Feet on the Mountain

By Richard S. Mann

In this expansive memoir looking back over his fifty-five years of living and working with the hill tribe people of northern Thailand, Richard Mann gives an in-depth account for one of the world's most successful attempts to curb narcotics. As a Christian missionary, and both a project manager and advisor with the United Nations, Mann helped find suitable crops and markets for those crops that could provide a livelihood in place of opium poppy. Feet on the Mountain details life for the hill tribes before modern roads, technology, and infrastructure brought change. Mann shares humorous experiences during his time in Thailand, including living in the "Pink House where the Ghost lives."

Feet on the Mountain is an entertaining and enlightening read, reminding readers that the first stop for tackling problems is growing hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886852301

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Feet on the Mountain

Richard S. Mann

Copyright © 2023 by Richard S. Mann

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

In memory of the one without whom this book could not have been written—Marlene, my beloved wife of sixty-two years; always faithful, with a very special love and devotion to family and to the Lord. Always there but never wanting to be in the forefront; truly humble, modest, and unassuming. I lost her on October 27, 2018, four days before her eighty-third birthday. And though I am comforted knowing she is now with in her heavenly home, as long as I remain on this earth, she will be with me through her beautiful creations and reminders left behind.

Foreword

I have been privileged to know Richard Mann since the 1970s, first professionally and then as a friend to this day. We connected because I was a foreign correspondent based in Thailand and Dick a key figure in the intense war against opium and heroin then gushing out of the so-called Golden Triangle and onto the streets of the Western world. It was a big story, and Dick knew it all too well—not from reports and seminars but by slogging through the hills and opium fields of northern Thailand to grapple with the problem at its literal roots.

It didn’t begin that way. Dick and his family were sent to Thailand in 1959 by the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society to work with the Karen ethnic minority in agricultural development. The knowledge he gained and his academic background led to a key position with the then fledgling project by the United Nations and the Thai government to eradicate opium in a humane manner.

I was able to accompany Dick on his mission into the mountains where we would sit down with tribal people to hear of their troubles and joys and to find a path that would wean them away from opium—their vital source of livelihood—without plunging them even deeper into poverty.

Besides witnessing his total dedication, I grew to admire Dick’s great understanding, empathy, and humanity.

Whether it’s religion or development, you’ve got to meet people on the same plane halfway, he said during one of our journeys together. They have to work out their own decisions. It’s their culture, their work, their land.

Richard Mann remains one of my true heroes, but I was hardly the only one to sing his praises. Here is what a veteran United Nations narcotics official, Jorgen Gammelgaard, said: Dick’s passionate commitment doesn’t change no matter what outfit he works for because he is basically for nobody but the hill tribes. Our program is quite unthinkable with him.

Always a humble man, he rarely talked about the honors that came his way, including one from the former king of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej, with whom he enjoyed a rare personal contact and cooperation.

Feet on the Mountain offers information as well as personal insights into one of the world’s most successful drives against narcotics: Thailand’s crop-substitution program. The lessons learned are still valid today because other countries like Afghanistan have tried to emulate the effort. Those currently involved should take careful note of what Dick has to say.

But the book is also a portrait of a virtually vanished era and a long gallery of characters who came Dick’s way: world leaders, obnoxious US congressmen, Cold War operatives, assorted celebrities, fellow missionaries, and the tribal people he so loved and served. Had he not set down the scenes and people from the northern hills when these were still innocent of modern development, they would have remained unrecorded and lost forever as memories faded.

Interspersed in this memoir are stories of the exotic and adventurous life of the Manns, one of the many Christian missionary families who, since the 1860s, have contributed immensely to the welfare of the northern Thai people and continue to do so. Richard Mann ranks high among their number.

Denis D. Gray

Former chief of bureau, Associated Press

Chapter 1

Preparation for the Mission Field

The Way It Started

Most of my uncles and cousins on my dad’s side were farmers with family farms in northeast Missouri. Though as a boy I had been brought up close to downtown Los Angeles in the city of South Gate, I had been regularly exposed to farm life. During many summers, our family made road trips to Missouri to visit our country cousins. Their way of life on the farm and the work that went with it really appealed to me, so upon graduating from high school, I asked my folks if I could take a year off from any further schooling. I would like to go back to Missouri and work on Uncle Mansel and Aunt Katherine’s farm for a year. My dad particularly thought this was a great idea, and so in 1949, after Uncle Mansel and Aunt Katherine welcomed the idea, I spent the year living and working in a backwoods culture a world away from Southern California.

On the Farm

There was no indoor plumbing. A hand pump was the means by which water reached the kitchen sink. Hot water from a large teakettle heated on a woodstove was used for washing dishes, as well as for taking a bath in a large galvanized laundry tub. Besides the wood-burning kitchen stove, there was no other source of heat in the house except for a potbellied stove in the middle of the living room.

During the winter months, a steer and a couple of pigs were butchered, and after the carcasses had been skinned and quartered, the meat was hung in a screened porch where the temperature remained below freezing until spring. Beside fresh cuts from the pig, bacon and ham was prepared and cured in a smokehouse. Aunt Katherine also prepared sausage in an earthen crock, using salt, pepper, and selected spices, along with rendered lard, which apparently acted as a preservative and a flavor enhancer. The sausage was then further preserved using paraffin to seal Mason canning jars.

California State Polytechnic College-San Dimas

Upon returning to South Gate, life on the farm with the rustic lifestyle, the growing of crops, and raising of livestock had gotten to me to the extent that I enrolled at California State Polytechnic College (Cal Poly) Voorhis Unit. At the time, the campus was located on the outskirts of the town of San Dimas. Majors offered were crop production, agriculture services and inspection, ornamental horticulture, and landscape design. I decided to study crop production (Crops). The enrollment then was right at four hundred male students.

In 1951, at the beginning of my third year at Cal Poly, the Korean War was well underway, and the draft board had already reached several classmates. Leroy Lucas, a buddy and classmate since grammar school and now at Cal Poly, drove to the United States Coast Guard (USCG) Recruitment Station in Los Angeles and joined up.

US Coast Guard

After going through boot camp at the Coast Guard Base Alameda, California, I was assigned to the 11th USCG District, which covered the coast and waters off Southern California. However, I quickly found out that being assigned to the 11th Coast Guard District didn’t necessarily mean guarding the coast of Southern California; for upon arriving at the District headquarters in Long Beach, my orders were to report to the 255-foot Weather Patrol Cutter Pontchartrain. Then within a couple of weeks during the month of February, the ship was off on a three-month patrol to the Bering Sea, where we sat in extremely rough waters with ice covering the ship in subzero temperatures. Besides standing wheel, radar, and lookout watches, our daily activities consisted of knocking ice off the ship’s railings, gunnels, gun mounts, and bulkheads with baseball bats.

Upon returning to our homeport of Long Beach, I put in for pharmacist mate school located on the Coast Guard Academy grounds in Groton, Connecticut. After completing the six-month course, I was assigned to the USCG Cutter Perseus, a 165-foot search-and-rescue vessel moored in San Diego Harbor. Following six months aboard the Perseus on independent duty, taking care of the aches and pains and medical problems of the crew, and ministering to victims during search-and-rescue missions, I was transferred to the US Coast Guard Air Station, San Diego. There I took part in air search-and-rescue operations both by helicopters and seaplanes.

In between missions, I was assigned to assist the base dentist. He quickly trained me as a dental technician and apparently thought that someday I might make it in dentistry. He recommended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as the school to do predental studies. With that recommendation and his support, I was out of the Coast Guard three months earlier than when my three-year hitch was up. I was then able to register and begin classes at the start of the fall semester of 1954.

UCLA-Campus Crusade for Christ

Enrolling at the University of California at Los Angeles turned out to be the most important decision (with God’s guidance) I would ever make, for that was where I met Marlene.

It was in the library. I recognized her as one of the girls who had attended the college briefing conference at Forest Home, a Presbyterian conference and retreat center located in the Sierra Madre Mountains just north of Pasadena, California. The conference had been sponsored and directed by Campus Crusade for Christ. The month was December in the year 1954 when UCLA had the number one college football team in the nation. Campus Crusade had gotten its start on the campus of UCLA under Bill Bright and his wife, Vonette, two years earlier in 1952.

Marlene and More

So here I was in the UCLA library, about to meet the girl who, eight months later, would be my wife. I went over to the table where Marlene was supposedly studying for the finals that were coming up. I introduced myself and explained that I had seen her at Forest Home and wasn’t it really a small world. I guess she figured I was okay as it was at a Christian conference where she had caught my eye.

After the brief introduction, I said it was quite a coincidence that we were attending the same university and had a common interest in the ministry and outreach program of Campus Crusade for Christ being carried out at UCLA. I then asked her if she would care to take a break and head for the Student Union for a cup of coffee. She said she didn’t drink coffee, so I said, How about some orange juice? After getting further acquainted over the orange juice, Marlene gave me her phone number.

A day or two later, another rather remarkable meeting took place. I was in a large classroom with about two hundred other students who were taking a course in physiological psychology. While listening to the professor not answering a question he had no answer for, saying, That’s Just the Way Things Are, I spotted Marlene sitting a couple of rows below me. That day, while we walked out of class together, I thought that what was going on was more than coincidence—that possibly God was bringing us together. Today as we reflect on our sixty years as man and wife, the assurance that God has been leading and guiding us has always been there.

Following a number of Campus Crusade functions and meetings we attended together, and after taking her on several dates, which included a day’s ocean fishing, we decided to continue the courting, which lasted three months. Then during the Easter Sunrise Service at the Hollywood Bowl, we announced our engagement to our friends who were attending the service and watching the sun come up with us. Four and a half months later on August 27, 1955, we were married.

Back to Cal Poly San Dimas-Voorhis Unit

After discussing and prayerfully considering our future, we agreed that God was leading us away from UCLA and from a possible career in the confined spaces of dentistry and back to Cal Poly to continue my studies in crop production. From there, we had no idea where God might lead us. For the honeymoon, we drove up the west coast of California, Oregon, and Washington to Banff National Park in British Columbia. Upon our return, I registered and once again was back studying at Cal Poly, San Dimas-Voorhis Unit.

In looking for an apartment to rent near the campus, we were fortunate in being guided to a citrus and cattle ranch located a couple of miles from San Dimas. The elderly owners, apparently taking an interest in us as newlyweds and me being a student at Cal Poly, were willing to rent the upstairs complete with a small kitchen and bathroom. After settling in, Marlene was able find work, first at the Bank of America in Pomona and then at a Coca-Cola office located in the same city. Fortunately, having served in the USCG, I qualified for the G.I. Bill, and as with UCLA, most of the Cal Poly school fees would be paid by the US government.

While settling in at Lauralette Ranch, something took place that helped us to believe that God was still with us. In searching for a church home, we were introduced to First Baptist Church, Pomona. Happi Moore, Marlene’s supervisor at the Bank of America, a longtime and very active member of the church, invited us to a Sunday service. After several Sundays worshipping at First Baptist Pomona, we knew we had found a church home. As we gradually became more involved in church activities, we prayerfully considered a further step of faith, and that was to be baptized and join the church. Marlene had been raised a Lutheran and I a Methodist, and though baptized as infants, we decided, after committing our lives to do the Lord’s work, to be baptized together.

California State Polytechnic University-Pomona

At the end of the 1955 fall quarter, the campus of Cal Poly, San Dimas-Voorhis Unit was moved. The faculty, staff, and students took everything that wasn’t nailed down to the new campus site, which was located about four miles south of the San Dimas campus on 1,400 acres of land donated by the Kellogg Food Foundation. My main contribution in the move was to help the librarian and other students assigned the task to take the books from the Cal Poly, San Dimas, library to the new campus and place them on the shelves of a temporary library located in the recently constructed science building. Once the move was completed and before the new academic quarter got underway, the official name for the school was announced—it would be California State Polytechnic University-Pomona.

In 1957, from a male student body of about five hundred, the first class graduated from Cal Poly Pomona. Fifty-seven of us walked across a platform set up in what was then the Rose Garden to receive our diplomas. Again, at that time, major subjects were offered in agriculture services and inspection, landscape design, ornamental, horticulture, and crop production. I graduated, receiving a BSc degree in crop production. Majors are now offered in almost all fields of study, from English literature to mechanical engineering. Today, the smallest of the faculties or colleges is agriculture science. And from that all-male student body of 508 in 1957, there is now some 27,000 enrolled, with female students having been admitted in 1961.

Called

During my final year at Cal Poly, one of the classes required a senior term paper. Because Marlene and I felt that God could be calling us to the mission field, and with the fact that I was preparing to possibly serve as an agriculture missionary in a foreign land, I chose the topic Opportunities for Agronomists in the Field of International Agriculture. Included in the paper were chapters on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN/FAO), and the Private Sector. Also included was a chapter on Agriculture Missions. In gathering information on agriculture missions, I had written to the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (ABFMS). Along with the information requested, the Baptists sent me an application form. Toward the end of the school year, prior to graduating, I filled out the form and enquired further as to possible requirements for being recruited as an agriculture missionary by the ABFMS. I was advised to continue my studies toward a graduate degree before Marlene and I could be considered as missionary candidates.

University of Missouri and Missouri School of Religion

Continuing to follow what we believed to be our calling to the mission field, I applied to and was accepted by the University of Missouri Graduate School of Agriculture located in Columbia, Missouri. I also enrolled at the Missouri School of Religion, a Christian institution under the Disciples of Christ denomination located on the university’s campus.

Bethel Baptist Church and Dr. Mark Rich

While attending the University of Missouri (Mizzou) and the Missouri School of Religion, I had a couple of courses under Dr. Mark Rich, a professor at the School of Religion. Dr. Rich was a well-known American Baptist pastor and educator whose special field was the church in rural society. He had authored several books on the subject. During our time in Columbia, Dr. Rich was pastoring a small country church several miles outside the city, Bethel Baptist Church. The membership was primarily made up of farm families. Dr. Rich asked if I would like to serve as the assistant pastor and youth leader. Marlene and I thought this could be a part of God’s calling, so under Dr. Rich, with his friendship, advice, and support, I received a real blessing in being mentored and encouraged by this truly exceptional and sincerely humble man of God.¹

Beginning Our Climb

Two years later, in 1959, after receiving a master of science (MSc) degree in agriculture extension education, we were accepted by the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society (ABFMS) and commissioned as overseas missionaries to serve in Thailand. And now, here we were, with our two small children, about to begin our climb with God by embarking on a life we never could have imagined or thought possible.

Lauralette Ranch from our upstair’s kitchen window

Cal Poly graduation—

I’m talking with Dr. Fredrick Pettem² while Marlene speaks to friend and her mother looks on

Reception following commissioning by ABFMS

---

¹ Dr. Rich and Bethel Baptist Church are more fully covered in chapter 19, Colleagues, Counterparts, Coworkers, and Others, under Others Who Stand Out.

² Dr. Fredrick Pettem is covered in chapter 19 under Others Who Stand Out.

Chapter 2

Manns to Thailand

Departure

It was on October 10, 1959, that I with Marlene; our son, Mike (age two); and baby daughter, Christine (just six months old), boarded the passenger liner President Wilson to set sail for Hong Kong, a voyage that would take twenty-one days.

Family and friends had come to see us off at the Los Angeles Harbor, a major seaport in Southern California. As mentioned, Marlene and I had made a lifetime commitment to serve Christ in a foreign land and had been commissioned as missionaries to Thailand by the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (ABFMS), headquartered in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. The ABFMS has since changed its name to International Ministries (IM), American Baptist Churches-USA.

Our first term would be for five years, and we were looking forward to working in Thailand with excitement and great anticipation. There were no regrets or second thoughts that we would be separated from our families for such a long time. There was no uncertainty in our minds after having made a prayerful decision to follow God’s calling to the mission field.

The Voyage

During the voyage across the Pacific Ocean, the luxury of the services and accommodations aboard ship were totally unexpected. Gourmet meals were served at every sitting, and round-the-clock childcare was provided. Supervised recreational activities for kids of all ages were planned and scheduled on a daily basis. A ship’s doctor was on call day and night. It was great! However, as we later found out, this lavish lifestyle experience would be in stark contrast to what a young, rather idealistic couple with two small children would soon experience carrying out a ministry with tribal people in the highlands of northern Thailand.

Thailand Arrival

We disembarked in Hong Kong, where the President Wilson ended its voyage. From Hong Kong we flew to Thailand, landing some two and a half hours later at the Don Muang International Airport, located a few miles from central Bangkok. The date of our arrival was October 30, 1959, one day before Marlene’s twenty-fifth birthday.

At the airport, Carl and Louise Capen met us. Carl was the Thai Baptist Missionary Fellowship (TBMF) Secretary, and the couple with their three children was stationed in Bangkok, where the mission office was located. Both Louise’s and Carl’s parents had served in China with the Baptist mission. At the time of our arrival, there were ten American Baptist families and three single ladies serving in Thailand. Three of the families and two of the single ladies were working in the Bangkok area with ethnic Swatow speaking Chinese. The remaining seven families were serving in the north.³ The third single lady missionary, Allison Osborn, was teaching at the Prince Royal College (PRC), a Christian school located in the northern city of Chiang Mai.

A Bit of Thailand Baptist History

We had been appointed to do agriculture mission work under the Thai Karen-Lahu Baptist Convention (TKLBC). The Karen hill tribe, from Tibeto-Burman beginnings, I learned later had begun migrating to Thailand from Burma over seven hundred years earlier. Today the Karen is the largest tribal group in Thailand, with a population of over four hundred thousand. The Lahu were more recent arrivals, with the first immigrants coming across the border from Burma less than a hundred years ago. Their population today is about thirty thousand. Both tribes have Baptist roots in Burma dating back sometime after the arrival in 1813, of Adoniram Judson, the first missionary to that country. In fact, Judson and his wife, Anne, were the first American missionaries to serve in a foreign land.

In 1883, three Karen Baptist evangelists left Burma to present the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Karen people living in Thailand. Through their preaching and teaching, many were converted, and the Christian work with Karen got underway. In 1887, the first Karen Baptist church was established in the village of Ban Nawk, located in a remote mountainous area in the northern province of Lampang.

The Thai Karen-Lahu Baptist Convention (TKLBC) was formed in 1956, and at the time of our arrival in 1959, four TKLBC area associations had been established. The four associations were made up of fifty-four churches with a total membership of 5,250. The Lahu and Karen Baptists have since separated, with each establishing their own convention (see chapter 19, under Missionary Colleagues). After the split, my work was primarily with the Karen.

The Thailand Karen Baptist Convention (TKBC) has since expanded to eight associations comprised of 143 churches with over 26,000 members.

Totally Unexpected

Marlene and I studied the Thai language for a year and a half at the Church of Christ Thailand (CCT) Union Language School located in Bangkok. Marlene’s Thai lessons were interrupted a bit when our third child, Caroline, was born at the Bangkok Seventh-Day Adventist Hospital. The following day after the delivery, a totally unexpected happening took place.

While walking down the hallway to visit Marlene and check on the new arrival, I happened to look into a room where the door had been left open. A farang (white man) was lying in bed, facing the door. He looked very familiar. I kept walking toward Marlene’s room, but the face of that patient kept coming back to me. I was sure I had seen him somewhere.

After visiting with Marlene for a while, I decided to go talk to the fellow I thought I had recognized from somewhere in the past. So I went back down to his room and, knocking on the open door, went in. Walking over to his bed, we just stared at each other.

What’s your name? I asked.

Larry Ulsacker. What’s yours?

Dick Mann, I answered.

Right then, the connection became clear. Larry and I had been in the same soils class at the University of Missouri (MU) some two years earlier. Now here we were, both in Bangkok, Thailand, and, of all places, meeting in a hospital. Larry, as he told his story, had completed undergraduate work at MU and applied to and was accepted by International Voluntary Services (IVS), a private nonprofit organization that sent volunteers to developing countries to render aid in the areas of agriculture, health, and community development. The Mennonites together with the Brethren and Quakers established IVS in 1953. Through the years, the role, scope, and work of IVS was modified with implementation and organizational changes as other international aid agencies came on the scene. Finally, due to these changes and financial difficulties, IVS was dissolved in 2002. IVS was considered the precursor to the US Peace Corps.

After Larry was recruited by IVS, he was sent to Vietnam, where he was assigned to a rural development project. As Larry explained it, a couple of weeks prior to his hospitalization, he was with an IVS team and Vietnamese workers building a log bridge across a stream. Larry was operating a tractor winch, dragging a log onto the partially constructed bridge. The cable snapped or came loose and became tightly wrapped around one of his legs, all but severing it. At the time, Larry was alone on the bridge. By himself, he managed to untangle the cable from his leg and drive the tractor back to the village where the IVS team was staying. When team members saw the extent of the injury, a radio call immediately went out for a US Army helicopter.

While waiting for the chopper, a tourniquet was applied to stop the bleeding. The helicopter soon arrived with a medic, and Larry was flown directly to a US Army medical facility in Saigon, where emergency surgery was performed. The leg had to be amputated. Within a day or two, Larry was medevac’d to Bangkok, where he was admitted to the Seventh-Day Adventist Hospital.

For a period of time after Larry was discharged from the Bangkok hospital, we kept in contact. He returned to his home in Minnesota and was fitted with a prosthetic leg. Hearing God’s calling, he went to seminary, and after graduating, he committed his life to serve the Lord as a missionary in South America. Since then, we have lost contact with each other.

Move to Chiang Mal

After Marlene and I completed the Thai language course at the Union Language School, our family moved to Chiang Mai in October 1961. Chiang Mai, known as the Rose of the North, is the fourth largest city in Thailand, and the greater metropolitan area has a population of over one million people today. In 1961, when we moved there, the inhabitants of Chiang Mai and outlying communities numbered about eight hundred thousand. The city is located 750 kilometers (450 miles) north of Bangkok, the capital and largest city in the country. In 1962, Bangkok’s population was approximately six million people. Today, that number has increased to more than ten million.

At the time of our move, my folks were visiting. With my dad eager to go along, it was decided that he and I would drive north in a four-wheel drive (4WD) Land Rover assigned to our family. We loaded the vehicle with boxes of household goods and suitcases full of personal belongings and took off. Back then, the road trip took two days on a partially asphalted road with long graveled stretches. We ended up making the trip in two and a half days; we were delayed a half day trying to get through one dirt stretch that had turned to mud. It was toward the end of the rainy season. Today the road between Bangkok and Chiang Mai is mostly a four-lane superhighway, and it now takes about eight hours to drive the distance between the two cities.

The rest of the family, including my mother, flew Thai Domestic Airways on the only type of aircraft in service at the time, a twin-engine propeller-driven Douglas DC-3. After about a two-hour flight, they landed at the Chiang Mai airport on what was then a graveled runway.⁴ My dad and I, having arrived in Chiang Mai the day before, were there to meet the family and my mom. Prior to our arrival in Chiang Mai, Dr. John and Meg Bisset, medical missionary colleagues from New Zealand,⁵ had located a house to rent. It was a large two-story pink (Marlene’s color) French-style concrete-and-brick house with three bedrooms and one bathroom. We lived there for the next thirty-one years, during which time the family grew to seven, with Matthew and Catherine being born in 1963 and 1966 at McCormick Hospital, a Christian hospital established by the Presbyterian Mission in 1889.

A Karen Welcome

My dad and I had driven to Chiang Mai the day before the rest of the family and my mom were to arrive by plane. We spent the night with Andy and Cora Yousko, a missionary couple also with the Baptist Mission working with the Thai Karen-Lahu Baptist Convention (TKLBC). They had arrived in Thailand in 1954.

After picking up Marlene, the three kids, and my mom at the airport, we drove to our new home. Arriving, we were surprised by a group of Karen Christians waiting on the front porch. Two Karen Christian leaders, as we quickly found out, led the group. The first was Kru (Teacher) Sant.⁶ The second leader was Padee (Uncle) Ka Paw Mu.⁷ Following handshakes all around, a custom in greeting and saying goodbye adopted by Christian Karen from the early missionaries serving in Burma, we went inside the house and sat on the living room floor. After brief welcoming speeches (in English) by Kru Sant and Padee Ka Paw Mu, we were presented with gifts. Then following a short worship service, tea and Thai cookies were served. The group then departed, but not before Padee informed us that a special service followed by a Karen meal was to be held in our honor at the Karen church located just outside of town at the foot of Doi (Mountain) Suthep. Adjoining land to the church property was later purchased, and the Center for the Uplift of Hill Tribes (CUHT) was established.⁸

After the service, we were introduced to what later the missionaries labeled Padee Ka Paw Mu’s Curry, a curry made with lots of fat pork, potatoes, and secret ingredients.

The Pink House Where the Ghost Lives

A few days after we moved in, a Thai neighbor told me that the house was haunted and that Thai folks would never go inside the place at night, let alone sleep there. The house was known as The Pink House Where the Ghost Lives.

The ghost story started at the end of the Second World War. A Japanese army officer had lived there while in charge of an army facility located across the street. The occupation forces had taken over what had been the campus of Prince Royal College (PRC). In 1903, Presbyterian missionaries had established PRC as an all-girl primary-secondary institution. The school offered classes from kindergarten through twelfth grade. In the midseventies, PRC opened its doors to boy students.

Back in 1941, soon after the Japanese military had invaded and occupied Thailand, the grounds and buildings had been turned into an army holding and training facility. While serving as commander of the camp, the officer moved into what was then just a pink house. At the end of the war, instead of returning home in disgrace, the soldier decided not to return at all. As the story goes, soon after the surrender, he took his own life by committing hari-kari, thrusting a sword into his stomach on the back porch. From that time on, his ghost occupied the house. However, we found the ghost to be quite friendly and protective. During the first twelve years, our home remained burglar-free.

First Encounter

The ghost apparently gave up on protecting the pink house. One night, during the thirteenth year, I heard a noise downstairs. It could have been our ghost, but as I crept down the stairs, I was able to make out a human form in the dark. I yelled, and the intruder bolted for the window, climbed through, and was gone in the darkness.

The following morning, Marlene remembered that she had hung her Karen bag on a hook on the side of a desk in the dining room. Inside the bag was an eyeglasses case in which she had stuffed a couple of thousand baht (50 USD). She went downstairs and checked the eyeglass case, and sure enough the baht was gone. She claimed the teller at the bank where she had exchanged US dollars for Thai baht the day before was the only one who saw her put the Thai money into the Karen bag; therefore, he had to be the one who had broken into the house and stolen the money. How he knew where to find the eyeglasses case is beyond me, but Marlene insisted that he was the guy.

Unexpected Advice. I reported the break-in to the police, and the police chief came to investigate. His first question was How long have you been in the Pink House Where the Ghost Lives?

Three months, I answered.

He then gave me some advice on how to handle burglars in case I ever encountered another one.

First, buy yourself two pistols. Then if another break-in occurs, shoot the intruder, but make sure you kill him, the police chief instructed. If you find that he had no gun, shoot your second pistol into the ceiling and put it into his hand. That way, you can claim self-defense. If you have only one gun and the burglar is unarmed, drag the body to your car, put it in the trunk, and drive outside of town and dump the corpse in a ditch alongside the road.

This was his final advice.

I bought a handgun, but only one. It was never proven that the bank teller was the one who broke into our house that night.

Second Encounter

A couple of years later, once again I heard a noise downstairs. I opened the drawer in the stand next to the bed, reached in, and got my pistol and a flashlight. I quietly opened the bedroom door and began descending the stairs. I heard a noise in the dining room and switched on the flashlight, and sure enough, I spotted a figure climbing out a window. Since the first intruder had gotten into the house, we had kamoy (robber) bars installed on every downstairs window. Even so, the robber had apparently been able to bend the iron bars enough to get his body through. Now he was squeezing his way out of the window and was gone in a flash. I decided to continue my pursuit, so with gun in hand, I went to the front door, unbolted the lock, and slipped outside.

As my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I was able to make out a figure creeping alongside the front-yard fence. I decided to give him a scare, so I raised the pistol and fired a couple of shots in the air. The figure bolted a few feet and then disappeared. I figured the shots had done their job and scared him good. I didn’t have to worry about that kamoy coming back. Just then, a couple of shots rang out from beyond the fence. He also had a gun.

I sprang to the open door and was in the house like a flash, slamming the door shut behind me. That was the last of the intruders to enter the Pink House Where the Ghost Lives, at least while we lived there. No doubt the ghost had something to do with that.

Haunted or Not?

The kids through the years claim to have been visited by the ghost, with doors creeping open, sometimes in the wrong direction. Also at times, strange noises of unexplained origins were heard. One night, our son Matthew had Cameron, a friend, stay over while Marlene and I were away. They decided to put the ghost to the test.

If you’re really here, turn off all the lights at 9:00 p.m., Matt yelled out.

Matt and his friend claim to this day that at exactly at 9:00 p.m., the lights did go out. They ran from the house as fast as they could to the neighbor’s, where the boys spent the night.

Another late night, Matt claims, he and another friend were practicing on a guitar when the strings started vibrating and making noises on their own.

The most beneficial result of living with a friendly ghost had to be its influence on our landlady. Through the years, whenever the sweet grandmother suggested the rent might be raised, I would quickly point out our friend the ghost wouldn’t be happy about that; besides, who else would rent a ghost house? Our very accommodating landlady, therefore, kept the monthly rent at baht 2,000 (between 50 and 100 USD, depending on the exchange rate at the time) for almost thirty years. Her daughter eventually raised the rent after the mother’s death. The daughter wouldn’t accept my reason for keeping the rent as it was.

Had that Japanese army officer’s ghost really occupied the pink house? I can’t say, but during the years we were there, many unexplained happenings did take place within its walls. Then in 1992, after thirty-one years occupying the Pink House Where the Ghost Lives, we moved to the mission hill station located in the Karen tribal area of Baw Gaow.⁹

Off to Thailand aboard SS President WilsoN with little Mike and baby Christine

Family send off aboard SS President Wilson

With Dad on way to Chiangmai

Chiang Mai in 1961

1963 Some of our family waiting to board at Chiang Mai Airport

Pink House Where The Ghost Lives

With Thra K’pru too, Padee Ka Paw Mu at CUHT church

Padee Ka Paw Mu holding baby Cathy

1961—Mission Conference—Marlene with baby Christine far right

Family in 1970

Karen procession to village church

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³ See chapter 19, Colleagues, Counterparts, Coworkers, and Others, under Missionary Colleagues.

⁴ The history and development of the airport will be covered in chapter 5, The Chuck Boddy Story, and chapter 9, About Air America.

⁵ See chapter 10, Boy Scout Fifty-Mile Backpacking Adventures, under Taking an Elephant Along.

⁶ See chapter 5, The Chuck Boddy Story; chapter 9, About Air America; and chapter 19, Colleagues, Counterparts, Coworkers, and Others.

⁷ See chapter 5, The Chuck Boddy Story, and chapter 19, Colleagues, Counterparts, Coworkers, and Others.

⁸ See chapter 4, Approach to Agriculture Missions.

⁹ See chapter 10, Boy Scout Fifty-Mile Backpacking Adventures, and chapter 21, Back with the Baptists.

Chapter 3

Gobal Swami

The Unexpected

During the hot season (April–May) of 1962, after having lived in Chiang Mai just five months, I became involved in a totally unexpected and unimaginable situation, one that came about from political upheaval in a neighboring country.

Marlene and I were in the dining room of the Pink House Where the Ghost Lives, studying the Karen language with our tutor Thra (Teacher) Bernie Poe. The ceiling fan was on high. We were in the middle of a lesson from our language manual, Say It in Karen, on family relationships. How many children do you have? What’s the name of the oldest? the youngest? etc. I was just about to try and answer these kinds of questions when the sound of a noisy vehicle was heard coming up the driveway.

I went to the front door and saw a dilapidated World War II Jeep stopping in the gravel parking area in front of the house. Within seconds, a man jumped out of the passenger’s seat next to the driver. Hardly pausing, the Jeep backed up, turned around, and took off back down the driveway. The man came up the front steps and peered through the screened front door. I opened the door and, speaking Thai, asked a rather smartly dressed young Asian, whom I assumed was Thai, what he wanted. He looked a bit perplexed, apparently not understanding my Thai.

Are you Mr. Mann? he asked in perfect English with a distinct British accent.

I am, I replied. Who was that in the Jeep?

A couple of friends, he answered. Later, I found out they were Karen Freedom Fighters. Can I come in and talk?

What about?

I have some rather important information you might be interested in, he said.

What kind of information? I asked.

I can’t talk out here. Please let me in.

About this time, I noticed the young man had a large brown manila envelope under his arm. I told him to come on in. Marlene and Thra Bernie Poe were still sitting at the dining room table. The stranger asked if we could be alone. I suggested to Thra that we continue our lesson the next day.

No problem, he said

We shook hands, and he left. The Karen Christians had learned about hand shaking from the early missionaries who had brought the gospel to the Karen tribe in Burma (Myanmar) over two hundred years earlier.

The Story

Marlene then went upstairs to tend to baby Caroline, our third child, born some seven months earlier at the Seventh-Day Adventist Hospital in Bangkok. The young man then began to unfold his story in a very calm and controlled manner.

Mr. Mann, he began. I am Gobal Swami. That is not my real name. It is best that you do not know my real name. Several months ago, I was involved in a coup to overthrow the military dictatorship of General Nae Win, Prime Minister of Burma. At that time, I was the chief of the Prime Minister’s security guards. The plot was discovered, and many who were accused of involvement were arrested. I managed to escape and disappeared into the eastern Karen hills close to the Thai border.

Kawthoolei

I knew the area he was talking about; it was controlled by the Karen Freedom Fighters of the Kawthoolei (Karen Free Country). The Kawthoolei had been fighting the Burmese army since 1949, after the British relinquished Burma as a colony. At that time, a tripartite agreement had been signed between the Burmese government, the United Kingdom, and the Kawthoolei that the Karen would be granted status as an autonomous state. Once the British were out of the country, however, the Burmese reneged on the agreement. The Karen took up arms and have been fighting for independence ever since. The Kawthoolei leaders to this day are bitter and feel very strongly that the British government had sold them out. One of the main reasons for this bitterness is the fact that during World War II, the Karen fought the Japanese army valiantly as guerilla fighters and had rescued many downed Allied airmen in the jungles and mountain forests of Burma. By the time Gobal Swami had made his escape, the Burmese army had pretty well pushed the Kawthoolei fighting force to the eastern hills along the Thai border.

The Large Brown Manila Envelope

Now the leader of an attempted coup against the Burmese government was sitting in our dining room. Gobal Swami continued.

The Kawthoolei Karen Freedom Fighters were kind and took me in. They believed my story, which I am now sharing with you. In this—holding up the large brown manila envelope—are highly classified documents and secret information dealing with Nae Win’s government.

Gobal Swami went on with his story.

I came to you because your name was given to me by the Karen Christians in Mae Sariang as someone who could be trusted and who would put me in touch with the right people—a government agency that would know how to best use the materials I have. Also, I would like to seek political asylum in a Western country.

During further conversation, I found out that Gobal Swami had been posted to Nae Win’s elite security guard unit two years earlier after having proved his loyalty during an internal uprising. Gobal then told me that he was the son of mixed parentage. His father was English and his mother Burmese. He had been brought up a Catholic. His early education took place in Catholic primary and secondary schools in Rangoon. After graduating from high school, Gobal went on to attend and graduate from the primary military academy in the United Kingdom, Sandhurst. After graduating, he was commissioned in the Burmese army and served as a captain until the incident that led to him becoming the chief of General Nae Win’s security guard.

After serving just two years, he became disillusioned, conspired with other disgruntled comrades, and attempted the coup. It failed—but he was able to make his escape. Now Gobal wanted help in meeting and handing over to the right people the materials contained in the large brown manila envelope.

Meeting the Right People

My first thought for the right people was the US consulate in Chiang Mai. The consul at the time was Harlan Lee, whom I had met the previous month at an official function held on the front lawn of the consulate. After a snack of Marlene’s homemade cookies and a cup of Thai coffee, I suggested to Gobal we visit the consulate; possibly the consul would put him in contact with the CIA. Staff members of the CIA were housed in a building on the same compound as the consulate.

We finished the plate of cookies, got up from the table, and went out the front door to where a Baptist mission four-wheel drive (4WD) Land Rover was parked. We climbed in, drove out the driveway, and headed for the US consulate, which was just across the Ping River less than a mile away. Arriving, we drove right through the unguarded front gate to the main building and parked in the lot next to it. Back in those days, the US consulate was pretty much unprotected with no visible security measures taken. In the late 1960s, security began tightening up to the point that, today, the place is like a fortress, with guards and barriers surrounding the whole compound. If a permit can be obtained to park inside, the vehicles as well as its occupants are electronically screened before going through a large, imposing steel gate.

The Wrong People

After parking the Land Rover, I asked Gobal to wait in the car. I would first talk to Harlan about his situation. I got out and went up the steps to the front door. Inside, I asked the receptionist, who was sitting at a desk just to the right of the doorway, to see the consul. I had called earlier to make sure he was in and would have time to meet with me. The receptionist apparently knew I was coming. She buzzed Consul Lee and informed him of my arrival. Within seconds, Harlan came walking down the hallway. After being greeted with a handshake, he turned, and I followed him back down to the end of the hallway where a large teak door marked the entrance to his office.

We went in, and I was invited to sit in one of four large leather-covered easy chairs. The chairs had been placed around a glass-topped bamboo coffee table. A Thai staff member then came into the room and served coffee. Through the years, I found this always to be a courtesy custom when meeting with Thai officials in their offices. Harlan was following the practice.

I got right to the point and explained the purpose of my visit. I told him how Gobal found his way to my doorstep and how after an initial awkward introduction, I was taken by complete surprise and overwhelmed by his incredible story. After relating all that I had been told, I waited for some wise political advice as to what to do with Gobal. In my own thinking, I thought the CIA would be the way to go. While the American consul was apparently mulling over what to do, I was asking myself, How did I get here? Having recently arrived in Chiang Mai to serve as an agriculture missionary with the Karen/Lahu Baptist Convention. I certainly wasn’t expecting to get caught up in any political upheaval taking place in the neighboring country of Burma. But I was involved, and was now waiting for a helpful solution to the problem from the senior US diplomat in Chiang Mai. In the meantime, Gobal was sitting in the Land Rover, no doubt waiting patiently for good news concerning his future.

What happened next was totally unexpected. It didn’t take Consul Lee long to decide what course of action to take.

You say you have this man sitting in your car in our parking lot right now? the consul asked.

Yes, sir! I replied.

Get him off US government property as fast as possible, Consul Lee said in a distinctly agitated voice.

Is that it? No advice as to what to do with him? I asked.

I don’t care what you do with him. No way can the US government get involved with a person who led a coup to overthrow the US-recognized ruling government of the country of Burma, the consul blurted out.

With that, I was ushered out of the US consulate and guided over to my vehicle. I got in and looked over at Gobal. He had a look of hopeful anticipation on his face.

Well, that’s that! I exclaimed.

That’s what? he asked.

The US consul wants nothing to do with you. Sorry!

I drove out of the US consulate grounds, wondering where to turn to next.

The Right People

I figured the only recourse I had