Christine Lavin - Moken Spoken Here lyrics

There's a tribe of nomadic people called Moken who live on the Surin islands in the Andaman Sea. Six months of the year they live simply on their handmade boats, the rest of the year they live on the beach. They learn to swim before they learn to walk and they are so good at diving and catching sea creatures that they can see underwater twice as well as the rest of us in the so-called "civilized world." They take care of turtle nests, and they speak their own Austronesian Moken language, a language unusual in that it has no words for 'want' or 'take' or 'goodbye' or 'hello' or even 'worry.' They don't know how old they are because they have no concept of time, have no word for 'when.' I want to go there. Very very badly I want to go . . . Way out on the Surin Islands in the middle of the Andaman Sea there lives a happy people with a small vocabulary . . . if you have no word for 'worry' there must be no worry there . . . imagine never having a birthday party? and guess what? you don't care . . . if you have no word for 'take' or 'want' you must have everything you need . . . if you have no yen for material gain guess what? no greed No hello no goodbye no 'how are ya?' no need to lie no telling time no asking when? never hearing 'are we there yet?' over and over again No road rage no cellphones with their annoying downloadable hippity hoppity ring tones no car alarms no baseball scores no second hand smoke no slamming doors No noisy neighbors you can hear through the walls no tailgaters or telemarketer calls no panhandlers no spam are you happy about going away? I know I am Did you know Eskimos have 28 different words for 'snow' well the Moken don't have a single word for 'eskimo' Let's pack our bags what's there is enough-for-us on an island without a single the-saur-us or greenhouse gases or toxic spills or internet access or sleeping pills How do we get there? how soon can we go? do they take Master Card? what do you mean no? no credit cards? no central air? no direct flights? well how does one get there? Oh . . . Take one plane to another plane to a train to a boat? from a boat to a dock? from a dock to a float? from a float to a beach? hike the beach to a hut? does this hut have a bathroom? oh . . . it sounds lovely, but . . . Way out on the Surin Islands as peaceful as can be there lies a perfect paradise a paradise I'll never see