After a couple of hours of driving we left the pavement and headed towards the border on a dirt road. One of the guys produced a radio and Ting Win screwed the antenna on and began hailing his men. The gravel road became a track that had recently been cut through the jungle and then ended in a small clearing. We got out and I was having a stretch and a look around when a group of heavily armed guerrillas came up the trail to meet us.
We followed them down the trail to a little stream, and across a bridge made of rough planks. There was a young soldier sitting in a little bamboo booth at the gate. We had arrived in Kawthoolei.
I noticed that there were fighting positions covering the Thai side and I later learned that often the Burmese army would circle around into Thailand to attack the base from the rear. This particular camp had been attacked several times in the past, the last time being only a few months previous.
The guerrillas were positively bristling with weaponry of all sorts. Everyone had guns. There were M-16's, and AK-47's, Chinese machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. One old soldier sauntered up with an AK slung over one shoulder, he smiled and said hello, and later he told me his story. He had fought for many years as a young man, and then having had enough he retired and tried farming, but after a few years of harassment and intimidation by the Burmese army he got fed up and joined the rebels for a "second round." He was sixty years old.
The rebels were very hospitable, and with a great deal of fussing and attention I was shown to the hut where I could hang my hammock. One soldier saw me fiddling with the knot and showed me how to tie it "commando style," so it would never let go as I lay in it, but if the enemy should attack, one quick tug on a cleverly protruding tab and I would be off.
I spent the day taking photographs and touring the camp, which was stretched out in little pockets here and there along a little valley. Everywhere I went I was accompanied by a security detail and an interpreter, and when we would arrive in a new area the young soldiers would scramble about looking nervous. This made it difficult to photograph them but after a while everyone got used to having me around and relaxed.
As the afternoon waned I ate with the soldiers and discovered what it was like to eat like a guerrilla, the food consisted mostly of rice mixed with a paste of fermented fish and chilis. There were a few wild vegetables that had been gathered in the jungle and that was all. The men encouraged me to "please eat slowly" which in Kawthoolei is like saying "please make yourself at home." The Karens have been living on the run for so many years that it has become a custom at times when you are safe to make a point of savoring the ability to enjoy a leisurely meal.
At dusk a wiry lieutenant and I took a walk up the hill past his hut to look down on the camp, it was hard to believe that there was a war going on in a setting so beautiful. The lieutenant was about forty years old, and had been a guerrilla since he was a teenager, he was kind and friendly despite the things he must have seen. He pointed up the trail and using sign language, signed a person walking then stepping on a mine. As the sun set, the soldiers had rigged up booby traps and set mines on the few secret entrances to the camp. I made a mental note not to walk too far should I need to get up in the night for a pee.
