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| The Hmong aide
I traveled with to Luang Prabang met a Hmong tuk tuk driver that
he spent a lot of time with. In the top photo his friend is sitting
next to his father in their family home. Each door leads to a
small bedroom, about 5 x 10 feet for each of his brothers and
their wives. In the bottom photo his father is honroing his ancestors
before the New Year meal. |
In the top
photo Chou's friend is cleaning chickens for the New Year meal
with his thirteen year old wife. IIn
the bottom photo his father is burning paper money to.... |
This is the
meal that was served for the beginning of Hmong New Year on Dec.
8. We had to wait a long time and it was much colder than normal
and as we had to take off our shoes before entering the house,
and since the house had concrete floors, my feet froze. I wish
I had a pair of socks in my pocket. The meal was delicious, especially
the fish mixture in the brown rimmed bowls. In the bottom photo
you can see some of the brothers. Believe it or not, this man
has seventeen sons and two daughters and three wives. His first
wife is in the foreground, and his third wife is in the back,
you can just see her face. |
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| In the afternoon
before the meal above we went to a small Hmong village where
they were making 'rice pancakes." In the top photo the young
woman is sharpening the scraper which they will use to scrape
out the rice mixture after it has been well pounded into a glutinous
mass. In the second photo the woman has cut branches from the
banana tree and is slicing off the leaves to use in wrapping
the rice pancakes. In the bottom photo the steamed sticky is
rice ready to be pounded. |
In the top
photo the rice is being pounded in the dug out log. When we went
to this house we were told they would begin pounding the rice
around 4:00. But we ended up waiting until 5:00 because, depending
on the village, there may only be one or two dug out logs to
share among all the families and as soon as one family is done
it is carried to the next family's house. In the bottom photo
the rice has been pounded (it took about one half hour) with
many men helping (it got much harder as the mixture kept getting
stickier and stickier) and is being scraped out of the log with
the scraper that was sharpend in the photo on the left. |
In these two
photos the pancake mixture is being made into separate pancakes
which are then wrapped in the banana leaves the woman had prepared
earlier. |
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| I had met this
young woman, Pa(g) in the market area by the Phusi Hotel in Luang
Prabang where many Hmong woman sell paj ntaub. I wanted to find
out some information about Hmong New Year and one morning we
went to her house, since it had rained the day before she was
staying at home with her mother to sew the paj ntaub she would
sell later. As she had told me earlier it was a very small house
and here she poses with her mother and brother. |
This shot of
Pa(g) was taken outside of Luang Prabang. |
When we walked
up to Pa(g)'s house we passed these two young girls who were
also staying at home instead of going into town to sell paj ntaub.
They are good friends of Pa(g). |
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| On Thursday,
December 9, the Hmong New Year festivities began. I thought it
would be much bigger, but we were told since it was a school
day many of the boys and girls were still in school (We went
around 12:00). |
Here this young
woman is singing Kwv Txhiav, which I found, even in Laos, is
the exception and not the norm. |
I like the
shot of these three young woman 'throwing ball.' You get a feel
for the setting down in this wooded glen. |
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| Another part of Hmong
New Year Festivities is the gathering of extended families, parts
of villages, or entire small villages.
There is a ceremonial "tree", maybe about ten feet
tall and already cut, with a length of woven banana leaves looped
hanging from it and stretching about twenty feet. In the first
ceremony we saw a live rooster was hanging from the woven strands
of banana leaves near the top of the tree. A shaman had everyone
gather on one side and then at his command they circled around
under the woven strand of banana leaves (the other end was held
high by some young men) as he chanted. After several times around
they stopped and then circled back the other way while the chanting
continued. There was a lot of chatting and shouting, this was
not a solemn event at all, and I guess the intent is by circling
the "tree" they are leaving all the bad spirits behind
and entering the new year only with good spirits. As you can see in the photos in these three
rows the ceremonies can be different, even in these two locations
which were only about 100 yards apart. |
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| This photo
goes with the photo above and is a view from the "rooster's"
perspective! |
The bottom
photo is of a Hmong shaman. We liked his explanation that the
big altar was the "doctor" and the smaller altar was
more like a "nurse." |
This Hmong
shaman oversaw the 'tree ceremony' in the top two photos (middle
and right column). I missed a great photo of him riding home
on the back of a motorcycle after the ceremony. |
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