall. Now I had my own room, though without a door.

The Wa teachers lived in a separate building on ground slightly lower than our building. They had a kitchen, so we ate with them.

There were three teachers for the school and one of them, Sam Lor, was a graduate of the Burmese government’s academy for ethnic minorities in Sagaing. In fact, several other Wa officials we met had graduated from this government university. 

The 24 students were a very interesting lot. Many of them were orphans. The oldest was about 16 and the youngest was about nine. They were divided into two military units and had to take turns to lead the group, perhaps part of the practice of many resistance training schools.

I often watched them fall in line after dinner and recite an oath, perhaps allegiance to Wa freedom. I did not understand it but it was clear in a sense that it was recited in military style. This was followed by daily leadership rotation. They finished the ceremony with songs.

I realized after watching them go through the routine a few times that they were going to be soldiers in the Wa army. My suspicions were confirmed when I later saw them handling weapons.

Since they were just kids, I did not take their military connection seriously, until one pitch-dark night I woke up and left my room to find my way in the dark to the lavatory.

Suddenly, I bumped into someone. Frightened, I grabbed the person and looked closely. It turned out to be one of the 10-year old students, with an M-16 in his hand, standing guard near the building.   

I spoke to him in Burmese, which he did not understand. I felt very sorry for the young soldier, who just stood there without saying a word. He seemed to have been asleep while on guard and was probably as frightened as I was by our collision in the dark.

The next day, I asked the teachers about their students doing guard duty, because there was no imminent fighting around the camp. They told me they could not do anything because guard duty was part of school regulations. 

On the same hill to the east of the school, separated by the volleyball court, was the house of the Lahu pastor, which doubled as the makeshift church. Down the hill along the path leading toward the headquarters were several Lahu houses. Up another hill a short walk from the school was another Lahu village, bedecked with colorful flags, which we had passed through the previous day.

We were told that a beautiful Lahu girl, named Narlaw, lived there. We never saw her, however. We didn't know the name of the village so we called it Narlaw's village.

To our surprise, the Lahu from Narlaw’s village, our ethnic neighbors, were animists. For the next few months, we would regularly hear the sound of drums from Narlaw’s village at full moon, and at the end of each lunar month, when the night sky was black.

Beyond the village were poppy fields flowering beautifully with the mountains as backdrop. Wa officers told us the fields belonged to the Lahu and not the Wa. “We just tax them,” the officers said.

Dr. Salai Pa Cin and Zaw Htun, our mission’s medical team, took up residence at the hospital and stayed there for the next six months. They had to start working immediately because the hospital was full of Wa soldiers, who had been wounded in battling Khun Sa’s Mung Tai Army.

One evening we were invited to a lavish dinner at the camp secretary’s house, a feast with many Chinese dishes and specially prepared liquor reserved for special guests. It was the best meal I had had in two years.

There we met several Wa leaders, including Chairman Aie Sui, who is said to be living in Chiang Mai now. But it was clear to us from the beginning that he was Wa and that the secretary, whose name we could not catch, was ethnic Chinese. 

Aie Sui was the older of the two. The secretary was in his early fifties but his manner made it appear that he was more powerful than the chairman.

Later, we heard that the secretary was one of the Wei brothers wanted in the US for drug trafficking. But it's still uncertain whether this was true.

Kyaw Kyaw and Aung Htoo returned to Manerplaw after a few days. I walked with them to the end of Narlaw’s village, listening to what they had to say about our mission.