A town on Middle Andaman island, Mayabunder was where the first Karen people on the islands set up their homes. The Karen are an ethnic group originally from Myanmar that were brought to India during British rule for their forest know-how and relative immunity from malaria, the Andaman rainforest being similar to those back home.
Mayabunder was mostly cut off from Port Blair, the Andamanese capital, until the ATR (Andaman Trunk Road) was built, in the early 1990s. The only other connection between the two is a more than 12-hour journey by ferry that is often cancelled due to cyclones in the Bay of Bengal.
At the break of dawn, I board a bus, the red body of which is obscured with dust. A handwritten cardboard sign pasted on the windscreen declares Mayabunder as its destination.
Some 40km from Port Blair, traffic is stopped at the Jirkatang checkpoint, from where the ATR cuts through the Jarawa Reserve, home of the Jarawa, one of four remaining tribes indigenous to the Andaman Islands.
Later, when the sun finally comes out and the mist over wet paddy fields starts rising along with temperatures, I see a Jarawa couple by the side of the road, a beaded silver headband glinting on the woman’s forehead. I wonder what they think as they watch traffic pass along the road that threatens their habitat and exposes them to measles and other diseases they have never encountered before.
After seven hours on the road and a few minutes before the bus reaches Mayabunder, I alight at a junction and am picked up by my host, John Aung Thung, for the ride to the village of Webi, a Karen word meaning “hidden city”.
Paddy fields of Burmese black and white sticky rice stretch off into the distance on both sides and a narrow dirt lane cuts across a field before opening up to a unique wooden structure, unlike the concrete houses that now fill Webi.
The Koh Hee Homestay (koh hee means “island home” in the Karen language) is the ancestral home of my host John, a third-generation Indian Karen who is dedicated to protecting a cultural heritage that is being lost in the rapidly modernising Andamans.
Three thousand Karen live in the Andaman Islands – mostly in eight Middle Andaman villages – but Koh Hee is one of the last of their traditional homes here.
“Traditionally, Karen houses have been made using bamboo and timber from the Lagerstroemia hypoleuca [Andaman Crape Myrtle] tree,” John tells me, as we sip from a coconut his wife, Doris, has brought us.
I have all but forgotten about the afternoon sun now that I am on the Koh Hee balcony, sitting on a hammock chair made with the traditional Karen weave. The open balcony on one side and large windows on the other are ventilation enough so that we do not need a fan in the 35-degree-Celsius (95-degree-Fahrenheit) heat.
“The wood we use, the thatched roof, the direction of the windows, all help keep the indoors several degrees cooler,” John says.
By converting his home into a homestay, John can afford to maintain the timber structure. The owners of the few other traditional Karen houses struggle to meet the cost of keeping termites at bay and rethatching their roofs every few years.
That, and changing laws regarding the newly “protected” forests, has pushed many Karen in the Andaman Islands to start using concrete as a building material.
John’s attempts to protect Karen heritage in the Andamans do not end with Koh Hee.
He also founded Andaman Karen Crafts, an initiative designed to keep alive the arts of traditional woodworking and weaving, as seen in the red bag John flaunts while showing me around his backyard medicinal nursery, established using the knowledge of his grandfather – a traditional plant-medicine healer.
According to John, tourism is the only hope of saving the remaining Karen houses from falling apart one by one.
As long as intrepid travellers keep going beyond the road frequently travelled, John and other committed Karen will be able to keep their heritage alive.
