OCTOBER 1986

The Karen month, Si sah– ‘little starlight’

The rains have begun to ease after (they tell me) two months of deluge. The roads have been destroyed. Given one or two dry days, someone was sure to try and drive between the border and Riverside, stirring the mud to the colour and consistency of toffee mousse. The mornings are cold. Colonel Marvel is sick and has taken to his bed, miserable and unspeaking under the blankets. The mist mills about in the forest until near eight o'clock, huge water particles like distracted rain that has forgotten where to fall. Drying clothes is a trial. If I do get a shirt dry, it goes straight into a sealed plastic bag.

I go to the river, to bathe in the rain. The surface of the water takes off around me, billions of big splash droplets rising three inches, a new top surface over the river. It is mostly gentle–although a sudden cataract has swamped a boat by the hospital.

The forest is close and claustrophobic; it has been growing hard since May, and every building is obscured and overhung–bad news if there are snakes in the trees. The rice fields are dense-packed but not yet ripe. Rats and wild pigs are the problem now. Boys with catapults sit in bamboo watch-towers overlooking the crop.

Everyone is waiting. When the rain stops, the harvest and the fighting will commence together. NOVEMBER La Naw–‘oilseed’ The rain slows. The level of the river falls, the water clears, and at night I shiver even with a blanket.