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| You have to read the Mai Vang reports under the report section to understand what an amazing day this was for me. Here we're heading up this dirt road to locate the village of Ban Phu Leuy, another three hours drive. | This is a view of Ban Heuy Ot where we parked the truck to hike up to Ban Phu Leuy. |
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| In the afternoon these boys gave us a tour of their village and led us up a hill to their school. | I asked to take their photo inside the school and the oldest boy on the right arranged them from shortest to the tallest. | The boys are showing off with their tops! |
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| This is inside Mai's mother's house (I think really her oldest son's house where she lives now). The man is arranging pieces of string around the table that would be tied around our wrists in a ceremony before the meal. | Corn stored in grainery. From what I know corn is used primarily as animal food, especially for pigs. | I like this shot. These two young women are daughter-in-laws of the eldest son of Mai's mother. I took this photo while I was also videotaping their father-in-law speaking to his sister here in America. |
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| This is Mai Vang's relatives including her mother who is the older woman in the back row with the blue bandana on her head behind her oldest son in the brown shirt. |
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I love her smile which reflects the warm welcome I received in this village. |
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| Here the little boy is helping his mother feed the pigs, an important task. | I brought a video of Mai Vang and her family and her mother who can't see or hear well got as close as she could to the lcd screen and her daughter's family she misses so much. | After watching the video Mai's mother got up and walked over to this raised platform and began moving all the baskets off the platform and began sweeping it clean. I then realized she was doing this because she really wanted me to stay. I couldn't, but hope I can go back this summer and spend several days in the village. |
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| This is a view from Mai's mother's house looking at another house with a well protected garden area. | There is a dramatic feel to this shot of the grainery (does it hold corn or rice?). | This is a photo of Mai's aunt whom we met in the village of Ban Phu Leuy. Here she is being videotaped by Chou giving a message to her neice in America. |
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| A distant shot of Pha Tung where the village of Ban Phu Leuy is located. | On the drive up the dirt road our tuk tuk got stuck in this stream. We ended up pushing/lifting it up out of the stream. Mr. Kamphan, our driver had never been up this road before and I don't think he would take his tuk tuk up here again! |