Unit-1-The-Sea-Gypsies

1、Unit 1 The Sea Gypsiesl It was Christmas night in the United States a year ago that a giant wave of Tsunami hit South Aisa. It swept away at least 200,000 Indonesians, Sri Lankans, Thais and tourists from around the world on their Christmas vacations. But theres one group who live precisely where th

2、e tsunami hit hardest who suffered no casualties at all. They are the sea gypsies of the Andaman Sea, or as they call themselves, the Moken. Theyve lived for hundreds of years on the islands off the coast of Thailand and Burma. As reported last March, they are, of all the peoples of the world, among

3、 the least touched by modern civilization. And miraculously they survived the tsunami because they knew it was coming. It's their intimacy with the sea that saved them. Theyre born on the sea, live on the sea, die on the sea. They know its moods and motions better than any marine biologist. They

4、're nomads, constantly moving from island to island, living more than six months a year on their boats. At low tide, they collect sea cucumbers and catch eels. At high tide, they dive for shellfish. And they've been living this way for so many generations that they've become virtually am

5、phibious. Kids learn to swim before they can walk. Underwater, they can see twice as clearly as the rest of us, and by lowering their heart rate, can stay underwater twice as long. They are truly sea urchins. This old man decided he wanted to fish for breakfast. It was a pufferfish. If it's not

6、cut properly, it can kill you. The Moken cut it properly.l We found this Moken village on an island two hours by speedboat from the coast of Thailand. It had become something of an exotic tourist Mecca before the tsunami. A Bangkok movie star and amateur photographer named Aun was here on December 2

7、6, taking pictures of Moken village life, when someone noticed the sea receding into the distance.Correspondent: “How far?”Aun: “Like.you see the blue one?”Correspondent:“Yes.”Aun: “Can you see the blue water? You didnt see any water.”Correspondent: “No kidding. You could walk all the way out there?

8、”Aun: “Yeah.” Aun continued taking pictures. They showed the Moken on the beach crying.Correspondent: “Did you have any idea why they were crying?”Aun: “I feel like they know what bad will happen, but I dont know how much bad.” And Auns pictures showed the Moken fleeing towards higher ground long be

9、fore the first wave struck.Aun: “The first water, just come like., over here.”Correspondent: “The water got that high?”Aun: “Yeah.” And that was just the first wave. The worst was yet to come, as the Moken knew because of signs from the sea. It wasnt only the sea that was acting strangely. It was th

10、e animals, too. On the mainland, elephants started stampeding toward higher ground. Off Thailands coast, divers noticed dozens of dolphins swimming for deeper water, And on these islands, the cicadas, which are usually so loud, suddenly went silent.l And the silence was heard by Saleh Kalathalay, th

11、at skilled spear-fisherman who was on a different part of the island. He ran around warning everyone.Correspondent: “When you told people in the village, you said something was wrong, did they believe you?”Kalathalay: “The young people called me a liar. I said, weve told the story of the wave since

12、the old times, but none of the kids believed me. I grabbed my daughter by the hand and said, Child, get out of here, or youll die! She said, Youre a liar, father, youre drunk. I hadnt had a drop to drink.”Saleh brought the skeptics to the waters edge, where they, too, saw the signs. Eventually, ever

13、yone, the Moken and the tourists, climbed to higher ground and were saved. But the village itself? Theres nothing left.Correspondent: “Why do you think the tsunami happened?”Kalathalay: “The wave is created by the spirit of the sea. The Big Wave had not eaten anyone for a long time, and it wanted to

14、 taste them again.”Correspondent: “Do you think that they consider themselves very unlucky because their village was destroyed or lucky because they survived?”Hinshiranan: “I think they just take it as a matter of fact.”Dr Narumon Hinshiranan is an anthropologist, one of the very few who speaks the

15、Moken language.Correspondent: “Tell me what is it in you mind that permitted the Moken to know that the tsunami was coming?”Hinshiranan: “The water receded very fast and one wave, one small wave, came so they recognized that is not ordinary. And then they have this kind of legend that passed from ge

16、nerations to generations about seven waves.”Its a legend recited around campfires, bearing an astonishing resemblance to what actually happened on December 26. They call it the Laboonthe wave that eats people and its brought on by the angry spirits of the ancestors. Before it comes, the sea recedes.

17、 Then the waters flood the earth, destroy it, and make it clean again. l Correspondent: “So basically, this tsunami myth is that the world is reborn after it is covered with water.”Ivanoff: “Yes.”Correspondent: “So, were back to *the Biblical flood.”Ivanoff: “Yes.”l French anthropologist Jacques Iva

18、noff is the worlds foremost authority on the Moken and has been living with them on and off for more than 20 years. We joined him on a voyage of discovery, who was going to the Moken islands off the coast of Burma，* a military dictatorship closed to the outside world. Thered been no news of what had

19、 happened to these Moken since the tsunami.Correspondence: “We knew that the Moken survived the tsunami, the Moken in Thailand survived. We really dont know for sure what happened in Burma, dont we?” Ivanoff: “Nobody can know, because no information gets out of Burma. Everybody has to say nothing ha

20、ppened.* That means the tsunami stopped at the border thats it, finished, end of the story.”Ivanoffs boat, a converted cargo ship called “the Moken Queen” * could have sailed right off the pages of Joseph Conrad. The captain was called “Long Ear,” the crew all Burmese, the deck shrouded in nets to p

21、rotect us from malarial mosquitoes.* All sense of time of the 21st century seemed to evaporate into the tropical night air as we probed farther and farther into what often seemed to be the heart of darkness. Correspondent: * “Its really difficult to get more remote than this, isnt it?”Ivanoff: “*Not

22、 the best part of the story. You are outside of everywhere. You are nowhere, in fact.”And at dawn, two Moken boats came out of nowhere. They invited us down. The Moken on the two boats hadnt seen each other since the tsunami and started exchanging tales of survival. * While the Moken off Thailand ha

23、d been on dry ground, these Moken in Burmese waters had been in their boats, at sea. A Moken Man: “The water had such unbelievable strength. It was swirling like a whirlpool as if it was boiling and coming from the depths of the earth.”Like their Thai cousins, these Moken also knew what to do. Since

24、 they were at sea, they made for deeper water and were spared. Others, like some Brumese fishermen near them, were not.Correspondent: “When you can, I wanna ask him a question, which is, how come he knew something was wrong, and the Burmese fishermen did not? They werent Burmese businessmen; they we

25、re fishermen. They should know the sea, too. ”A Moken Man: “They were collecting squid; they were not looking at anything. they saw nothing, they looked at nothing. They dont know how to look. Suddenly, everything rose up. Their boats were thrown up in the air. The violence was unbelievable”l When w

26、e got to shore, we talked to a family of Moken living on their boat on the beach. But during the tsunami, theyd also been at sea. We started by introducing ourselves. Correspondent: “My name is Bob”Moken man: “Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob.” We came here to find out whether or not these people had survived tsu

27、nami. We wound up captivated by their culture. We had never seen anything like it.Correspondent: “How old is this gentleman?”Ivanoff: “He dont doesnt know.”Correspondent: “Why, I mean, every, everyone we asked how old they are, the answer is the same-they dont know? How do you explain that?”Ivanoff:

28、 “Time is not the same concept as we have. You cant say for instance, When. When, it doesnt exist in Moken language.Correspondent: “When doesnt exist, the word, the question When doesnt exist?”Ivanoff: “No, no.” And Ivanoff says “when” is not the only word missing from the Moken language.Ivanoff: “W

29、ant”Correspondent: “Want?”Ivanoff: “Yes, you use it very often. Take that out of your language and you see how often you use it. I want this, I want that.”Correspondent: “There is no word for want.”Ivanoff: “No , there is a word for take. You take something, you give or you take. You dont want.”l Th

30、e fact is, the Moken want very little. What they dont want is to accumulate anything. Baggage is not good for a nomadic people .It ties you down. They have no notion and no desire for wealth. Remember Saleh, the spear fisherman, that was breakfast. He will think about lunch later on.Correspondent: “

31、Ok, there is no word for “when”, there is no word for “want” Anything else that well be.?”Ivanoff: “No goodbye, No hello.”Correspondent: “No goodbye or hello?”Ivanoff: “Ahem, Thats quite difficult. You know, after.imagine after one year, you live with them, and then you go. You go. Thats it. Finished.” No greetings. While we were on a Thai Moken island, a flotilla from Burma dropped by. They didnt seem terribly excited by this. Visits from relatives, and theyre all relatives, happen all the time. And since there is no notion of time, it doesnt matter if the last visit was a week ago or five