In the Danger Zone

by Stefan Gates

  La Puo tells this story without emotion, and I find it difficult to understand if she's angry, grieving, combative or simply relieved that her ordeal is over. The Karen aren't loquacious people, and they seem happiest answering direct questions. This makes interviews extremely difficult as I have to ask some uncomfortably probing questions: unless I ask if any of their family have died, they don't think to mention it. On top of the tragedy of La Puo's father-in-law it turns out that their two youngest children died of diarrhoea.

  The Karen are friendly but unused to talking about emotions and opinions – in fact, Black Tom tells us that expressing emotions is a sign of weakness, and God forbid anyone should be seen crying. Crying in someone else's house is a big taboo because this curses the house, and you then have to pay the owner to make up for the impending bad luck. A therapist would have a field day here. It is horribly ironic that a people with such a negative attitude to emotion have experienced such misery. Maybe denial is the only way of surviving when life is so full of pain.

  They aren't consumed by their pain, though: the entire family howl with laughter when, at their urging, I try the local bird's-eye chillies. A word of advice: don't eat these at home, unless you want to know how it feels to be punched in the mouth.

  Jungle Trekking

  We leave Ei Tu Ta in search of the Karen rebels. We're going to spend a week living rough in the jungle, monitoring Burmese army movements and checking on the remaining Karen villages.

  After half an hour's walking we stop at a clearing and it takes me a few moments to realize that there are 20 or so heavily armed men lurking under trees and in the undergrowth. Tu La Wa introduces me to Major Ki La Wa, the platoon commander, who says that he will be responsible for our safety.

  We walk out of the camp along a riverbed, wading through the water. Our jungle boots aren't waterproof – in fact they are exactly the opposite: they're designed to let water in, but more crucially, to let it out again. Jungle trekking involves stomping through endless rivers and streams in the fetid heat, so walking through the rivers isn't as unpleasant as it sounds – it's a great way to cool down.

  The Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) has around 5,000 soldiers, all volunteers who spend much of their time fighting in the jungle. They are a ragged army of flip-flops and rocket-propelled grenades, and they're vastly outnumbered and outgunned by the half-a-million-strong Burmese army. But the Karen soldiers have the benefits of guerrilla warfare, the support of the villagers and 60 years' experience of living and fighting in the jungle. Our platoon travels light, each man taking with them little more than their weapons and ammunition, a small bag of rice, oil, a sleeping blanket, lightweight hammock and a machete.

  Marc and I, on the other hand, have BBC health and safety rules to contend with, so we come complete with trauma packs (for major injuries), emergency food rations for eight days, insect repellent, cameras and microphones, batteries, sleeping bags and a set of clean clothing.

  We hike off into the hills at a fair lick, stopping frequently to check for Burmese army patrols. Almost instantly I am bathed in sweat from the damp heat, and I start to feel tense and irritable. My mood isn't helped by the fact that the walk seems to go on forever, and I begin to despise the jungle with a passion.

  Ei Tu Ti Village

  After five hours of walking up and down steep valleys I am exhausted, but we have finally reached our stopping point near the Karen village of Ei Tu Ti just in time for nightfall. A few of the soldiers go to check if the village is free of the Burmese army whilst we set about preparing for our first night sleeping rough in the jungle. Ki La Wa helps us find a couple of trees from which to string our lightweight hammocks, then teaches us to clear the ground underneath to make sure that snakes and rodents don't hide there. If you're bitten by a snake it's a long, long way back to the camp, and they probably won't have the antidote anyway.

  I set up my hammock, spray the end ropes with insect repellent to avoid the tree's legion of creepy bitey crawlies joining me in bed later, and attempt to get in. I'm swiftly and humiliatingly ejected from the other side. After an ungainly struggle, I finally manage to get in and stay there. The discomfort is a surprise – the hammock is tiny, precarious and wobbly, and it clamps you into a bowed posture designed specifically to bugger your back.

  The major tells us that the village has an animist ceremony later and the villagers have invited us to join them, so we leave our new jungle home and pick our way up the hill as soon as night falls.

  The village is a collection of 20 or so bamboo huts in the same style as those in the refugee camp. We're led into one of them where a dozen or so men, women and children are having a feast. The head of the house greets me with a huge smile, then ties red strings around my wrists as good luck charms whilst mumbling words of blessing. All your good spirits will come back to you,' he says. That would be nice.

  'Ta blu,' I say [thank you].

  The villagers are fascinated – they've never seen Westerners before, and it's all they can do to stop themselves from poking us with their fingers. They are kind and welcoming, and they've been waiting for us to arrive before starting their dinner, which makes me feel very guilty. The major, Black Tom and I are given a meal of boiled pork – a huge privilege in a place where there is so little food, but after the offence I caused Sabra in Afghanistan, I have learnt that turning down food is a great insult, so I swallow my guilt. The pork is still covered in pig bristles, but it's the first meat I've had in ages, so I wolf it down.

  The major explains the Burmese army's Four Cuts, a deliberate policy of starving the Karen. 'When they arrive at a village they loot it, taking all the food. Then they ask the villagers where the rebel soldiers are, and beat them if they won't say. And where they suspect there are landmines they make the villagers walk on the fields.' The army hope that if the villagers are starved out, the rebels will lose supplies.

  The Ei Tu Ti village head relies on the KNLA for protection and says 'If they weren't here we wouldn't be here either.' But right now he doesn't want to talk about problems in case it brings bad luck on the village – he wants to sing and drink to bless the coming harvest. He passes me a small bowl of rough and potent rice wine; it warms me instantly. The cup is passed around over and over again, and the villagers all start smoking gruesome cheroots. They begin to throat-sing, a dirgey, moaning noise that no one could translate. After drinking enough hooch to ensure a swift departure into dreamland, I thank everyone profusely, wish them luck and stagger back across the soggy valley to our camp, from where I can still hear the throat-singing loud and clear.

  The ominous drone of the singing, together with the discomfort of the hammock, the freezing cold and the constant rustle and scratching of Lord-knows what on the jungle floor below keeps me wide awake until about 4 a.m.

  I awake at 6 a.m. with a throbbing headache and the sensation of having wet myself. I feel my sodden sleeping bag, and realize that it has been raining whilst I've been asleep. I'm soaked through. It has also been building up on the leaves above me, and then dripping down on my forehead, adding to the hangover. I look around to see that the soldiers had built themselves fires next to their hammocks, which they stoked every few hours throughout the night. Why didn't I think of that?

  We pack up camp soon after dawn and head off to our next camp. I'm already exhausted and sleepy, and I hike in a daze. After four hours of zombiefied walking we stop in dense jungle next to a stream and make a more substantial camp. Two of the soldiers start hacking down bamboo to make utensils for a meal. They've brought a couple of pans with them, but use bamboo to make everything else: ladles, spoons, pans, cups. They pack rice into a piece of bamboo around 5 cm in diameter, top it up with water, put a stopper into it, and then lean it against the fire. The rice steams, and just before the young bamboo starts to burn, it's cooked. They also make a bamboo saucepan using the same principle – it sits on the fire and because it's green and tough, water inside it will boil before the pan burns. You
can use each pan twice before throwing it away. This is how the rebels survive carrying so little – they make utensils every time they stop to camp, but leave them behind when they move on.

  The soldiers pick some wild banana flowers, thinly chop them and their stalks and boil them in stream water. They also find bo na – a kind of tropical root that tastes of ginger and aniseed – and the major shows me how to strip and cook it into a stew. He tells me that he's been a soldier for 30 years, and he's never even thought about doing anything else. He spends most of his life living in the jungle: 'I miss my family, but I have a responsibility. What can I do?'

  I ask some of the younger soldiers what they would do if the war ended, but they haven't got a clue. They have no understanding of life without the war, and in truth they don't believe it'll end in their lifetime.

  The food is good and we eat it gratefully. Marc says he isn't hungry, but soon after, I spot him wolfing down a batch of Boots flapjacks.

  The major decides we should stay here by the stream tonight and arranges guards to surround the camp. I wander off with the satellite phone, trying to locate a satellite through the jungle cover. I haven't spoken to my girls for four days, so I'm elated when I get through. Poppy goes nuts, screaming, 'Yello Daddy.'

  Marc and I make a much better camp this time, building a fire in between our hammocks and making a little bench to keep our kit off the ground. I even set up a strip of plastic as a rain cover in case it rains again tonight. We make some coffee and strip off to wash in the chilly stream, after which I feel almost normal again.

  We go to bed early, and I lie awake wondering what it must feel like for these people to welcome journalists from rich countries into their lives. The Karen are stuck here, possibly forever, whereas we have the luxury of coming and going with our high-tech kit to keep our expensively insured bodies as comfortable as possible. And we are being paid tor it. Black Tom says that he's just glad we're here, making a film about them – it shows that the world cares, and that if nothing else, at least their suffering isn't going unnoticed. But I can't help thinking that if I were in his position, I'd resent these two wimpy blokes from the BBC with all their expensive stuff.

  Bushmeat

  In the morning I notice that next to the major's hammock is a vast cow pat. Quite what (or how) a cow was doing here in the middle of the jungle is anyone's guess. I point at the huge turd and ask the major if last night's supper hadn't agreed with him. He doesn't get the joke, and I hope I haven't offended him.

  During the night the guards had shot a type of cat and a monkey-like creature called a ki chi, which I've never seen before. Black Tom doesn't know what their English names are. The cat looks oddly like my own faithful cat Tom, so I pay close attention to the cooking process and store the recipe in my memory for when he gets old and grouchy.

  I find out much later when we're back in London that the cat is a civet cat, renowned for spreading SARS, and the monkey-like creature is a loris, an endangered primate, though possibly not as endangered as the Karen.

  The soldiers impale the animals on sticks then burn off their fur over the fire. It smells foul, but it's better than skinning them as we need to eat the skin too – it would be a waste of precious protein to throw it away. We gut and butcher the cat and loris in the stream, and only the lower intestine and gall bladder are thrown away – everything else goes into a pot to be stewed. The civet cat is briefly simmered in water, but the loris needs to be cooked for two to three hours. We make the bamboo rice again to accompany the meat.

  When it's finally ready, the major invites me to eat – he gets the first bash at any food, so it pays to stay matey with him. The civet cat is delicious – sweet and strongly gamy, with lots of small, fiddly bones to suck on. I eat a hunk of cat's liver, which is a first for me. The whole thing tastes quite heady and intestinal – they haven't thrown much away, and the innards of the cat have all been cooked up with the flesh. The loris isn't as nice as the cat – a murky, strong and musty flavour, although this could be because of the intestinal overload. Either way, I'm grateful for the meal, and relieved that I don't have to join Marc eating the emergency rations. He complains of gag reflexes, but I manage to bully him into tasting a morsel of the cat. He turns green almost immediately and I feel a little guilty. I look at his rehydrated lunch: pasta with some filthy excuse for a meat sauce. It smells like cat food.

  Then there's more walking: hours and hours, miles and miles. The KNLA keep this up for years on end, but I am exhausted after a few days of it. The villages are spread out – the Karen enjoy living in isolation, and the terrain is so difficult to cultivate that it takes large amounts of land to support a relatively small concentration of people.

  It's dangerous patrolling the jungle regions because there are no front lines in this war – the area is so vast that occupying it permanently would be impossible for the army, so it has a series of barracks and it tends not to venture far unless absolutely necessary. We drop in on one village close to one of the barracks, which is regularly raided by the army. I ask them if the army treats them badly, but they can't answer – they have no frame of reference.

  'Every time the army comes, we all run away and the soldiers loot our food,' they say. But there's no sense of surprise or outrage: they just accept that this is the natural order of things, and there's nothing they can do about it.

  That night we stop on a high mountain ridge to camp. It's an unsettling place: we're on the site of a Karen graveyard strewn with pots and pans and clothing for the departed soul to take into the next life. We're also near a Burmese army camp so everyone's on high alert, and night-time guards arc doubled. There are five bases and 400 Burmese soldiers in this area, and they are far too strong for our KNLA platoon of 20 men to engage them in a battle.

  Determined to keep my mind occupied I borrow a machete from one of the soldiers and hack down bamboo to make a bench. I'm hopeless at it to begin with, and the soldiers try to help me. It's all about getting the angle right, apparently.

  Marc and I build a huge fire – we're determined not to get too cold on this mountain. We sit on our bench winding each other up talking about gin and tonics and ice-cold glasses of wine, then put a vast log on the fire and turn in. Soon the fire has grown out of control and I have to get up to try to calm it down. I finally go to bed and sleep fitfully, too hot.

  I wake in a pool of cold sweat. I'm really not built for this jungle thing.

  We visit another village and are ushered in as honoured guests along with the major. The village head offers us a wonderful treat of big white wriggling butterfly larvae – they are especially rare at this time of year. Tu La Wa dry-fries them in a pan over a fire. They are extraordinarily delicious and taste exactly the same as Jerusalem artichokes: sweet and crunchy, with a soft centre. I even get Marc to eat one.

  This village is almost comically isolated – there are no services of any description, and the people are often on the verge of starvation. They grow a little rice and a fair crop of tobacco, and if they can make it as far as the next village without disaster, they can exchange the tobacco for other foods. There's no healthcare, no education and no protection from the Burmese army, except occasional patrols like this.

  I spot a little boy with a testicle the size of a small melon – a tumour or cyst, perhaps. His mother says that every three or four days he feels acute pain and can't breastfeed; she's distraught. I leave some money with Tu La Wa, asking him to make sure the child gets to Ei Tu Ta camp to visit the clinic. Journalists aren't supposed to give money to people because it has a tendency to warp the truth: people will make up tragic stories in the hope that journalists will pay them to talk. But I reason that this boy's condition is serious and specific, and my cash could help. On the way out, Black Tom worries that we've ensured the boy never gets to see a doctor – his parents now have more money than they've ever had before, and it's in their interests to keep him like this in case another Westerner with a charitable bent comes their
way.

  On the way back to the refugee camp we meet a couple of nervous women who have been scouring a stream for food. It's taken them four hours to catch three minute frogs and a tiny fish about the size of my little finger.

  After four hours' trekking (it doesn't feel so bad this time – perhaps we're getting fit) we finally arrive at the clearing on the outer reaches of Ei Tu Ta camp and say goodbye to the soldiers. They've looked after us well, and I'm grateful to have got back unscathed. The major gives us both a gift of a bamboo saucepan and I wish him all the luck in the world.

  It feels like we're returning to a luxury hotel: we have a floor! A roof! Food! As we arrive at our shack, a huge crowd has gathered and I smile and thank them for coming to welcome us back. I shake a few hands, but the people look confused. I realize that they haven't come to welcome us back at all. In the middle of the throng stands a rotund, balding, goateed man who looks like a drummer from a death metal band.

  Pastor Joe is something of a legend around these parts. A brash Noo Yoiker with a big gob, a desire to do good, and the personal approval of the Lord. He is in town to distribute boxes of toys and clothes donated by the people of Australia, along with the word of God. He's bursting with energy and faith. He tells me that Sylvester Stallone is going to make a film of his life – he spends his life smuggling aid across the Thai border and spreading the good word. It's a tough way to live, but Pastor Joe relishes the challenge.

  I want to talk to him some more, but right now just looking at him makes me even more exhausted so I go and collapse in the hut.

  Ei Tu Ta vs The Rest of the World

  We are invited to try betel nut by some of the camp women. All across Burma, Thailand and India people chew betel nut in much the same way that Westerners smoke cigarettes – it's a habit-forming, mildly euphoric stimulant and it's cancerous. It dyes the teeth red and causes the chewer to salivate profusely and spit bright spurts of red saliva all over the place. Burma is covered in red flob in the same way that London streets are covered in chewing gum.