Our tribal guide appeared in western clothing smoking a bamboo pipe which he was quick to offer us to try ... coffee yes, but a tribal water pipe, a definite no! Kids start smoking at 4 years old and there was plenty of evidence of that! We wandered around the village and saw lots of interesting sights. This tribe were "animists" who, dare I say it - rather like the Muslims - the men could have up to 4 wives. This practice is now illegal in Laos but still continues and family groups tended to live together, the biggest family in this village consisted of 90 members all living under the same roof! Imagine that! Mr W and I were a little perturbed by one of their more morbid practices of preparing coffins for the elderly members of the family and keeping these stored under their houses - worrying thing was that elderly was 50+ ... The women, seemed to have a reasonably tough life, they were up at 3am to prepare food for the men who went to work in the fields (primarily coffee and rice in this area) and then most went out to work with them too! Their belief in spirits means that a woman is not allowed to give birth in the village for fear of upsetting the spirits, she goes out into the jungle with a female family member and stays there for up to a week after the birth of her baby - a male family member, most likely her father, makes a bed for her to take to the jungle.
The people seemed happy and content with their lot, no shortage of food - plenty of pigs running amock in the village, chickens roosting in very interesting places and food being grown in very different ways ... the only really noticable modern addition to their lives seemed to be tv, that's judging by the huge number of satellite dishes. Apparently these often form part of the modern day dowry along with corrugate iron roofs for the houses ...
Coffins under the house
Girl smoking a water pipe
Happy pigs
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