Dynamite!

* Thra is a Karen term meaning “teacher”. Evangelists, and agricultural workers, teachers, pastors and missionaries were usually called “Thra”.

Thra Shway Lah Yay (white T-shirt) teaching
some kids in Oh Loh Tha Village: 1985-09

Part of our stateside training before coming to Thailand was the warning that especially in developing areas of the world, we might encounter some legal and ethical gray areas. Something might be illegal, but in common practice and for practical reasons, the law was ignored and a work-around system was employed. Everyone, including the police (who might well be involved), knew about it but went along with it so that everyone could go on with their lives with more money in their own pocket and less in a government account. In Thailand, getting a driver’s license, traffic violations, accidents, getting building supplies, tree cutting and more were often subject to these legal work-arounds. It turns out buying dynamite to use in our irrigation project was in one of those gray areas. Probably a dark gray area at that!

Digging the irrigation ditch in Oh Loh Tha. All
work was done by hand.
1985 - 09

Thra* Shway Lah Yay was the evangelist covering a number of villages along the Mae Ngow River and
he was working closely with Thra Waw Hae, the agricultural worker, at the village of Oh Loh Tha. Our Irrigation Project was helping the village of Oh Loh Tha dig a sizeable irrigation ditch and they had run into some particularly stubborn rock. Checking on this irrigation ditch was the reason that I and several others came along on the trip with Kinuko where the boat broke down, as mentioned in the previous post.

I was told the traditional method of digging through rock was to make a fire on top of the rock and get the surface good and hot. Then cold water was poured on top of the hot rock to make the rock crack. Once cracked, heavy steel spud bars and sledge hammers could bust some of the rock away. It worked, but it was slow. Dynamite could do the job quicker.

Dealing with some smaller rocks on the 
irrigation ditch in Oh Loh Tha. 1985-09

Thra Shway Lah Yay told me all about this and asked if it was OK for the project to buy some dynamite to move things along. He explained that as luck would have it, there was an active mine not far away and dynamite could be bought there. If Baptists had High Priests, Thra Thu Nu would have had the position in the Mae Sariang Area. He was an amazing evangelist and was responsible to one degree or another for starting and nurturing most or maybe all the churches among the Karen in the Mae Sariang area. He was, and remains, my spiritual hero and he seemed to also be in favor of buying the dynamite as he came along with Shway Lah Yay some of the times we talked about it.

I’m not sure at what point I became aware that dynamite was highly regulated and while maybe legal for the mine to have it, not legal for me or the Irrigation Project to have it. Even after learning it wasn’t legal, at first I figured with no less than Thra Thu Nu and Thra Shway Lah Yay behind it, dynamite was just one of those gray areas we’d learned about in our stateside missionary training. No worries.

Thra Nae Gay preparing dynamite to blast rock
on a later project in March of 1991

Finally, the dynamite arrived. Apparently, Thra Shway Lah Yay got the dynamite and blasting caps but
was afraid to keep it at his house. So, he drove right past his own house, brought it to me and told me I had to keep it. He was a nervous wreck and literally had the shakes. I hadn’t been concerned about the dynamite up until this point but seeing how afraid he was made me afraid. I only had to keep it for a day or two, then I was to deliver it back to him and he was going to take it to the village where it could be used. I’m not sure if I was afraid of the police, afraid it would blow up in the house or both. But I was definitely nervous and afraid and didn’t sleep very well.

Small irrigated terraces. Not one of our
projects but an example of what we hoped to
develop.

Finally on a brutally hot day with the dynamite and caps not so safely tucked away in the overly hot cab of the pickup truck I drove to Thra Shway Lah Yay’s house wondering if it was hot enough to trigger the blasting caps and send me and the truck into the next life. I finally delivered the contraband returned home and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

During our second term, the project used dynamite once again but I personally had nothing to do with the purchase. The dynamite I was involved with did get used on the irrigation ditch, the ditch was completed and it was very helpful to the people of Oh Loh Tha. I was glad for that but I decided that buying dynamite had been a rookie mistake not to be repeated. It was a little too gray of an area for me and I definitely didn’t want to be involved in buying more.