Turning down a visit to the human zoo

Cecile Clerc

Cecile Clerc, MRG’s Head of Fundraising, discovers how Thailand’s tourism industry is exploiting highland ethnic minorities…and does the right thing.

This time it was South East Asia. Thailand, to be specific. But I was not on an MRG trip but enjoying three weeks under the sun while my friends and family were freezing in Europe. In my rucksack, I had my trekking boots, swimming costume, sun-cream and a pile of books. I even had my husband with me to carry the rucksack! 100% different from my usual MRG trips then…Or was it?

I admit I completely managed to forget about work and MRG at the beginning of my trip. I almost forgot to check before Christmas if the judgement of the Finci Case (an MRG project I’d fundraised for) was made public.

I immersed myself in the craziness of Bangkok. I cycled across the ruins of Sukhotai, an old capital in the Central Plains. I tried all local food possible, including hot pumpkin in coconut milk, a dessert I now love. I learned more about Buddhism and was fascinated by the temples.

Maybe I did think about MRG when visiting the Museum of Siam in the capital, where many references to the ethnic diversity of Thailand were made. Although maybe not…

However, arriving in Chiang Mai brought me back to ‘my’ reality. It is a nice, quiet, provincial town in the north of Thailand and the main centre for hill tribe trekking.

And here I was, walking across the city and passing in front of dozens of ‘travel agents’, displaying pictures of tribesmen and women, dressed in their traditional outfits and encouraging tourists to book a tour to visit a tribal village. In fact it was promoted just like a visit to the zoo.

Thailand is home to numerous communities ranging from the Chao Ley in the Southern islands of Koh Lanta, Phuket or Kho Phi Phi and the Moken who still lead itinerant lives around the Ko Surin Archipelago (both groups often called ‘Sea Gypsies’) to the Karen, Hmong and Lahu in the hills of the north. Since the mid-Seventies, a large percentage of minorities known as ‘hill tribes’ who live in the north, are made up of refugees from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.

I had of course read about Thailand’s ethnic minorities before travelling. But I was certainly not prepared for the industry generated around them. And I could not help wondering how beneficial to these communities such an industry is. Surely, sending crowds of tourists to a village must be disruptive to their traditional way of life? And how can we be sure that the profits from this lucrative tourism are actually benefiting the communities?

I’d read on various leaflets distributed by the travel agencies promoting these visits that ‘hill tribes are very welcoming’. Well, do they have much choice?

Here I was- back to thinking about work and about all MRG campaigns to ensure that the rights of ethnic, religious and cultural minorities are fully respected worldwide. It reminded me especially of an online campaign we ran to promote sustainable tourism in Africa.

MRG is not yet working in Thailand. One day maybe? In the meantime, it is down to individual tourists like you and me to think about the consequences of our holiday activities.

I obviously refused to go on a hill tribe trek. Instead, we decided to go for a ‘normal’ trek across the beautiful Doi Ithannon natural park. We looked for a ‘green’ travel company (hard to find but really worth it) whose guide thanked us for not asking for hill tribe trekking.

The best coffee shop in the world

IThe scenery of our walk was breathtaking. And when I asked on the way back if we could stop for a coffee somewhere (OK I can admit it now…I was simply exhausted and wanted to sit down), our guide offered to take us to a local coffee cooperative entirely managed by a local community. It was the best coffee I’d ever had.

And overall probably one of the best holidays of my life. Since it was after all holidays, I can finish this post with a typical holiday picture, right?

Cutting a shine on the Endorois dancefloor

Emma Eastwood, MRG’s Trouble in Paradise Campaign Manager, rounds off her trip to the Rift Valley discussing Obama ‘the Kenyan wonder boy’ and struts her stuff dancing with the Endorois. Sign our petition to pressure the Kenyan government to guarantee the Endorois community’s traditional way of life.

Today we take yet another bone-shaking ride up a poor excuse for a road to the Mochongoi Forest, which at around 2500m affords us views of the entire Endorois territory, bordered by dark hills swathed in rain clouds on the horizon.

The forest (which represents about one tenth of their land) is as crucial to the Endorois as the land surrounding Lake Bogoria. In the old days during the dry season the community would migrate up here with their cattle to the plentiful pastures – that was until the government gazetted the Forest in the 1970s, depriving them of yet more of their ancestral homelands.

To an outsider it would seem that the Endorois have plenty of space – only 60, 000 people scattered over a huge area, encompassing dry lowland plains dotted with irrigated maize fields and this highland plateau covered with lush grasslands and conifer groves. Playing devil’s advocate I point this out to Kipkazi, but he’s quick to remind me that the crux of the matter lies in the community’s lack of collective title to any of this land – they live daily with the possibility of being kicked out of their homes at any minute (in much the same way as they were from Lake Bogoria in the 1970s).

High up on the plateau we meet the volunteers who run the Human Rights Office, a humble wooden hut festooned with last year’s Christmas decorations and calendars portraying Obama ‘the Kenyan wonder boy’. Politics – everyone we’ve met so far is obsessed with the subject – the only words in Swahili I can ever make out are Obama, Raila, Kbaki and Obama and more Obama.

The main topic of discussion revolves around whether the presidential candidate will bring about change for Kenyans – so many people are pinning so much hope on this one man. Incidentally in Nairobi we found out that Obama’s father’s family are from the indigenous fisher folk community of the northern shores of Lake Victoria, a group MRG recently featured in our briefing on Kenya.

Paul Chepsoi, the Human Rights Office Chairman, looking incongruously smart in the rural surroundings in his suit and tie, takes us through the history of the dispossession of the Endorois from the Mochongoi Forest (and their continued struggle for the return of their lands). He accompanies us on a tour of the area, which is dotted with traditional mud huts (and some newer dwellings made entirely from zinc sheets, which, although easier to maintain, must become ovens in these temperatures during the day).

We meet the Endorois elders from one of the villages who tell us of how they are forced to graze their cattle on barren lands whilst outsiders have been allowed to settle on more fertile plots.

Volunteers at the Mochongoi Forest Human Rights Office

My education in pastoralist culture continues…I’m told that back in the day an Endorois girl’s family would have received ten cows for her hand in marriage, but nowadays she’s worth only four. My companion Neil wonders whether that’s deflation in the value of girls or inflation in the value of cows…Kipkazi says he would have been a rich man in the old days – he has four daughters!

Later that afternoon our visit to the Endorois community is rounded off by a show of traditional song and dance in a shady clearing backed by an enormous termite mound. After a welcome dance we were shown to a gnarled log and seated to enjoy the show – which features songs about the importance of Lake Bogoria and the community’s hopes for the return of their homeland. I am embarrassingly moved to tears by the spectacle and am thankful for my overlarge sunglasses and the distraction of trying to film and record the proceedings (and keep my dignity when obliged to strut my stuff on the dancefloor…)

Endorois traditional dance

We finish off the afternoon by giving impromptu speeches which we hope in some small way can communicate how, with the support of people like you, the Trouble in Paradise campaign can bring about real change for this resilient and courageous community whose traditional culture and livelihood is under threat.

There’s rubies in them there hills

Apart from having lost their land to make way for a game reserve, the Endorois, like many other indigenous peoples throughout the world, have also been adversely affected by opencast mining. Emma Eastwood, MRG’s Trouble in Paradise Campaign Manager, investigates.

In 2003, without consultation with the community, a private company began ruby mining on the land the Endorois had been forced on to after their eviction from Lake Bogoria. After complaints from the community of diarrhoea and stomach cramps, the Endorois’ sole drinking water sources were tested in June 2006 and found to be contaminated by poisonous chemicals used in the mining process. The Kenyan government forced the mine to shut down a few months later.

Wilson Kipsang Kipkazi, Secretary of the Endorois Welfare Council and our guide whilst visiting the area, eagerly shows me a document he recently found on the internet (which was mysteriously withdrawn soon after) detailing the amount of rubies the company running the mining operation had extracted and the market value of the gems – 1grm of rubies sells for around 135, 000 Ksh (approx US$193). He suspects that the company may never have paid any taxes on the revenue it gained from the mine and that the rubies were extracted under a prospecting license rather than a full mining license.

And so we set out to visit the abandoned mine, a two-hour, dusty ride down a road that often resembled a dry riverbed, scattering baboons as we bumped our way further and further into the bush. How they had ever managed to get huge earthmovers and mining machinery into such an isolated area in the first place baffled me.

After various 4-wheel drive dilemmas we ditched the car and continued on foot down a steep track towards the abandoned mine. Although the whole operation was abandoned over 2 years ago, the landscape was still scarred – exposing the purple earth that indicated the presence of rubies beneath the soil.

We forded the river (the very same one that had poisoned the community…. I put thoughts of bilharzia and elephantitis out of mind as I felt my barefoot way across the slippery rocks) and climbed up to inspect the mining equipment. The whole area had an eerie feeling – what was left of the rusted, derelict machinery had been ransacked and vandalised in the post-election violence according to Kipkazi, a couple of donkeys (looking considerably fatter and well fed than the poor beasts I’d seen toiling away in Morocco a few years back) eyed us docilely from the top of the mine shaft, ubiquitous goats, dotted around the site, bleated mournfully.

Abandoned machinery at the mine site

A small group of Endorois men who’d been tending their goats nearby appeared from nowhere – the sense of remoteness I felt was misleading, the area is far more densely populated than it first appears. Kipkazi and Richard Yegon, an elder from an Endorois village called Kapkuikui who was also accompanying us, chatted with them about their experience of the mine.

Endorois men who live and tend their goats close to the mine

Apparently hardly any of the people from the surrounding area were employed here – and when they were it was only to shovel dirt into the cleaning and sorting machines, they were never allowed to see the rubies. They were also prevented from grazing their goats and cattle within the vicinity of the mine (bear in mind that we’re on Endorois land here and permission was never sought for the mining operations from the community) and were often harassed by security guards.

Whilst Kipkazi and Richard poked around in the dry, purple earth (hoping they might get lucky?) one of the men showed me a ruby the size of a sunflower seed, which would fetch around 1000 Ksh at a local dealers. When I asked him what he thought about the mine he said, “I wish it had never existed.”

A ruby found at the mine site

Kipkazi tells me that a 2006 Mining Bill, which contemplates payment to local communities for mining privileges, is stagnating at a draft stage. Same old story…