Introduction to Khmu culture
There are many kinds of Khmu people, and each has different customs. We all speak Khmu, but each group uses different words. Khmu believed that they are the first group who came to Laos, even before the Lao, although they always don’t agree with us. In the past, some Lao people didn’t like Khmu people, our culture or our way of living. They thought that Khmu lifestyle was backward and not modern. Now we are friendly with the Lao. Khmu traditionally live on the side of mountain, far from the cities. Khmu houses are two stories high, made from bamboo with thatched roofs. Many generation lived together-grandparents, parents, and children. Khmu people get their food from forest by hunting wild animals such as rats and wild pigs, trapping birds and gathering plants such as bamboo shoots and wild banana flowers. In the past, the wild animals such as tigers, bears and deer were more common, and people hunted them for food. Today, they no longer hunted them. They also fish in the Rivers and grow vegetables like pumpkins and cucumbers around or in the rice field. They plant chilies and eggplants in other places on the farm.
Their food is similar to Lao food. They make soup from bamboo shoots, baby pumpkin, pumpkin leaves. They have some meat they add pork, buffalo, and chicken or other meat available except elephant. Elephant meat is very tough. They make stews from ingredients like eggplants, chilies, onion, and grass melon. With the fish they catch from the River, they grill it, fry it, steam it or use it in a soup. Sometimes they dry it out on the sun and it will keep longer for use later in a stew.
Khmu people grow different kinds of rice: sticky rice, plain rice, black rice, and rice for noodle. After they harvest their rice, they dry it in the sun. Now they have the machine to husk the rice, but before that they husk it in a wooden mortar with a pestle or with a wooden foot pedal husker. Then they shake the rice to get rid of the husks, and soak it in water before they go to bed. The next morning it’s ready to be cooked. To make sticky rice they put it in a bamboo basket and put this on a pot of water over the fire and steam it until it’s sticky and cooked through. They can make steamed rice in the same way, but when it’s cooked they mix it with more water and cook it again so that’s not sticky rice. Khmu people eat rice for every meal. They say that if they have rice to eat, they have everything in life. If they have no rice to eat, they have nothings.
They traditionally make their own clothes from cotton that they have grow on farm. They spin into thread and dye it. The most common colors are red and black. Then they weave into clothes to make their clothes which they sew by themselves. Nowadays many people buy cloth and cloths from the market, but some people still make for their own. They used to wear their own traditional cloth every day, but now they are just worn on special occasions for instant during Khmu festival or weddings. The girl wears a black cotton or silk jacket with red or green with bands of color on edges. The front of jackets crosses over the chest and is tied at the left hip. With this they wear a long skirt of the same color. The boy’s jacket is similar, but the front of the jacket is fastened with buttons down the middle. They wear matching pants which come down to mid-calf. On their heads they wrap a turban of the color they choose. When I wear these clothes at festival I feel a Khmu person from a long time ago. Many ethnic groups in Laos are Buddhists, but Khmu are not. They respect the spirit such as the house spirit and forest spirit. If someone does s bad thing for example if a boy sneaks over to his girlfriend’s house at night and sleep there, the house spirit may make someone in the house sick. The spirit doctor of the village checks the sick person and consults with the spirit to find out what it wants. Then the family may sacrifice a pig or a chicken to appease the spirit and the sick person will get better.
They have to consult with the spirit before they will do many things. Before they decide where to make the field to plant the rice, they first have to check if the hand is okay for farming and check what the trees are like. The best place to make a farm is in a green forest with big trees and water. This means that the land is fertile and the crops will grow well. When they have found a good site for a field, they go back home and go to bed. If they have good dream, for example if there are a lot of water in the dream, then the spirit of the sticky rice will make sure they have a good harvest. But if they have a bad dream such as a dream about people killing buffalo or ox, then it is not a good place to make a farm because someone in family may die. Now there is something new that sometime appears in dream: taking a truck, helicopter or airplane. This is also a bad dream because it presents that a person is being taken away.
When they have chosen a site for their farm, they decide what day is good to clear the forest. Then they kill a chicken to offer to the spirits of the forest and tell them when they will cut down the trees. If they don’t give an offering to the spirit of the trees before they clear the land, then the spirit will get angry and may make someone in family sick. In December or January they celebrate the harvest festival, which called Khmu New Year. They stop working and gather together and eat, drink and talk. They catch up with friends and family from others villages and celebrate the end of nine months of hard work in the fields. They play cymbals, a wooden flute, a long drum, and a wooden wind instrument called”Sngul”. They sing and dance and drink home-made rice wine. They steam taro and other vegetables that they have harvested from the fields. Each house in the village kills a pig or a chicken and the whole of the village will contribute some money to kill a buffalo or cow, so they have a lot of food to eat.
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