The Akha village experience was a two day trip that seemed to take weeks. Starting out early on Tuesday around 6 am a crew including Tom, Bob, Kerstin(a german intern with Tiger Trail), Yoxa(a friend of ours plus the director of development(I think that’s her title) with Tiger Trail), Bounkham(a guide with Tiger Trail), Boutan (an older lao man who works with CLI also one of Laos preeminent writers, who likes translating Hemingway to Lao), Ling (our driver) and me. We are an interesting bunch setting out with one goal. That goal was to see an Akha village which few other foreigners see. The Akha are an ethnic people who originated in china and have worked their way down in to Phongsaly and Oudamxay provinces in Laos and other parts of Vietnam.
This particular village has no electricity and according to Bob the people don’t like to bathe. They can be attractive but age quickly with the rough lifestyles they live and wear beautiful bright colors. This bumpy and dusty trail took us almost 9 hours to get to the Akha roman village. It was at this village on the side of the highway that we left the van (Ling was not too pleased or secure with the idea of leaving it there) and walked the 40 minutes to the remote Akha village. We walked along the ridge tops until we got to a gate of bamboo and wood that we enter the Akha village. As we entered no one greeted us we just let ourselves in until the guide took us to the village headman’s (nayban in lao, sorry spelling lao karaoke is very hard) house. He was out so we took a stroll around town to get to the old naybans house. On our way we ran into a sign that listed things built in the village by German donators and the United Nations Office Drug and Crime. Directly behind the sign was a school which was in disrepair. The reason for the trip was to see if Tiger Trail and CLI could work together to help supply this village with a school.
We walk through the town on the way to the old naybans house and it is very basic. Small paths between houses with pigs, cows, dogs and buffalo sharing the paths. The village is set into the hillside and as we would find out later has one bathroom and one shower. We arrive at his house and are warmly greeted and led upstairs where over the next few hours we would talk about the village and eventually eat dinner. I took a tour around town while it was still light out with the guide Bounkham and Ling.
Bounkham told me some very interesting and shocking things. This next section is not for the faint of heart. If an Akha woman has twins the babies are left out in the sun to die while the parents are exiled from the community for a month while all of their belongings are burned. They believe that twins are a bad omen. After a woman gives birth she eats a black dog. Not sure why exactly but we did see a large number of black dogs and puppies running around and now we know why. They don’t care about divorce. Yoxa told me about one man who had three wives, first one died, second one he divorced and is currently married to the third. His second wife is now on her seventh husband. When women get married normally around 15 they put their hair up in a bun sort of thing and don’t wash it until the husband dies or she gets divorced.
The sun went down and we had to find our way back to the house for dinner. Dinner was served under a light powered by D Batteries. Its amazing how nice things like indoor plumbing and lighting really are. You don’t miss them until they are gone. We found out more information about possibly building the school and Bob seems to think that it is viable as long as the funding is there. It will be difficult because it is such a remote location but doable. We did our shots of Lao Lao with Yoxa and Kerstin doing their best to fake taking the shots. It was a homemade brew which really was not very good. They served us dinner and we ate a raman type noodle dish with some Laap and some vegetable soup. Good but most of it was a little spicy for me.
The old nayban seemed to look about 14 but he had already served as nayban for 2 terms. The current nayban was selected by the village elders and he also look about 14. The reason he was selected because unlike many other Akha people he had passed the 6th grade. Currently the academics in the village there were four grades and two teachers and 75 students. After the 4th grade kids had to go to another village and then for high school had to completely move a few hours’ drive from home. The nice part was that during a good portion of the discussion most of which was in Lao I could understand/follow along. It felt empowering and rewarding to know just enough to follow basic conversations and across the room tom and I shared looks of satisfaction at our comprehension.
After dinner and Lao Lao drinking, Tom, Bounkham, Ling and I made our way back to the actual Naybans house where we kept drinking Lao Lao, lipton tea and eating oreos. Weird I know. The naybans house was the only one in the village with electricity and they only had a single light in the middle of their upstairs. Then the drunk father of the Naybans says “OK massage time”. At first Tom and I are reticent because we don’t know if some young girls will be forced to give us a naughty massage so we respectfully decline but then the girls come in and it turns out just to be a massage. Not the greatest massage I have ever received actually felt a lot like just full hand pinching but its not like I would turn it down. Then on to sleep.
I awoke with everyone around me gone and wandered downstairs to see Ling and Bounkham cutting up what turned out to be deer meat for Laap. Laap for breakfast is not my favorite meal and considering I don’t normally eat my first meal of the day till 11 this 7 am deer laap mostly raw was not my idea of starting the day off right. It was good and we did our best to eat some while the Naybans father keep trying to get us to drink Lao Lao with the Laap. Only thing worse than raw Laap at 7 am is Lao Lao. Luckily we were able to persuade him we didn’t want any lao lao.
Breakfast was finished so we walked back to the other house and passed all the kids sitting outside of the school house waiting for school. I got Bounkham to ask them if I could take a picture and they all ran inside screaming. The Akha think that if you take their photo it will steal their soul, sadly this means I have very few photos of Akha people. We made it to the house and then were forced to sit down for another breakfast this time of chopped up chicken. We bolted before they busted out the Lao Lao bottle and went to take a look at the land they had prepared for the new school grounds. It was easily large enough with about 4 cows asleep in the middle. We said our good byes and trekked out.
We drove back which took about 10 hours because we had to drop off Bountan in Mung Kua which added a few hours the drive. We arrived in desperate need of some showers and very happy to get out of a bumpy van. I am sure we will all appreciate the running water and the light switch in the house a little more often.
Below the current school in the village.
Well it was a busy few days but back in civilization messaging you all around the world.
2 comments:
Very interesting fact finding mission. Good job! You deserve a job just for keeping up this blog. Keep writing!
Thank you very much. I found out recently that some of the information is wrong.
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