On social visits, we sit around the fire and talk, munching on roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes to keep warm. We drink lots of warm tea and roast freshly picked peanuts with their vivid pink skin, sunflower seeds, and kernels of corn which pop at the heat.

 

With rare photographs, Mae Chan: The Water Changes Course recounts the lives of Thailand’s hill tribes in the mid-1980s. Written as a series of letters by a passionate social worker, it touches on the everyday challenges of land rights, inadequate education, and exploitation and the people’s efforts to counter them. From avoidable tragedies such as deaths by superstition to small triumphs like the villages’ first co-op, Tuenjai makes those who populate these pages come vividly alive.
 

AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR, GLOBAL 500, UNEP

 

5th Printing!