BAHN BOON YEUN, Phrae Province, Thailand -- Small, wild-haired figures in ragged clothes move barefoot through the moonlit mango grove. Some carry archaic muskets as long as spears, others squat beside soot-stained shacks murmuring to each other in the darkness. Inside a big wooden house at the heart of this forgotten valley, Eugene Long is bathed in a brilliant pool of fluorescent light. His wife has just baked apple pie and he's getting ready to tuck in.
Long is an American missionary living in this isolated region of northern Thailand with a nomadic tribe known as Phi Tong Luang, or Ghosts of the Yellow Banana Leaves. If Long has his way the tribe will soon know their Epistles from their Apostles and say grace before each meal. "We want 'em to be Christian," says Long. "We want 'em to be Christian so bad we can taste it."
The Ghosts of the Yellow Banana Leaves are a tribe on the verge of extinction. They are so named because they build their shelters from green banana leaves, and when these turn yellow they move on. They call themselves Mlabri, meaning "forest man," and number some 220 members. The Mlabri are animists who believe tigers are the angry souls of the dead and that rainbows, which they call "monster's farts," can swallow people whole.