During the month of July I made a tour to Thailand and Laos. I myself was interested in story collecting and in trying to find trees and plants in the forest, since I have described over 500 kinds of trees and other plants for our Kammu Yuan-English Dictionary.
I have since 1972 collected over 600 stories from the Kammu people both in Northern Thailand and in Laos. However, at the beginning we just recorded the stories, but we did not know which area and which village our story-tellers came from. Therefore I travelled both in Northern Thailand and in Laos in order to find out where our story-tellers came from. Indeed, I met quite a few of our story-tellers and interviewed several of them who came from areas of which I have no personal knowledge, because their villages are situated at a great distance from my home village. The most important task on the tour was to find out the changes in living conditions now and in my early youth. And I also would like to follow in the footsteps of the Professor of Anthropology Joel Halpern from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, United States, because we have many of his photos from northern Laos in the 1950th. All the way I have been endeavouring to take "the same" pictures as he did 50 years ago. I am glad to say that it has succeeded unexpectedly well. However, the pictures I took now are much different from his, since people do no longer wear their traditional clothes. When we met people, we did not know who is Lao Lum or Lao Theung. On the tour we visited some areas where we have not been earlier, for instance Ban Pak Mong, Ban Nam Bak, Ban Nongkhiao, Muong Ngoi and the Oudom Sai area. In Oudom Sai Province we found that the Kammu there speak the Lue (Cwaa) and Rook dialects, but we were not able to tell them apart by their dresses, as one always could in my youth.
I have travelled through and close to these regions when I was from 11 to 14 years of age. I have thus been in Muang Beng and Muang Hun but not in Oudom Sai. Now I tried to find Kammu people by looking at their clothes, but I could not see anyone at all wearing Kammu traditional dresses. One morning we went to visit the dentistry at the Oudom Sai Hospital. There we met a man who is a dentist. We interviewed him for more than 30 minutes. Suddenly he asked me: "Are you of some minority ethnic group?" I answered: "Yes, we are Kammu." Then he said in Kammu: "Oh well, now we go to my house, you must come to my house!" The man to whom we had spoken Lao was a Kammu as well. This could not have happened 50 years ago, we would have recognized each other immediately. At that time there can hardly have been any Kammu dentist in the country either. Unfortunately we did not have the time to accept his kind invitation; we had to catch our airplane from Luang Prabang to Vientiane. In this connection I would like to draw attention to something which I have never heard before: There are lots of fresh water shrimps in the Nam Ou River some 3 to 4 kilometers to the north of Muang Ngoi village. The Muang Ngoi villagers catch the shrimps during the rainy season. They are as big as prawns, about 6 to 7 cm long, and they are very tasty, but they are found only at this place. We went and saw the villagers catch them with creels and they caught several kilograms. The Muang Ngoi villagers catch them and sell them in Nam Bak village and in Luang Prabang.
July is in the rainy season in Laos, the weather is just right, not cold and not hot, the forest is green and wet, the path is slippery, all the mountains along the Nam Ou River are covered with thick clouds, and the river is red with the muddy water and fills the river banks. We took a long tail-boat from Ban Nong Khieo and went up Nam Ou River to Muang Ngoi. The boat-man told us: "Take off your shoes, if something happens you can swim easily!" We took off our shoes, my wife and our guide ate their lunch, but I stood in the stern and filmed. There were five people in the boat, a middle aged man and his 9 years old son who operated the engine, our guide, my wife and I.
When we came to a certain narrow stretch with strong rapids, our boat was almost unable to pass through. However, the boat-man was able to avoid dangerous situations. Sometimes he turned to the left and sometimes to the right in order to avoid the strongest currents. When he got tired the boat-man's son slept on the roof of the boat near the stern. I thought that if he fell into the water, his father would never hear or see him fall down. But I was sure that the boy could swim. We arrived in Muang Ngoi at 5 o'clock in the evening and our guide told us we were going to spend the night at the village headman's house. The house had two storeys, and we entered on the first floor. We put our things there, the village headman took us for a walk around the village, and he told us that his village had been bombed several times and had been burnt down. When we returned home, his wife had already prepared food for us. She had made fish soup and fried a kilogram of shrimps. Before we had our dinner the house owner invited us to drink lao-lao wine which is made of rice and is the strongest kind of wine the villagers themselves make it. The village headman asked me: "How many kilograms of shrimps would you like to have tomorrow? We will go to examine our fish traps early in the morning." My wife said that we would like to have two kilograms for we would take some with us to eat on our way from Muang Ngoi to Oudom Sai.
At five in the morning I heard the owner of the house and his wife open the door when they went off to examine their fish traps. I woke up my wife and we went down to the first floor, and called our guide who slept on the first floor. I took my video camera and an ordinary camera and went to the river, but they had gone, and I stood and waited for them on the river bank. I saw how many villagers went to their boats and paddled to their fields, and some women went to fetch water at the river and carried it home. About 30 minutes later I saw a small boat coming down, and it was the village headman and his wife who returned after having examined their fish traps. They had got some fish and some kilograms of shrimps. There are no problems with food and rice in this region. All the villagers are living well and have enough food and rice. Almost every family owned some 5 to 8 water buffaloes, some pigs and several hens.
Pounding rice. We use two different types of mortars for pounding rice. One we call a "foot mortar" because we use our foot to work it. The other type is called "hand mortar" because we lift the pestle with both hands, when we are pounding. Indigenous knowledge is still very useful for people living in the country side. In every work we use our indigenous knowledge. It costs only our strength to work with that way, and it costs no money and does not require electricity or any kind of motors. The way we pound the rice certainly preserves the vitamins that are removed in the factories, when the bran is polished away.
These young water buffalo were one year old. During the day they went grazing in the forest, and in the evening they returned home to spend the night at the courtyard close to their owner's house. When it was raining they slept under the house. When they came home the owner let them lick salt. On the following day some 10 to 15 elderly villagers, both women and men, came with a ceremonial tray with objects which they were going to use in the baxi ceremony. They tied white threads around our wrists in order to welcome us and to make our souls feel happy. On the day when we arrived in Muang Ngoi village, our boat-man promised that he would come and pick up us at 9 a.m. the following morning, but at 11 a.m. he had not yet come. Then the village headman paddled us in a very small boat which could take only 4 persons (the boat which paddled see at picture above). We paddled down the Nam Ou River, and on the way we met a smaller boat going up the river and the boat-man told us: "The engine of the boat you travelled with yesterday does not work; therefore he could not come to pick up you today."
When we arrived at Ban Nong Khiao, our driver was waiting for us at the river bank. We drove to Ban Nam Bak and Ban Pak Mong and from there to OudomSai. I recognized almost all kinds of trees all the way to Oudom Sai, since this region is like my own village area. I felt as if I was at home in Rmcùal village, because the nature, forest and trees looked precisely like around my home village. There are some Hmong and Kammu villages on the way between Pak Mong and Oudom Sai, unfortunately the largest and most beautiful Kammu village has burnt down by fire in the beginning of the year 1999. When we were there the ground and the stocks were still black, and the villagers have built smaller and simpler houses after the fire.
Communication is much easier than before. In some places people travel by long tail-boats from one village to other villages, and in some places people fly from a town to other towns and in still other places people have to walk wherever they want to go. Laos is extremely beautiful and has a rich nature and the people are most friendly, and the only worry now is the slash-and-burn farming. People who are living in the big cities and work inside a building 8 hours a day should spend some of their vacations to feel a fresh and nice smell from the soft wind on the mountains of Laos. Then they will experience the new life in the new world in Laos. This is especially true at the Plain of Jars in Xieng Khoang Province. If you come there at sun set, you will see the beautiful sky and hear many different kinds of cicadas and other insects.
I myself was born and grew up in this country, where I lived until I was 34 years of age. Then I left my village to live in a rather big city, but I have never forgotten the fresh and nice smell from the soft wind on the mountains. I will never forget, when I was lying on the bamboo floor in the field-house, where the soft wind blew in from underneath. The wind also blew through the rice leaves outside, and I could hear the rice leaves swinging and beat against one another. I could hear the soft and pleasant sounds from the krwang and iilek-cicadas singing in the trees around the field-house
written by Damrong
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