It has been almost a month since a group of ethnic Karen villagers left their relocation site down the hill and headed back to Jai Paen Din village, the place they had called home for generations, deep in the Kaeng Krachan jungle.
The grown-ups are now preparing the abandoned farmland for next season's crops, amid concerns of a raid by state authorities.
"We've planned the return for quite a while, with several discussions among ourselves. We would starve if we [continue] living in the new village. There's no farmland [that had been promised prior to the eviction]," one of the Karen villagers told me.
The deciding factor was the pandemic, which brought on restrictions that forced the villagers' children out of the cities and back into the community.
It was on Jan 8 that the first group, which comprised about 10 families, began the journey back. Fifteen more families followed the next day. As there were several young children in the second group, it took them longer -- about two nights -- to reach Jai Paen Din, which is located near the Bang Kloy watershed area.
The returnees, about 70 in total, came from all walks of life, including infants and the elderly. One of them was a woman in the last stages of her pregnancy, who was determined to give birth in the forest.
They had some food supplies -- mostly rice, salt, dried chillies and some canned goods -- with them for the journey. Food, in fact, was not a problem. Families shared rice, they would pick up vegetables, especially pak goot along the way.
The forest dwellers have now reoccupied the old village they were forced to leave over a decade ago. There were attempts to erase the village from official registries, but traces of the settlement were more than visible -- although the betel nut and durian trees which they had planted years ago have been replaced with tall bamboo grass, after being abandoned for over 10 years.
On average, each family has about 2-3 rai of farmland. Some are detached plots, but quite a few are connected, shared and tended by 5-6 families. The villagers have built a new rice barn to replace the one that was torched by authorities in the brutal eviction of 2011. Now, the grown-ups would leave every morning to tend to their farm, preparing it for the rice harvest.
"We will honour the late Grandpa Ko-ee [the villagers' spiritual leader] with our first rice crop," said one villager. "We don't intend to expand our land beyond what we once had."
Their return to Jai Paen Din has caused quite a stir, with some seeing the move as a direct challenge to their authority. Park officials have denied the villagers their right to return to their home, despite the fact that the laws they quoted were promulgated decades after the villagers had settled in. In fact, military surveys showed the village had been there before the entire area was designated a conservation site in 1981.
In a bid to pressure the villagers, the authorities sent drones to track the forest dwellers. As a threat, they made it clear they have been monitoring the villagers' movements using wildlife's cameras. They have even tightened security checks to make it difficult for aid to reach Jai Paen Din.
Last week, civic groups and networks gathered at the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment for the #SaveBangKloi campaign. They submitted a petition urging the ministry to recognise the forest dwellers' right, and a panel was formed under a deputy permanent secretary of the ministry to look into the issue. But the fact that the panel is made up of state officials who have no sympathies to the indigenous people strongly suggests how they would go about resolving this long-standing conflict.
The groups plan to gather again at Government House on Feb 15 to make sure their petition is acknowledged. These people aren't demanding more than what they deserve: the right to live in their homeland.
Paskorn Jumlongrach is the founder of www.transbordernews.in.th.