by Stefan Gates
Betel nut is the seed of the betel palm. It's the size of a nutmeg and it has high levels of psychoactive alkaloids. The giggling women show me how to grate the betel nut using a tool that's a cross between a nutcracker and a pair of pliers. One of the women, Li Do, takes me under her wing and shows me how to lay the gratings on a bitter betel leaf, wipe some lime paste (the ingredient in concrete rather than the fruit) on top, add some tobacco and wrap it up.
The women all proudly show their red teeth – they look like vampires – and tell me that the Burmese find red teeth very sexy. Li Do warns me not to chew, but rather to just hold it at the back of my jaw, otherwise it'll sting and make me feel dizzy.
I put the package into my mouth and try not to chew. Saliva starts to run like a river from my mouth, and I'm overcome by a sensation of intense pain. There's nothing about this experience that's pleasant. I tell Li as much and ask when the good bit starts, but she just laughs at me and teases me that my face has turned red. She says that it should taste sweet and delicious, but I'm overcome by a heavy sweat, a burning mouth and general panic. I'm chewing involuntarily and persevering, but I just don't get it. The girls find my discomfort hilarious.
I start to splutter, and thick red saliva spews forth. I go for as long as I can, but after 15 minutes or so, I can't take it any longer and spit the whole lot out. I'm feeling dizzy and sick and the women are splitting their sides at the sight of whitey making a tit of himself.
Pastor Joe wakes me early – he wants to play a game of football against the camp. Ei Tu Ta vs The Rest of the World. I am a little hesitant – I'm leaving tonight on an exhausting eight-hour hike back over the border into Thailand, and a twisted ankle is the last thing I need. Before I go, I also need to see a woman whose baby is in the camp clinic with severe malnutrition. But Pastor Joe hasn't got where he is today by giving in to secular reluctance. He practically drags me, along with his chirpy acolyte Joshua and our French friend Roman, to the camp football pitch.
We stand there in the early dawn light, but no one else has turned up. This doesn't bother Pastor Joe who says we should have faith and warm up. After half an hour of booting a football around, a trickle of people starts to arrive. The trickle turns to a flood, and eventually about a thousand people gather to watch the crazy foreigners make fools of themselves. We borrow a few of the camp administrators to make our side up to a decent number, and the best Karen footballers gather to take us on. I'm sure they are better players than us, but I sense that this one could be close: we have the crucial advantage of shoes.
Oh, how wrong I am. The football pitch is about as flat as the Somme after heavy shelling, and the ball bounces unpredictably and wildly, as though it were a rugby ball. We totter around the crevassed pitch trying not to break our ankles, whilst the Karen glide around as if it is as smooth as the Stamford Bridge turf. They wallop the ball hard with their bare feet and our only saving grace is, of course, Pastor Joe, who is a fearless and bulky goalkeeper. This is fortunate because he is kept very busy. At one point, Joshua scores a goal for us, and the refugees roar enthusiastically.
The balls continue to fly past Pastor Joe, until suddenly I get a lucky break: the ball actually goes in the direction I kick it, I dribble like a pro, dummy past two defenders leaving them flat on their backs, wrong-foot the goalie and ready myself for the coup de grace, then just in front of their empty goalmouth a muddy chasm opens up in front of me and my foot disappears. I pirouette, arms flailing, and fall on my face like a drunkard. A thousand refugees laugh their pants off. We finally call it a day at 6–1, and gather for a team photo with half the spectators. The school bell rings (the teachers have kindly waited until the match is over), and the kids run off.
I return to my shack to tend my wounds, but there's bad news from the clinic: the baby girl that was suffering from malnutrition has just died. I'm devastated. Perhaps I've become biased from spending too much time here, but it feels as though the Burmese junta has just murdered another Karen child.
Just before we leave, Pastor Joe gathers us for a blessing. It's not really my thing, but in the circumstances, Marc and I need all the help we can get.
Night falls and we're ready to move off. As we leave camp, people wave and say 'Ta-ta'. They know that we're going home to a place where there's wealth, opportunity and respected human rights. They also know that we'll be making a film about their lives and they hope that this will help in some way. But there's little real optimism here: the Karen are a broken people fighting a war they can never win, against a regime that persecutes them with impunity. I hope with all my heart that the world begins to care a little more and puts pressure on the junta.
We climb into a wobbly boat and cross the river. We're taking a different route this time in case soldiers discovered the path we took on the way over and are waiting for us on the way back. I could tell you about the return journey in detail, but it's just more of the same: hour upon hour of utter, body-aching exhaustion, sweat-drenched nervousness and vaulting fear. The only difference is that I will, for the rest of my life, feel an impotent rage at what I've seen here.
Burma's brutal totalitarian government seems propagated by greed. A military junta that's unburdened by the expense and restrictions of democracy and can do fantastic business deals when it's using forced labour, when it can take land and resources from its natural owners at will, and when it cares little for the social or environmental consequences. If you are thinking about going to Burma on holiday, bear in mind that whatever the deal, you can be sure that, in one way or another, the regime and its friends are pocketing a fair amount of the cash from it. Russia and China are happy to do deals with a repressive regime, which seems to say a lot about their own politics. India is happy to ignore human consequences in order to fuel its economic boom. And the world doesn't mind what's going on in Burma as long as it stays quiet. The only hope for democracy in Burma is if the small rumblings amongst the international community become a roar.
NOTE: The facts in this piece have been checked as far as reasonably possible; much of what is stated about the country is common consensus from journalists, politicians, NGOs and protest groups. Many of these groups have an agenda, so I have usually gone with the less hysterical views and tried to tread a middle path through them, and to let people speak for themselves.
INDIA
The Rat Eaters
POPULATION: 1,169 million
PERCENTAGE LIVING ON LESS THAN S2 A DAY: 80%
UNDP HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX: 126/177
CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX POSITION: =70/163
GDP (NOMINAL) PER CAPITA: $797 (133/179)
FOOD AID RECIPIENTS: 190,000 to 2007
MALNUTRITION: 20% of the population
Everyone falls in love with India eventually. It's partly to do with the swirling, chaotic human soup, the sensual assault and the intricate, bewildering beauty. But there's a guilty secret to our fascination: much of India's beauty is found not so much in its fabulous riches, but in its gruesome poverty, in our wonder at the sheer scale of deprivation. The poorest Indians endure conditions so awful that they seem unreal, like an epic movie of human suffering rather than reality. And the Western visitor wanders around the country in a state of semi-disbelief, mesmerized by the vast gap between the wealthy and the impoverished, fascinated by the lives of its rural poor, the beautiful kids running about in shreds of clothing, the people surviving amidst filth and squalor, the sheer pressure of so many people in such a small space.
India has the fourth largest economy in the world, but despite that, over half of the world's hungry people live here. It's odd because food is India's most successful cultural export (and of course curry has become the UK's national dish). But what's even more shocking is the fact that this hunger isn't just due to the natural growing pains of an emerging capitalist democracy: in some parts of India the poor are systematically kept hungry by the wealthy, and it's all justified by the caste system.
India is home to one-ei
ghth of the world's population (1.1 billion people), and one-eighth of the population of India (that's 165 million people) are dalits – the untouchables. These people are seen as outcasts – below caste – outside the Hindu social order. Many of these people live in grinding poverty, disenfranchised from Indian politics and society, and with little hope of escape.
Caste discrimination is now, strictly speaking, illegal, but it's still going strong in the countryside, where the poor are routinely exploited and abused. Many rural dalits are desperately poor, perpetually living on the verge of hunger, and because they are so powerless they are highly susceptible to abuse by the wealthy, especially through food and land. There are widespread accusations that the Indian police systematically collude with the discrimination and support the Brahmin: the highest caste who usually wield the real power in India.
In the Hindu belief system you live an ongoing cycle of reincarnation until you reach moksha, or liberation, and in each cycle your caste is assigned to you depending on how good you were in the last life. It's a more or less fatalistic approach to earthly existence (and maybe it has positive uses) but it's also been used for centuries by the higher castes to keep the poor in their place, and to ensure the continuity of their own power and wealth – you've been born a dalit, ergo, you must have been bad in a former life. Ergo, tough shit.
I've come here to discover how untouchability has kept so many people hungry in a country whose economy is set to rival the USA within 30 years.
The Rat Eaters
I'm in Patna, the state capital of Bihar, in the northeast of India. It's a filthy, crumbling mess of a city, with tens of thousands living rough on the streets; it is renowned for corruption, bad government and a high level of discrimination against the dalit. I'm planning to head out to the countryside where, rumour has it, there's a sub-caste of the dalit, the very lowest of the low, called the Musahars – literally, the rat-eating people. My Indian guide and translator, Anoj, is extremely sceptical that anyone gets so hungry that they'd eat vermin: 'It may have happened in the past, but not any more,' he says.
In this area several armed groups, including the Naxalites (pro-dalit Maoist rebels), have emerged to assert the rights of the dalit, fight the wealthy landowners and claim land for the peasants, but in return the landowners have funded their own armies, such as the Ranvir Senato, to resist their claims, and my most difficult mission is to make contact and meet with these paramilitaries before heading out to the countryside. It's dangerous to meet them in town where there are informers and policemen everywhere, so they are very wary of us, with good reason as it turns out, because straight away there's a catastrophe. Somehow Anoj manages to screw up the meetings so that the Naxalite rebel contact is sitting waiting whilst I chat to their arch rivals, the notorious Ranvir Sena army. How the hell has this happened?
After trying to negotiate my way through a tricky few hours with a barrel-load of lies, it seems that neither group of rebels is keen to chat – in fact they're furious. I try telling them that I'm from the BBC, I have to remain neutral and I'm interested in both sides of the story, but it doesn't seem to wash.
It's a really bad start to the trip so I decide to find some authentic Biharian curry, plus a pint or two of Kingfisher to ease the tension. I drop into various curry joints, but either they don't serve beer, or they are too filthy to bear. Finally I stumble across a temple to 1980s' chic full of chintzy sofas. They sell beer. It'll do fine.
Refreshed and slightly more optimistic, I visit Patna's central food market the following day. But it's very difficult to talk to anyone. White people are pretty rare in Patna and the locals stare at me with a lobotomized gaze and a crowd of men follow me around in a bizarre human wave. I explore the chaotic, stinking market, trying to get a feel for food in Patna, but every time I stop people push forward until I am squashed in the middle. I take refuge in some grimy food stalls, but it's hard work.
I persevere, though, and spend some time wandering around the street stalls looking at vast mountains of sweets, buns, pancakes and all manner of breads. I stop at one breathtakingly filthy stall where the chef lets me make fresh golden yellow jalebi sweets. I squeeze flower shapes (well, that's what they're supposed to be) out of dough from a scrofulous cloth straight into hot ghee (clarified butter). They puff up and fry hard, at which point they are dropped into a sugar solution to soak, and then piled into mounds (on which the flies feast) for sale. It's hard to imagine a more calorie-laden opportunity for botulism spores to grow.
I'm useless at it to begin with, but my technique improves as I persevere. By the time I'm done the crowd has grown enormous, and they clap and cheer my efforts, which is sweet but undeserved, and I buy a few kilos of the sweets to say thank you.
The crowds continue to follow me until it becomes too difficult to work so I find a small sit-down curry joint and pay the owner a few rupees to close his murky restaurant to customers for an hour so that I can eat and talk to him. He glows with pride when I tell him that his food would stand up well in any Indian restaurant in London, but he warns me that in rural areas people are desperate for food and hunger is widespread.
Paraiya
I get up early the next day and set off on a four-hour journey to a rural village called Paraiya. In geographical terms it's not very far, but the roads are so potholed that our driver can go only at walking pace. It's tiring sitting in the car being thrown around as if you're on a tiny boat in a violent storm, and I become desperate for a break. Eventually I can take it no more and shout 'Stop!'
We stop at a roadside shack and eat kachori – fried dumplings stuffed with various pastes made from vegetables. They don't taste of much, but they're served with a slurp of very hot spicy pulses and sauce – it's a decent breakfast. It always surprises me how people eat curry for breakfast – it's quite a jolt to start the day with food that takes your breath away with its ferocity. I take a look at the filthy, fly-blown kitchen and wonder if I'm taking undue risks with my stomach again, but I figure that I've built up so much immunity from eating in squalid places over the past year that nothing much can hurt me now.
Four enormous breakfasts (sullen driver included), plus ten cups of sticky, sweet chai cost 80p. The tea is served in tiny clay cups that are thrown away after a single use. This seems a waste in such a poor country, but it's best not to argue with the system. The clay gives the tea a dry taste similar to . . . well . . . clay, but it's nice. The only problem with the place is that it's swarming with flies.
As we pass through the countryside I look out at the never-ending network of rice fields. Every patch of spare land is being used to grow food, which isn't surprising for a country with this kind of density of population. What I do find surprising is that there are people everywhere in the fields – all of them busy tending, tidying, or guarding.
That afternoon I stop at the offices of an NGO called Nav Bharat Jagriti Lendra and drink some chai with Ramswaroop, a kindly balding man who fights for the rights of the dalit and reminds me of Gandhi. He has a habit of farting long and loud in public without a hint of embarrassment, a skill of which I am enormously jealous (I'm not sure if Gandhi did the same).
We wander around the village. All the buildings are covered in cakes of mud and straw, and I wonder if it's something symbolic to do with dalit fatalism. Ramswaroop tells me they are dung cakes, used as fuel for cooking. A little girl called Indu shows me how to make them: take a bucket of cow dung and another of water. I get my hands in deep (best to remove your watch first) and squidge it about with my fingers to make sure it's fully mixed in, ignoring the rising feeling of disgust at being up to your elbows in shit. Then we make balls of dung the size of a large fist, and roll that in straw or rice husks, and set them aside. Once they are all rolled and ready, Indu takes one and taps it gently against a tree to flatten it, then, when it's cake-shaped, she slaps it against the tree with a large 'splat'. I try my hand at it, and make a big shitty mess of the tree and myself. Eventually I get the hang o
f it, and I finish off the rest of the cakes until the whole tree is covered in dung. The cakes are left to dry for a week or so, then used like wood for fires.
I ask why people bother going to the effort of making dung cakes rather than just throwing some wood on the fire and Ramswaroop explains that it's not easy getting hold of wood, especially in a country as densely populated as India, where deforestation has devastated rural areas. There's just no wood left near most villages, and it's one of the reasons why cow ownership is so important despite the fact that Hindus don't eat beef: the cow can be used for milking, but also for processing organic matter into cooking fuel. People who own no livestock often have to spend huge amounts of time and effort walking miles out of the villages just to gather enough fuel to cook.
Soon after dawn, we strike off across the shallow riverbed, heading for the next door village, with Ramswaroop farting merrily as we talk. This is the desperately poor village of Paraiya, medieval in its filth and poverty, but within a matter of seconds we are surrounded by a sea of tiny, ragged, heartbreakingly beautiful children, squealing with laughter and getting under our feet.
I'm struck, once again, by the poverty paradox: in the morning light the village – with its simple mud huts, children playing in the dirt, women washing in rivers, smoke drifting up from tiny stoves, baby goats and enormous cows fighting for space between people, and a patchwork of paddy fields – looks idyllic, and it's tempting to think that life here has an innocence and simplicity that we in the West long for.
Anshuman, one of the village elders, invites me to share his breakfast in front of his crumbling mud hut. He serves rice with a thick white sauce and I ask what it is. 'It's the water from the boiled rice. We use it instead of curry. We have it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.'