Millennia ago, when modern society had not yet even glimpsed its existence, a group of tribes descended from China and settled in the lands of what would later become Burma and Thailand. The Moken began their journey towards the lands closest to the sea and formed habits of life with which they earned the name of sea gypsies.
The millennia passed, but they resisted the storms of history. Later, with the geopolitical division and war conflicts in the area, they were forced to escape modern stigmas. Aboard their hand-built wooden boats, the Moken have preserved their culture and ideology and fight to safeguard their ways of life against a system that has no place for ancestral traditions and does not respect their full connection to the sea.
In their boats and without papers, the Moken sail on their traditional rafts called kabangs throughout the Mergui Archipelago. They move from one island to another, sometimes they don’t even touch land for months, they don’t need it, their home is the sea. Fishing, scavenging on rocks and the seabed, they gradually learned to eat the right sea creatures so as not to become intoxicated. Thus, over the millennia, the Moken managed to live in harmony with the sea and without ties to the mainland, which is why they are known as sea gypsies.
Moken, the tribe that blends into the seascape
From the oldest and wisest, to the youngest apprentices, they immerse themselves in the waters of the blue giant in search of sustenance to live. They have learned to modify their culture, but also their body around the sea. As if they merged with the seascape, they are able to immerse themselves in it for long minutes. Both their lungs and their vision have transformed and adapted, the youngest ones even spend so much time underwater that they are able to focus their vision, just like a dolphin would.
There are groups of Moken who live for months on board their kabangs, hence the term sea gypsies. For long eight months and following their semi-nomadic lifestyle, their traditional boats serve as their temporary home. In them they cook, eat, live together and also spend long periods of time under the sea.
For various reasons they have not experienced modern alienation, which is that they have always categorically rejected material possessions and external technology. In rainy seasons they temporarily live in hand-built huts on the seashore, waiting for the moment to leave again and start from scratch. Their vision of the world is so different from modern man that they are not even pressed for time. They do not have papers and they do not care about age, many of them do not even know how long they have inhabited this world.
Sea gypsy wise men
But today, its existence, which does not recognize geopolitical borders due to the folly that this represents for its freedom, is in danger. The peaceful people who are only dedicated to inhabiting the seas and freely navigating the oceans as if they were part of the ecosystem, have been constantly persecuted by the Thai and Burmese governments. They have tried to settle them permanently in national parks, even though this would mean the disappearance of their idiosyncrasy and traditions.
The modern hegemony understands little about wisdom and connection with nature. A people that only seeks freedom in inhabiting its universe, which is the sea, seems to have no place in a system that looks after monetary wealth and forgets what is truly important, living in freedom. But the Moken, those wise sea gypsies, remain standing and seek to continue preserving their habits and the great connection they have with the sea.