Khmu girl’s work
Young girls stayed with their parents in the family house until they got married and moved to stay with their husbands' parents. They learnt all kind of women's works, for instance, to make handbags and to weave cloth. Girls were expected to do domestic work inside the house and in the village. It was also the duty of the older daughters to take care of their younger siblings..
When the young girls got up in the morning, they carried one of their younger siblings, took some steamed rice and went out to meet their friends outside the house. There they fed the babies. They must bring the baby outside the house where it could not see its mother. If the baby saw its mother, it would cry and the mother would be unable to work
When the mother had finished her morning work, her daughter brought her younger sibling home and handed the baby over to its mother. Then the girl ate her morning meal together with the family members. After the morning meal the adults went to work in the fields, and in later years the girl went to school, where she learnt to read and write Lao.
The school is part of the new life in the Kammu villages. Earlier there was no school at all, and neither men nor women in the Yùan region could read or write. Thus for instance my father, mother and my sister could not read or write. They had never even seen a sheet of writing paper or a pen. If my mother had seen a sheet of paper, she would have believed that it was a white banana leaf. Today both girls and boys go to learn to write and read Lao in the schools, and there are schools in almost every village. However, there are still some problems, because the parents do not want their daughters go to school, since they do not think that rice and meat come from the school. Rice comes from the field, meat and vegetables come from the forest. Why do you need to go to the school? This is what our parents always said to us.
In the afternoon the girl came home from school, and again she carried her younger sibling and went out to meet her friends. Her mother returned from the field, pounded rice for the next day's meals. She also fed the family's dogs, pigs and hens. When mother had finished these evening works, the girl brought the baby back to her. Then they had dinner together with all the family members
After dinner the mother made a big fire on one of the fire-places, and the girl sat beside the fire and did her home work, and also learnt about women's life from her mother and her grandmother. This work was done every day, every day until the younger sibling could be left alone. It was thus a lot of carrying, and most of the time the girl carried the baby on her back. When she got too tired in her back she could turn the baby around to carry it on her side. When the baby was sleepy or hungry it cried, but then the girl carried it on her side, used her right hand and patted its behind and sang this song to calm the baby down and fall asleep.
Don’t cry my young sibling, don’t cry
Don’t cry for a skewer for roasting fish,
Don’t cry for a skewer for roasting frog
Don’t cry my young sibling, don’t cry
Don’t cry and disturb others
Don’t cry to be shy in front of others.
Girls who did not have any younger siblings, when they got up, they emptied some small water containers, carried them and followed their mothers to fetch water from the well near the stream. They filled all the containers and carried them and returned home. At home they helped their mothers pounding rice. The young girls used small rice-mortars and small pestles that their fathers had made for them, since they could not lift up the bigger and heavier pestle yet. When the family had finished the morning meal, the girls followed their parents to work in the fields, if it was an ordinary workday. On holidays they went to catch small fish and crabs instead.
Sometimes the girls also followed their mothers to collect firewood in the forest. Everything they had to learn from their mothers, their grandmother or from other grown up women. Their fathers made small knives and small straps for carrying firewood for their daughters. They used the knives to cut small dried wood and branches, because they could not cut the big wood yet. When they had cut enough to carry, they tied the firewood together and carried it home. Firewood is important in the Kammu villages, since there was no electricity in the villages. People had to use firewood to prepare food, warm themselves and to get light.
In earlier days Kammu women hardly ever travelled away from their homes for more than 10 days or so. If they left home for a longer time than that, they would feel homesick. Only sometimes they followed a group of men and went to buy salt at the border between Laos and China. This journey took 11 to 12 days, and probably this was the only tour they took. There were no women who worked in the factories in the towns. Women did not need to earn any money for the marriage as the men did, because a woman did, of course, not have to pay a bride price. It was her parents who received the bride price from the groom, and therefore young men often had to work in the cities to collect enough money to give his father-in-law.
All this is quite different now. Both men and women may work where they please, in the towns or in the villages. They are also all able to read and write Lao, since both girls and boys go to school now.
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