Women's choir performing at church.
A young Karen girl in a traditional white dress that women wear to indicate that they are unmarried.
We spent a total of five days in Huay Hee. On Sunday we went to church with our mother. Huay Hee is a completely Christian village and they have about five services on Sunday. The Karen in Huay Hee converted to Christianity from animism several decades ago, because their animist traditions required the entire village to move any time there was a tragic event. They Karen were tired of moving around all of the time, so they decided to adopt Christianity, so they could stay in place (I have a feeling that modern pressures and missionary work also helped form their decision to convert). In fact, Backenyaw was not a written language before they converted to Christianity, at which time missionaries helped the Karen develop a written language so the Bible could be translated.
Our host mother went to every service on Sunday, except for the men’s service of course. Ellen and I went twice, but declined to go the third and fourth time. As beautiful as the choir sounded, that was just too much church in one day for me.
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