BAD HABITS AMONG THE KARENS.
By Jennie Bixby Johnson
BY MRS. JENNIE BIXBY JOHNSON. Our Karen churches and schools are a strong army against intemperance; therefore we have not needed special organizations to combat that evil. But we find two other vices harder to overcome than intemperance, against which we must exert organized warfare. These habits, common to every man, woman, and child in Burma, are the smoking and chewing of tobacco, and the chewing of betel-nut. I have seen a little nursing baby turn from its natural nutriment to take the cigar from its mother’s mouth and put it into its own. Often have I knelt on the floor beside a very sick boy or girl, to give a dose of medicine, and waited for the patient to remove a quid of tobacco. Even worse is the chewing of betel-nut. Every man and woman carries about a small lacquered bamboo box, fitted up with green leaves from the piper-betel vine, several of the betel or areca nuts, a little tin box full of slacked lime, a piece of cutch, a little tobacco, and a few cloves. Many times a day the box is drawn out of the bag hung from the shoulder. Two of the leaves are taken and smeared with a good pinch of the lime; a tiny piece of cutch, a little tobacco, a couple of cloves, with half or more of a betel-nut, are all wrapped in the leaves, and then the morsel is put in the mouth to be enjoyed. Whenever they sit down to chat with a friend, whether in a house or by the wayside, the betel box is at once brought forth. The red juice stains the mouth and lips, the teeth become red, and in an old chewer are black. The odor is strong, and the expectoration profuse, staining everything it touches a deep red. A missionary party, staying for the night in a Karen village, left their ponies tied under the chapel. Some betel chewers, as usual, spent the evening spitting through the cracks of the bamboo floor. Intense disgust was pictured on the woman’s face when, in the morning, her white pony was led forth covered with blood-red stains. The immediate effect of betel chewing is stimulating, but its continued use is stupefying to the brain. Teachers who have given up the habit have told me that they could think more vigorously than when constantly under the influence of the betel-nut. Our town training school numbers from one hundred and fifty to one hundred and eighty pupils, preparing to be preachers and teachers among their people. Our rules are strict that no girl shall use tobacco while in our school, or be seen in any of our buildings chewing betel-nut. The boys are not to be seen with either tobacco or betel-nut outside of the boys’ dormitory. A Blue Ribbon Society has long been organized, whose pledge binds against liquor, tobacco, betel-nut, and profanity. In the past two or three years there has been a great advance in this movement. The young men and women have become very earnest, and about eighty of the pupils have become members. The great struggle is over betel chewing. They love it. Many fear to sign the pledge, because others who have kept it while in school, break it when they return to their villages, where the betel box is always before their faces. Our young men have organized several Blue Ribbon Societies among the children and youth in the mountain villages. Grown people rarely give up the habit, and our hope is to rescue the young. Some of the native Christians rebel in heart against our betel-nut crusade, because, in many instances, their sole income is derived from the culture and sale of betel-nut. Their beautiful gardens of betel-nut palms—they can not part with them. Many people here would say that they do not need to part with them, as the nuts are an important article of export, and are used in tanning leather. But the country is first supplied with nuts for chewing. Owners of these gardens are inveterate chewers. They can not resist temptation when the nuts are in their hands. Follow me down a steep hillside, and we shall find a long, narrow valley of softest green. A gentle mountain stream flows through, and its banks are lined with ferns and flowers. The whole valley is full of betel palms, their slender, cylindrical stems rising fifty or sixty feet upward, and at the top cluster long, waving green leaves and fragrant flowers, or the prized betel-nut. “Thus winds our path through many a bower
Of fragrant tree and giant flower,
While o’er the brake, so wild and fair,
The betel waves his crest in air.”
A lovelier spot would be hard to find. At one end we see a few bamboo houses, where the people stay while harvesting the nuts. The men become very expert in climbing these tall palms, with nothing but their hands and feet to aid them. After gathering the nuts from one tree, they cause the slender trunk to sway back and forth, nearer and nearer to the next tree, till, with a spring like a monkey, they light upon it. Wild, free, self-indulgent life! Why must they give it up? Why renounce this industry, which is the best way they know of earning money? Even in this Christian land business engagements and schemes sometimes rise between men and spiritual power, or the development of their highest nature.—The Examiner.