We’re not going to tell you where they are. We’re not going to tell
you the name of the village or how to get there. Enough is enough. All
around the northern province of Chang Mai, tribes are being used by
tour operators to bring in ogling back-packers. Women wearing straight-jacket
bronze necklaces have been photographed and their images marketed. They
are easy enough to see, these necklace women, but we didn’t see any.
We went off in the opposite direction and spent a few days with a family
of Black Lahus.
They are called Black Lahu, as opposed to Red, White or Yellow Lahus
not because they are fundamentally pessimistic but because they dress
in black tunics. We arrived during the Buddhist festival of Sonkran,
the New Years, and our host – the head shaman – was busy blessing the
village and the homes. Here’s what it looked like: every family built
a miniature model of their long-home out of bamboo reeds and banana
leaves, inside of which wicks fed with coconut oil were lit. Along side
these they built low bamboo arches, just high enough for an adult to
pass under crouching. The shaman made his blessing and members of the
household passed under the arch, from the outside in. Everything was
then folded and collapsed and thrown outside the village on the road
where even larger models and arches were built and discarded and under
which the entire population of the village (about 300 adults) passed,
spitting on the ground once they were one the other side.
The whole idea was to preserve home, hearth and village from the malefic
influence of evil spirits, for these people are Animists, which means
that they believe in the living spiritual powers of every existing thing.
Plants, rocks, animals, fields…all contain spirits which must be placated,
encouraged; fought or approached depending on the need of the moment
or the present flickering mood of the spirits. Like most polytheists,
they believe ultimately in one God, in this case a divinity called Geusha.
At night they huddle around the open hearth, and the living room/bedroom/dining
room would fill with acrid smoke. To cook, they push fish, herbs and
spices into a bamboo shoot and place it near the fire. Disgusting, but
it had to be tried.
Even though the Black Lahus have electricity, they have the wisdom to
not have television sets. In this way, a foreign world of game shows
and variety programs are blacked out and around the fire in the main
room, songs are sung and stories are told.
Our shaman host builds his own musical instruments out of bamboo and
held together with dried tree sap. At night the silent mountain air
fills with the plaintive call of these beautiful instruments called
atha, nous, nozileh, tchayu, and tolem.
In the morning you climb for half and hour until you pass a mountain
ridge and come to a vast valley in which are nestled the gardens. The
climb up is no pleasure tour. It is beautiful, but you’ve got to carry
everything for the pigs to eat, in this case fresh trunks of banana
trees full of water and sugar and heavy with inertia.
And yet even here tourism is leaving its ugly mark. The tribesmen are
getting used to the easy money tourists can bring in. At times when
we travel we get the feeling that the last frontier has already been
crossed and spoilt by indelicate hands. Like Malana in India, like Bam
in Iran, like Pakistan I can only cry out and tell the world: go now
but tread lightly!
Photo galery 