In Search of the Snake Charmer

Journalist and author Jamie James was captivated by the real-life story of a world-renowned herpetologist who lost his life in the field. The Bali-based writer tells of retracing the man’s travels in Myanmar for his new book.

Like mystics and soldiers of fortune, field biologists are prone to a passionate love of desolate places. It’s partly scientific: the study of wildlife requires wilderness. Yet sometimes there’s an irrational, almost addictive edge to the attachments that scientists form with exotic, far-flung places.

It was like that for Joe Slowinski, a curator of herpetology at the California Academy of Sciences, and Myanmar (also known as Burma), a place flung just about as far from his home in San Francisco as it’s possible to go. In 22 trips beginning in 1997, Slowinski led expeditions throughout the country. To scientists, he is probably best known for his identification of the Burmese spitting cobra, Naja mandalayensis – the first new species of cobra to be described since 1922.

Late in the summer of 2001, Slowinski led the first large-scale scientific expedition in Myanmar’s extreme north, in the foothills of the Himalayas near the frontier with China. On September 12, while the world was reeling from the attacks on America, Slowinski died from the bite of a many-banded krait, the deadliest serpent in Asia. It was a tragic loss to science and an exemplary tale of grace under pressure: Slowinski’s colleagues kept him alive for 30 hours by mouth-to-mouth respiration, waiting for a helicopter rescue that came too late.

In January 2005, I began researching a biography of Joe Slowinski with a journey of my own, tracing the route of his expedition from Putao, a small provincial capital in northern Kachin State, to the village of Rat Baw, about 30 miles from the Chinese border, where he died. It was my fourth visit to Myanmar in 12 years, but the first time I had ventured beyond areas ordinarily open to tourists.

I began in Rangoon, also known as Yangon, the nation’s first city and former capital. From the moment the plane landed at the decrepit airport terminal, the ravages of decades of dictatorial military rule were evident everywhere. As we drove into the city, we passed long scarlet signs proclaiming in English and Burmese: “Oppose those relying on external elements acting as stooges holding negative views. Oppose foreign nationals interfering in the internal affairs of the State.”

My first call was at the Forestry Ministry. Its primary mission would seem to be to look the other way while foreign loggers clear-cut Burma’s ancient hardwood forests, yet the Nature and Wildlife Conservation Division, which sponsored Joe Slowinski’s field expeditions, makes a valiant effort to protect what remains of the nation’s natural heritage.

I met the director, U Khin Maung Zaw, a courtly, soft-spoken zoologist, in a dim office lined with glass-fronted cabinets full of scholarly books and old maps. He and Joe Slowinski were friends; in 1998, Slowinski named a new species of wolf snake after him, Lycodon zawi. Zaw was still sorrowful about Slowinski’s death. He was glad I was writing a book about his old friend and offered to help.

My main adversary would be time, as I was only granted a 10-day pass to Putao. The area I wanted to visit was a site of active resistance by the Kachin Independence Army and other guerilla groups until the mid-1990s, and the presence of foreigners there is restricted.

My flight north was slightly terrifying, aboard an ancient Fokker propjet that looked ready for the scrap heap. Yellowed newspaper was taped to the pilot’s window as a sunscreen. When we skittered to a landing in Putao, I found myself in the midst of a broad plain encircled by distant blue mountains, the southeastern edge of the Himalayas. Away in the north lay Hkakabo Razi, at 19,294 feet (5,881 meters) the highest peak in Southeast Asia, which had been Joe Slowinski’s destination.

With the aid of my government guide, I immediately set about organizing an expedition to Rat Baw. This rugged area is home to hill tribes that migrated here from China more than four hundred years ago. Known collectively to outsiders as the Kachin, they call themselves by the names of their tribal groups, principally the Jingpaw, Rawang and Lisu. To my dismay, I found only one person willing to take me to Rat Baw. At the only decent restaurant in this town of 10,000, I met Yosep Kokae, an experienced guide who had served on Slowinski’s expedition. He said he would help me, but he couldn’t find porters on such short notice.

Then the restaurant’s owner, a tall, dignified Kachin woman, told me her son and his friends might be willing to take me to Rat Baw on their motorcycles. Her son, Khun Kyaw, a strapping, self-confident 22-year-old with shoulder-length hair, recruited two of his buddies, making a party of six with me, my guide and Yosep Kokae.

Just as we were about to depart, the local constabulary decided that we should have another official minder on the expedition, so we were assigned a timid 20-year-old policeman whom Khun Kyaw and the others treated with open contempt.

It was a cool, misty morning when we set off, laden with bottled water and freshly killed chickens. Khun Kyaw’s mother tied a yellow string around the handlebars of his motorcycle, a traditional charm to ensure a safe journey. A few miles out of town, we crossed a fine iron suspension bridge across the Molle River, a northern tributary of the Irrawaddy. Elephants were stacking freshly felled trees on the riverbank, awaiting a barge from Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State, to collect them. It was the last evidence of logging activity I would see on the trip.

A good macadam road led to Machanbaw, the last outpost of relative civilization; after that, the trail became narrow and overgrown, climbing steadily to an elevation of 2,000 feet. Although it lies north of the Tropic of Cancer, the forest here has a distinctly tropical character, with abundant fruit trees such as rambutan, mangosteen and banana, wrapped in thick ropes of lianas and other climbers.

We made our first camp at a village called Htanga. It was wretchedly poor. As in most of Myanmar, malaria was rampant, and the people were obviously not getting enough to eat; yet Htanga was a delightful place to visit, its inhabitant polite and amazingly hospitable.

They gave us the best accommodation in the village, a rickety bamboo house on stilts with a thatched roof, divided between an enclosed bedroom and a common living area, where an open fire burned. For dinner, Yosep Kokae cooked us a dish called bachelor’s chicken, a mild, savory curry served with tiny fried potatoes the size of garbanzo beans, with a delicious, nutty flavor.

Later, a few children sneaked up to see us. They were fascinated by my battery-powered lantern; one little boy blew on the light bulb as if it were a flame, trying to make it glow more brightly.

We awoke to a misty morning. After an hour on the road, the land took on a wilder aspect, so I told my posse to break for a few hours. I went ahead on foot and was soon surrounded by dense forest. I saw a hornbill swoop overhead, a reliable harbinger of wilderness; farther along I heard the screech of gibbons. Yet the most thriving wildlife population I observed were leeches. They were not as thick as they had been for Slowinski and his colleagues, who suffered terribly from the bloodsucking worms, but they were plentiful enough. The morning mist gave them a congenial environment in low-hanging foliage.

By midday the weather had cleared, and the landscape became astonishingly beautiful – high rock cliffs with frequent waterfalls plunging a hundred feet or more, and soaring trees and stands of many varieties of bamboo, ferns with fronds five to ten feet long and treelike rhododendron. Where a tree had fallen across the trail, I sat to wait for my escort. In a shady recess by a small creek, I found a black orchid, a rare flower but not as beautiful as its name.

We reached Rat Baw at dusk, just as a light rain began to fall. Home to 48 families, the village is tucked into a valley between two high ridges topped by swirling clouds. Rat Baw had a rustic, Tolkienesque charm: bamboo fences crisscrossed the gentle hillside, ruling off neat vegetable patches; the low roofs of the houses, thatched with fan-palm leaves, blended imperceptibly with the surrounding secondary forest.

A dirt path curved back toward the river, leading to the schoolhouse, a solid, handsome frame building painted chocolate brown, with a newish tin roof. It was here Joe Slowinski died.

We pitched our tents in the main classroom. After dinner the schoolmaster, Joseph Tawng Wa, invited me to his house behind the school, just as he had Slowinski in 2001. Wild spearmint grew all around, covering the mild funk of cow dung. Wa was a grave, placid man with two gold incisors, who wore a Norwegian ski sweater against the damp cold. He had lost three of his five children to malaria. He opened a bottle of homemade rum and we talked about our lives.

Wa’s English was surprisingly good. He told me he loved America, and showed me a laminated portrait of Bill Clinton he carried in his wallet. As I was leaving, Wa told me, “You are very fortunate to find me here.” After six years as schoolmaster in Rat Baw he was leaving for good – just four days later.

My rush to get to Rat Baw and back before my permit expired was soon revealed to be pointless; when I returned to Putao, I learned that my flight to Rangoon had been postponed indefinitely. The government-owned airline had simply cancelled the route. So I was stranded there with a trio of British birdwatchers for ten days, staying in an unheated guesthouse next door to a karaoke club that catered to very drunk Chinese loggers.

A week later, an airlift was organized for us, serendipitously scheduled for the morning after Putao’s annual festival. This country fair consisted mainly of dart-throwing gambling games, booths selling beer and fried snacks, and karaoke. The main attraction was a performance by an inept rock band, Claptonian noodling laid over a thumping pop rhythm of bass and drums.

Yosep Kokae was there with his wife; Khun Kyaw and his pals were flirting with the girls, bragging about their recent exploit. Perhaps 500 people milled about watching the show. Outside Myanmar it might have been accounted a pretty poor festival, but after my trip to Rat Baw it seemed like a saturnalia.

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