Beyond Fair Trade

by Mark Pendergrast

  A few weeks later, Darch Senior recalled the aftermath of Wicha’s death. “My first concern, after the personal shock and loss of a dear friend, was that I was worried everything would be in chaos. He was buried within twenty-four hours of his death in a family plot in Chiang Rai. Sandra has strong inner strength. She went up there and became mother to Wicha’s family and to the Akha in Doi Chang.”

  When Darch Senior arrived in Chiang Rai a few days later, he and Anand Pawa went straight to the Doi Chaang Coffeehouse to offer their condolences to Nuch, Wicha’s widow, and their children. Nuch had at first refused to believe that Wicha was dead, sleeping overnight in the room with his body and telling herself that he would wake up the next morning. Now she had come to terms with his passing. “God has called him home—he needed Wicha’s help,” she told Darch.

  Nuch spoke of Wicha and all he had done, and she committed herself to continuing the business and coffeeshop. Among his many other projects, Wicha had been planning to create a restaurant in their old home just over the bridge on the Mekong River, where the children had grown up. He had also designed a home there, where they would live. It was near completion. Nuch showed Darch a photo of Wicha on the roof with a picnic basket.

  Over dinner, Nuch complained that Wicha would never go to a doctor, that he pulled his own teeth with pliers rather than go to a dentist. For infections, he would buy over-the-counter antibiotics. Nuch said that he was finally scheduled for a checkup on February 4. He knew something was wrong with him; he didn’t have his same old energy. The morning he died, he was talking on his cell phone with Koon, his youngest daughter, when he suddenly said, “Oh, I have to go.” She thought he was going to a meeting. He put down his clippers, cigarette, and phone on the table, and apparently just lay down and died.

  In the morning, Darch and Anand Pawa drove up to Doi Chang village. “Miga ran and threw herself at me and clung, totally intense, and she cried and cried and cried for four or five minutes. I stroked her hair, saying, It’s OK, OK, OK,” Darch remembered. Then more Akha women—Nuda, Apeu, Dawan, and others—came for hugs, and finally Adel greeted Darch, saying, “Please don’t leave us.” Darch assured him, “I will never leave you, you are my brother.”

  Perhaps in honor of Sandra Bunmusik, a devout Buddhist who had done so much to contribute to Doi Chaang Coffee’s success, they then held a Buddhist memorial service for Wicha in the Academy of Coffee, with saffron-clad monks leading chants and blessings. “We spent two days in Doi Chang,” Darch recalled. “There was no discussion of business, just friendship and family stories, and expressions of the deep love and devotion they had for Wicha.” Then Darch and the other Canadians went back to the Bangkok office to reassure the staff there.

  A few days later, they returned to Doi Chang, where they calmly discussed the future of Doi Chaang Coffee. “The message from Adel, Miga, Lipi, and Nuda was that everyone was OK,” Darch said, “They were in control of operations. They didn’t need us for their business to be successful. They politely said, ‘We are not dependent on you, but we don’t want you to leave, you are our new father.’ It was very touching. It came through to us that they were strong, they would continue, everything would be good.”

  Adel and Miga said that, now that Wicha was gone, they would focus primarily on coffee. They would continue with the honey, soap, tea, and other ancillary products, as well as the cordyceps, but coffee was the main concern. They planned to be out of debt in three years. The mushrooms and plans for new drinks would be put on hold. “We didn’t challenge anything,” Darch said. “We just listened very carefully. They had a lot of confidence in themselves. Wicha had done a tremendous job of succession planning.”

  As word of Wicha’s death spread, hundreds of people from around the world called or wrote to express their sorrow and to remember Wicha fondly. One of the most informed messages came from Jacques Op de Laak, the retired Dutch agronomist who lived in Chiang Mai:

  I was shattered by the sudden, unexpected and untimely death of Khun Wicha, founding member of Doi Chaang Coffee Company. I never knew he had heart problems, and he certainly didn’t look like someone in poor health. Ever so cheerful, kind and amiable.

  I first met Khun Wicha at an Agricultural Fair at Chiang Mai University (CMU) in 2005 and instantly we became friends. I found that he was involved with Doi Chang village for some years already, that coffee growing was in full swing, and that farmers were enthusiastic and energetic in expanding the crop and profits from it. Afterwards I visited Doi Chang many times, and what Khun Wicha had told me was entirely confirmed. These villagers had been bitten by the coffee bug.

  I was highly surprised and in the end thrilled to see what was happening there. In the 10 years (1983–1992) that I was working at the Coffee Research Centre at Chiang Mai University to promote coffee among the northern Thai highland farmers, I was convinced that Arabica coffee could and should work here. Only I hadn’t seen it till then! Doi Chang taught me that Arabica coffee could and did work.

  It is simply incredible what Khun Wicha and his handful of Akha farmers have accomplished in a relatively short time. What has happened and is still happening there is unique. Nowhere in northern Thailand can one find such a vast area under (good-looking) coffee trees, nowhere else does one find the dedication, drive and determination of the Doi Chang coffee farmers to grow a crop which is not the easiest to grow, at least not in a sustainable way.

  Nowhere else is there a single village with an entire population dedicated to cultivating this crop. Truly, Doi Chang deserves the title of Coffee Village. And all this because of a humble, tiny Thai man who, through vision and compassion, lifted the villagers to great heights. Surely, without an appropriate “breeding” ground, nothing can be achieved. The Doi Chang farmers had the right mentality and insight and feeling for the crop. Khun Wicha just managed to “fertilize” this ground in the right way to get optimal results.

  During my visit in November 2013, I had recorded a few songs as Wicha and I sat around the fire. As I listened to the recordings again, I felt deep sorrow, but I was also moved by how beautiful and sensitive his voice had been. I had turned on my recorder partway through “Kumbaya,” so I uploaded it to YouTube, along with some photos of Wicha, the Akha, and Doi Chang. You can see and hear it there.

  The Festival in Doi Chang

  I ARRIVED FOR my third visit in Doi Chang on April 15, 2014, the night before the seventh anniversary celebration of the Academy of Coffee founding—an excuse, as Wicha had told me, to gather Akha from surrounding communities. This year, in the aftermath of Wicha’s death, the festivities wouldn’t be as ambitious as previous events, nor would tribal members come from so far away. During the day, there were various games and performances on the large drying patio, including takraw, a game that Wicha had told me he excelled at as a young man. It’s a fierce kind of soccer-volleyball in which players kick a lightweight rattan or plastic ball (similar to a large whiffleball) over the net, spiking it with incredible pinwheels in which players look as if they will land on their heads but somehow come down on their feet. Akha women in traditional dress pounded bamboo pole-drums in rhythm on the ground, and an older Akha woman sang a full-throated traditional song. Others played drums, gongs, and flutes.

  I also met a group of Akha women in their twenties, most of whom lived in the village and worked with their family’s coffee business. All had gone to school in Chiang Rai and seemed savvy and well educated. Nun told me that she had studied linguistics at Chiang Rai Rajabhat University, and that she and her sister had started a coffeeshop in the city. I told her I was looking for Meeyae, the Akha teacher, to give her an Akha-English-Thai dictionary by Paul Lewis, so she called her cell, and Meeyae soon appeared. I inscribed the book to her and told her I hoped she would use it to teach her students to be literate in Akha. Meeyae seemed grateful for the book, but she said she was two months pregnant, and after she gave birth, she would be taking time off from teaching.

  By now, tables had been se
t up on the drying patio for the evening’s entertainment. I joined the Canadians at their table—Darches Senior and Junior, Anand Pawa, Eric Lightheart—which also included Keith Crosby, a Canadian geologist who had worked for John Darch Senior when he chaired Asia Pacific Resources (APR), the Thai potash project in Udon Thani. Crosby had been the only foreigner to remain with APR when Italian-Thai Development bought it in 2006. Now Crosby was working with Darch on several new potash projects that might ride to success on the coattails of the Italian-Thai development, if that company finally got the long-anticipated green light to begin mining operations.

  While walking around, I met a very friendly Akha man who introduced himself. “My name is Tee, not coffee!” he said, and laughed. He gave me his card, which said that his name was Kritipong Jupoh (Tee) and that he lived with his Japanese wife, Nobuko, in Mae Suai, at the bottom of the mountain. He taught political science part-time at Chiang Rai Rajabhat University and said that he had been all over the world, had visited California and Ohio, and had returned to his home in Chiang Rai Province in 2003. He had come up the mountain to enjoy himself at the festivities, but also to attend a meeting of Akha World (akhaworld.com), a Chiang Rai organization trying to save and maintain the traditional Akha way of life.

  The program from the main stage began as dinner was served. Niwet Phori, the young nurse practitioner at the Doi Chang health clinic, served as master of ceremonies. Before the music started, he introduced Adel, Piko, and other village elders. Then Sandra Bunmusik translated as John Darch Senior and Eric Lightheart gave heartfelt tributes to Wicha. Darch later told me that Sandra didn’t speak because she would have broken into tears.

  Then I spoke. Sandra translated as I explained that I was writing a book about Doi Chang and its coffee. I said that I had brought the 1984 book Peoples of the Golden Triangle on a previous trip, and everyone had really enjoyed looking at the pictures, so I brought another copy and was giving it to Adel to keep, but that it was really for the whole village. Then I explained that I had also given the Akha-English-Thai dictionary to Meeyae, and that anyone could ask her to look at it. Finally, I said that I had loved getting to know Wicha and that we shared a love of singing and playing the harmonica, and I would miss his joy in life. I said I had sung “Kumbaya” with him and made a YouTube video of it, and that I wanted to play the song on my harmonica in his honor. And then I did.

  The evening entertainment was geared toward a distinctly younger and more raucous audience. A young Akha man and woman sang a duet in their native tongue, but it was clearly modern, influenced by popular Thai music. There were various dances by traditionally clad Akha from Doi Chang, but also from other nearby villages, some with the high conical headdresses of the Ulo Akha, including three women from the neighboring village of Saen Charoen, who took the stage for a rice dance, sweeping round bamboo winnowing containers in rhythm. I had met and spoken to one of them before the dance. She was quite tall for an Akha woman and had a rather sexy, husky voice. She ended up doing a kind of Akha striptease by herself—not really taking off clothing, but suggestively showing her shoulder and swaying her hips —to much catcalling and applause. Finally I realized that she was a he. “Ladyboy,” said an audience member, laughing and applauding.

  I had hoped that the aging, legendary rock musician Surachai Jantimatorn, whom Wicha’s children knew as Uncle Nga, would play this year, as he had in April 2013, but he couldn’t come. Instead, Todd Lavelle, a Scranton, Pennsylvania, native now famous as Todd Tongdee in Thailand, his adopted home, brought his traveling world music show, including bands from Yunnan Province in China and an African group from Ghana. He sang only briefly, because he was hoarse from previous performances, but he too gave a heartfelt tribute to Wicha in Thai, Akha, and English. He dubbed his show the Doi Chaang Akha-World Musiq Festival.

  The next day, I got a chance to talk to Todd (Lavelle) Tongdee, who had met Wicha twenty years ago. Tongdee had first come to Thailand on a Fulbright Scholarship. He worked in a refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border, then earned his living as a singer and wrestler, eventually becoming a celebrity with his own Thai television show. He got involved with the Akha when he heard and disliked a popular Thai song called “Mida,” about a young Akha girl who would teach anyone about sex. In other words, it purveyed the old stereotypical myth of Akha promiscuity. In response, Tongdee interviewed Akha elders and wrote a song about the Akha Way, using Akha drums and musicians, for his Rhythm of the Earth album.

  He ran into Wicha in Chiang Rai and learned that he was helping the Akha with coffee, so he came up to play for the Doi Chaang Coffee festival for the first time in April 2011 and had been back every year since then. I asked how he would characterize Wicha, and he called him a “pisser,” which in his native Pennsylvania means someone who is direct, determined, and funny. “It’s someone who knows what they are going to do, and they go for it, regardless of what anyone else thinks,” he said.

  Visiting Doi Lan and Saen Charoen

  ON THIS FINAL research trip to Thailand, I also wanted to visit two other coffee towns—Huey Hawm, the first coffee village in Thailand, and Doi Tung, the once impoverished mountain where the aging Princess Mother had established a model coffee-growing resort community. But first, I ventured out of Doi Chang to the nearby villages of Doi Lan and Saen Charoen, with Anand Pawa, who would translate for me.

  Lipi drove us down the paved mountain road and turned left to Doi Lan, about 4 miles away. This was the Lisu village where Dutch anthropologist Otome Hutheesing had lived, but when we stopped in the middle of town at a little store, we found a group of Loimi Akha teenagers, home for the holidays from Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai. One, a girl nicknamed Pal, spoke good English. She introduced us to their parents across the street, who explained that they had fled the violence in Burma, moving to Doi Lan twenty years previously, and with the help of the Lisu village chief, had gotten their Thai ID cards a decade ago. They all grew coffee on the hillsides above and sold it to Doi Chaang. Doi Lan was part of the Geographical Indication (GI) Doi Chaang district, the equivalent of a Bordeaux wine district for coffee.

  We drove up through the coffee trees, then further east to where the road dead-ended on a barren hillside. Down the mountain, I could see fields burning, although even agricultural burning was technically illegal now. Bits of ash floated by, and visibility was limited by the smoke. April is the hottest time of the year in Thailand, so even in the mountains, it reached 90°F or more. The rainy season had yet to commence, and the red gashes on the hillsides at lower elevations, where coffee did not grow, were ugly. By June and July, however, they would be lush with corn, tomatoes, and rice.

  On the way back through the village, we stopped at a house and spoke to Alema, a middle-aged Lisu woman who had grown up in Doi Lan when it was purely a Lisu village. When I asked if she knew Otome Hutheesing, she said that she was her cousin, though Otome was actually an honorary family member. Alema said that it was difficult to live off her coffee earnings, since she only owned 5 rai, and her husband was in prison, so she had to hire help, and this year, Doi Chaang paid only 18 baht per kilo. But it was still better than growing tomatoes, which is what she used to do. Yes, she remembered when the logging company cut down all the trees along the road to Doi Chang. There were 140 households in the village, still predominantly Lisu.

  We then drove a bit farther down the mountain to Saen Charoen, an Ulo Akha village about 6 miles from Doi Chang. The roads were extremely steep, but luckily were paved with concrete. Most of the village is too low in elevation to grow coffee. The houses we passed were modest, except for one imposing, modern home. Lipi said that it belonged to the ladyboy who had performed at the festival. He toured internationally and was quite wealthy. I asked if there were any Akha ladyboys in Doi Chang, and Lipi said that there were, but that they were still closeted.

  We drove down until the road dead-ended in a beautiful little compound owned by an Akha couple. The husband had grown up in Saen Charoen and met his
future wife, who lived in another village, when they were walking along mountain trails, before there were roads. They had five children, one of whom was married to a Frenchman in Chiang Mai. His oldest son lived with them and worked on their 20-rai farm, further up the mountain. They grew corn but used to grow tomatoes. They didn’t use pesticide on the corn or burn their fields. His other children lived in the city because of the lack of job opportunities in this beautiful area.

  Moving to the Village

  ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, I moved to the Doi Chang Resort, owned by Chome, the daughter of Beno, the long-time Lisu headman, which would give me a chance to stroll around the village. But Chome wasn’t there yet. After some confusion, since no one spoke English, Chome’s assistant, an older Thai woman named Pom, opened one of the small A-frames up the hill, and I helped her make up the bed. It was a small room with a fan and a bathroom, adequate but far from elegant—not exactly what North Americans would call a resort.

  At 7 p.m. I walked down to the Catholic church, where I found a big crowd of Akha, some of the women in traditional headdresses, all holding small candles and standing around a bamboo pyre that a priest lit in the courtyard. From the pyre, all the candles were eventually set aflame, including the one I was given. Then we all filed into the church for an Easter eve service. Most people sat on the wooden floor, but a man tugged me to a seat on a low bench at the back reserved for elders. During the service, small children ran in and out. I heard “Apoe Miyeh” repeatedly, the name of the supreme Akha God, and I realized that the Catholics had adopted it as the name for the Christian God. Finally we blew out our candles, and the service ended with communion.

  I walked back up the hill to the resort, enjoying the warm night air. There were no streetlights, just lights in houses dotting the valley like fireflies. Chome was back from the valley, and we talked for a while. She verified much of what I had read in Otome Hutheesing’s book about the Lisu. Yes, the Lisu were status-conscious and valued money, and yes, the women did most of the work. Families still negotiated a bride price before marriage. Chome said that she wanted to make her place an ecotourist resort that stressed organic coffee and the quiet appeal of the village. I noted that I was her only guest, and she said that she needed a better Internet presence and media coverage. A young Thai couple had stopped earlier for dinner and looked at a room, but they didn’t stay. I told Chome that the man had told me there didn’t seem to be much to do, and he couldn’t believe how quiet it was on a Saturday night. That’s the point! Chome observed.