I arrive as a guest of Alan’s and am promptly told that I will be writing the weekly blog ...so here goes!!
How do you try to describe a week that has included an eleven hour drive from Vientiane through the mountains to Luang Prabang, a day attending Hmong New Year celebrations, being a voyeur on the five day funeral rites of the next door neighbour, having a meeting with the Minister for Education, experiencing the trips to local markets and seeing so many things that I’ve never seen before? Impossible is the word that springs to mind...but press on Caruthers!
Travel to Luang Prabang
We set off at the exact time scheduled from the bus terminal on the edge of Vientiane, stopping off at a few small convenience stores to allow the driver and his mother to do their weekly shopping before getting going on the real journey. Once up into the mountains, the going was pretty slow but the views were magnificent. The 400 kilometre journey on the bus actually took three hours longer than the eight scheduled. So, about the same time that it had taken me to fly from London to Bangkok.
Hmong New Year
An invitation to attend a ceremony conducted by a shaman in a Hmong village (as part of their New Year celebrations) probably ranks as a two back teeth sacrifice by an anthropologist, so to get such an invite was exciting to say the least. The ceremony itself was quite extraordinary. One moment we would be sitting on very low wooden stools in the shaman’s house, listening to the strange incantations and watching the casting of animal bones on the mud floor, the next we would be sitting cross legged on the floor outside beside a log fire with four or five elderly members of the shaman’s family. Needless to say conversation was somewhat limited!
Then it was time for the three ceremonial chickens to be sacrificed. I’ll leave the description of how that happened to the reader’s imagination. It wasn’t long though before they ended up in a large cooking pot. Being fairly scrawny specimens, cooking time was somewhat brief and whilst this was taking place there was time to eat some rice from the small bamboo leaf parcels that had been resting in the fire. With chickens cooked, the ceremony entered an important phase. Was the New Year going to be blessed with good fortune? That was going to be decided by a close examination of the chickens’ feet, beak and eyes. Unfortunately one of the chicken’s eyes had not closed fully, so the result was inconclusive. We were informed that the entire ceremony would be repeated in 3 days time and that if the results were still inconclusive, a pig would replace the chickens. We then had breakfast which comprised the broth that the chickens had been cooked in, some rice and a concoction of the blood and innards of the chickens. Fortunately I wasn’t feeling very hungry!
With breakfast over, we said our goodbyes to the shaman and his family and travelled to the place where the main celebrations were taking place. Here there was a scene that resembled a typical English fair – food stalls, bouncy castles and opportunities for having a photograph taken against a backdrop of tulips and Norwegian fiords. The big difference though was in the traditional costumes worn by the Hmong and the rather nice rite whereby, lines of Hmong would form and balls would be thrown to and fro between the unmarried girls and boys.
The Voyeur
The death of a neighbour from the house next door has been a major distraction over the last five days. With tents erected on part of the playing fields opposite the house and in the neighbours’ yard, from our verandah and upper windows we have been able to observe rather a lot of what has been going on. For the five days, all the villagers, the friends and relatives of the deceased have been calling at the house to pay their respects to the widow. Judging from the number of vehicles parked in the lane, the daytime number must have been about 50 or 60 at any one time, with numbers swelling to about 150 in the evening. The novices and monks from the local temple certainly spent a high proportion of their days at the house, arriving just before a meal was due and leaving shortly after. A whole catering facility was constructed on the playing fields including food preparation tables, piles of fire wood, water containers and open fires and staffed by a host of people who all helped to produce the three square meals a day that the mourners needed. Whist the first three daytimes were somewhat subdued, the evenings were much more festive in nature with the noise increasing in proportion to the quantities of beer and LaoLao drunk. This would continue into the early hours of each morning. With a large proportion of the mourners (revellers?) starting up their motorbikes in any houses in the immediate vicinity.
Day four of the funeral saw the arrival of the flat backed lorry. The casket was brought from the house and duly loaded on the back, along with the various possessions that the deceased needed in the afterlife, and a few monks. With the mourners all following behind, all that remained were the catering crew. Quiet descended! Whilst we thought that this might signal the end of things, this was not to be as a short time later the mourners returned and the party stepped up a few gears! A band of musicians armed with drums and zylophones duly ensured that the decibel level could rise even higher than on the previous evenings.
Daybreak on day five was the signal for the band to add to the usual cacophony of cocks crowing and dogs barking. The squealing of a couple of pigs as they were dragged along the lane and into the catering area, certainly provided a timely reminder that Death was still the order of the day. I don’t recall smelling roast pork when we returned in the evening, which was just as well. On our ramblings that day around the town we had coincidentally passed three separate establishments where a groom, all decked up in his quite splendid costume, was being photographed along with his entourage but were unable to locate a fourth to complete the title of the film! Fortunately the party that evening was more subdued and wound up at a reasonable time.
Day 6 saw the tables, chairs, tents and beer crates being taken away, the rubbish packed up and a degree of normality returning. If we think that a wedding is an expensive celebration, then a funeral in Laos probably works out substantially more.
And finally...
Meeting a government minister is not really particularly note worthy but one dressed in a bright lilac jacket and sporting a serious quiff hairstyle certainly made it memorable.
So, that is the week over...and what a fascinating one it has been. I wonder what next week will bring (hopefully a lot more peaceful one), but Alan will be back to do the honours.
Chris
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