The Tattooed Women of the Chin Villages

They say that the ethnic Chin women were so beautiful that to prevent them from being stolen by other raiding peoples they had their faces tattooed. The tattooing happened around the age of nine years old. Some sixty years ago, the government outlawed the practice, so all of the tattooed women are at least in their mid-sixties. Most we met were well in to their seventies and even eighties.

These kinds of excursions always run the risk of being some kind of human zoo or spectacle, but I had read that the Chin villages near Mrauk U were not very touristed and commercialized yet.

Thankfully this was true. We saw only two tourists in two of the villages.

David with our guide and boat driver

Our wooden boat drove about an hour and a half up river to three different villages where some of these tattooed Chin women lived.

The first village had six tattooed Chin women, the second maybe a dozen, and the last one only two.

At the first and last village, it was like we were neighbors dropping by for a house call. The first woman whose home we approached was drying vegetables in her yard. When we came calling, she put down her work and came to sit with us while her husband chopped some bamboo. As we talked, she chewed on betel nut, spitting out the red juice over her shoulder. She chatted amiably with us through our guide and genuinely seemed interested in sharing some of her story.

She lived with her husband who was the local traditional doctor. Sure enough, while we were there, we saw a little boy with a gruesome broken arm that looked discolored but splinted with some branches. She had married her husband at the age of eleven, which was early but she had wanted to escape her family. Her mother had died and her father's new wife did not treat her well. Her first daughter died after being tattooed (I imagine from some kind of blood infection) so her husband forbade the second to be tattooed. Her daughter had her own family and lived in elsewhere in the village. We sat sometimes in companionable silence before we said good-bye and moved on.

Tattooed Chin woman at first village weaving

At the second village, it definitely seemed like the women were waiting for us. They had their weavings hanging in front of their houses and called out us to buy something. They each seemed to have delegated their weaving work to younger family members who were all busy doing the actual weaving while the women sat out front.

Tattooed Chin woman at second village in front of her house

Our guide explained that some of the tattooed Chin women had moved here to be part of this village. The guide didn't particularly like the commercialized aspect of this one and openly said so. I could tell he liked to hang out and chat with the less demanding and friendlier women in the other two villages. Although there were more ladies here, we spent less time, and moved on to the last village.

At the last village, we interrupted the Chin woman weaving in her yard. She got up to say hello and then we sat in her front yard, drinking a fresh coconut. "How much?" I asked. "It's up to you," the guide said. Children played out front with her grandson and practically tortured a poor cat trying to nap. This woman was smiley and chatty.

"I'm getting ready to die!" she laughed through our translator. "No, no!" I protested. "You look very good." And truthfully, like all the tattooed women we met, other than teeth stained by betelnut, they did look great. Her big eyes were lively and expressive, her skin was smooth, and she moved gracefully. No doubt she had been a very beautiful young woman.

On the way down the river, I napped and thought about the women I had met. The three in the first village, the group at the second, and the lively woman at the third. These tattooed Chin women are getting old and when they die, this tradition will go with them. Like the Omo Valley in Ethiopia, I think about how time and "development" move through a culture. In the end, traditions, languages, and a way of being, some day all become history and legend.