“While thick fog still covered the Matamuri Valley, our group set out following the course of a small tributary. At first the paths were pleasant, leading through dry shrubbery and grassland, past harvested fields which ran up the sides of the slopes. Soon, however, the path led upwards into the mountains, becoming steep and difficult. The hot sun beat down from a cloudless sky. I began to perspire, my legs ached, and it was difficult to breathe; but the sight of the hilly landscape, which during the dry season turns a yellow- brown color, was wonderful. In the east, as one followed the course of the Matamuri, one saw the blue shimmering of still higher mountains; in the west, the coastal plain glistened, and the Bay of Bengal appeared like silver glitter on the far horizon. Finally, after hours of marching, the goal was in sight: Menyong-Para, a particularly picturesque Mru village.”
These were the impressions of the photographer and expeditioner C.-D. Brauns when he first arrived at the Mru village whose life and culture he wanted to get to know. This book intends to give an insight into the world of the Mru, an unknown and inaccessible world in the southeastern tip of Bangladesh. It shows pictures not to be seen anywhere else, and reports on a culture never documented in detail anywhere else. No one other than the two authors Claus-Dieter Brauns, photographer, and Lorenz G. Löffler, anthropologist, could have written and illustrated such a book.
Unique photos, selected from over 6000 slides, illustrate the book’s message; the habitat of the Mru, their work, their daily round, their food, their rites and their festivities. This book is a unique document which will remain for many years, if not forever, the only testimony of its kind, since the culture of the Mru is now menaced by annihilation.