Our family farm (Julie Bawk)

Are you tired of living in the city, where every day you have to deal with crowded places, annoy with noise of traffic, sick of factorial and industrial pollution? Let me bring you to our family farm in Kachin State, Myanmar. It is very beautiful place!

Our farm is in the small village called Nan Si Aung, in Mohnyin town-ship, Kachin State. To get there, you can travel by train or can take comfortable express bus. From Yangon if you take express bus, it takes about 15 hours to get there. If you are traveling from Madalay, Sagin to Kachin State, when you arrive in Nan Si Aung, you will see the stone monument written “ welcome to Kachin State”.

In 2014 our family bought this 7 acres farm for hope to support our relatives (families of my father’ siblings), who are living here in Nan Si Aung. This village and surrounding areas are still under arm conflicts.

Frequent clashes between government troops and Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) troops is affecting so much on livelihood of people living in these areas. Beside, this place is close to popular jade mining area, so, most of my uncles and aunts go and work in jade mines under very harsh condition. Most of the time, they come home with illness such as malaria, and the money they earned are spent away with their medical treatments. And they remain poor.

We let our uncle Kin (youngest bro of my father) to take care of the farm. He was tenancy of other people farm before, but his family has to endure foods shortage most of the time. Above photo is the house of my uncle Kin’family. The photo was taken during my visit in 2015. Last year, our family managed to build a new house for uncle Kin family to live. I am happy for my uncle family.

( uncle kin' family new house)

Although the farm was bought in 2014, that year we didn’t manage to get paddy fields ready for rice to plant. The next year we started with a few rice paddy fields and planted some vegetables, but the harvest was not very good that year.

( rice field in 2015)

But in 2016, when I visited the farm for the first time, I was very happy with the progress happening in the farm! I was very happy to see beautiful rice fields and the vegetables growing beautifully. My uncle kin family harvested rice enough to sustain for one whole year for the first time. With last year harvest, uncle kin even managed to share rice and some vegetables to his sibling families living there.

I totally agree with Confucius teaching that says “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” I just hope that together with uncle kin, others will also join in the farming works to be able to yield more crops and hope to bring up their life.

( vegetables harvested from the farm)

Julie Bawk