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Published: July 11th 2010
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I haven't written in awhile because I've been busy working again! I finally found temporary work with a wonderful Luang Prabang company, OckPopTok, (www.ockpoptok.com) which works with local weavers to sustain the 1200 year old Lao art of silk weaving, creating gorgeous silk scarfs and wall hangings and teaching Westerners about Lao weaving. This company has two shops downtown and a weaving center where many of their weavers work, 1 ½ miles from the town center. I get to work at this lovely place, on the banks of the Mekong, in a lush tropical garden, managing and promoting the center.
Here we welcome tourists to come for free tours, to see our silk worms, to see how silk is made, to watch the silk being dyed and to watch the weavers weave that silk in to beautiful creations. We also offer classes, so tourists can come and learn to weave and dye silk, as well as seminars and workshops. And we have a café, serving delicious Lao food and drinks, a store, where people can buy the silks they see made, and starting next month, a four-room hotel, each room styled in the unique textiles of a particular ethnic group
of Laos. We also work with weavers of different ethnicities in villages around Laos, where we help them to develop their traditional weavings in to marketable designs, and provide them with access to a market to sell.
It’s a fun place to work because I’m always outdoors; the center consists of a number of open buildings, with roofs made of thatched bamboo, and without walls. That’s my favorite part. And while I’m working on many creative initiatives to make the center the most popular place to visit in town, all kinds of activity is constantly happening around me. The thirty weavers, all friends and family from the same village, are chatting, eating and weaving. There’s a bamboo weaver and a Hmong batik artist working. Work men are creating a new roof for one of the salas, and other work men are toiling to finish the hotel. Tourists are coming for tours, to eat lunch and to take classes. Tour company representatives come by to learn about the center for their future tour groups. An ice-cream man comes each day, selling the one flavor of ice cream he has hand-made from sticky rice, milk and coconut for 1000 kip a
This Temple Currently Has Twelve Watchdogs
Their is sadly a lot of theft in town, including from temples. But still twelve dogs is a lot of guard dogs. One dog just had eight puppies and they kept them all. cone. About 12 cents. Hmong women come by with big baskets of steamed cow corn on their backs, which everyone eats two or three at a time, without butter or salt. It’s very plain tasting, but not bad. Lao people are crazy about it. It makes me dream of American corn.
One of my co-workers is a young Hmong man, twenty-four years old, incredibly sweet and capable. Over lunch one day, I discovered that he lives with his wife of three months and his entire family: mother, father, ten brothers and sisters and one sister-in-law. I asked him if he would prefer to have his own house to live with his wife. He said, no, he liked living with his family now, and besides, he still had too much to learn from his father, about customs, traditions and how to manage a household. Plus, he couldn't afford his own home.
I asked him if he and his fourteen roommates ever got tired of living so closely with each other. He said, no, but it would be better to have two floors, so they could sleep on the top floor, and live on the bottom floor. Now they just
have one big room, just one floor. At night, they partition off the corners in to four sleeping rooms. During the day, the room is used for everything.
Unbelievable; the guy doesn’t complain, just mentions that it’d be better if there was another floor! He’s probably never known it any other way, so living closely with so many people is normal to him. I felt funny thinking about him with fourteen roommates when I went home at night to a friend’s giant house that I was house sitting alone.
Over lunch another day, I discovered his wife was only fifteen years old. In Hmong culture here, it is still very common for women to marry extremely young, to men ten-fifteen years older than themselves. Traditionally, they have very big families, so they need a very healthy wife that can start young. His mother, the mother of ten children, is 37. Thirty-seven!! And I was speaking to her twenty-four year old son. His father is 50. I mentioned that I would get in trouble in the US if I tried to marry a fifteen-year old. But now that I lived in Laos, I told him, maybe it was my
big chance to do so. (Just kidding!)
I asked my co-worker why he wanted to get married to a woman so young. He said she wanted to marry him, because he was handsome. He said she had finished high school. And now she stayed home with his family and parents and took care of all the household tasks. What a different life for this husband and wife- one speaks perfect English and works all day with foreigners, while the other stays at home in the house, in the village, and speaks no English. He said they would wait to have children, and when they did, have only 2 or 3. As he would not be a farmer, like his parents were, he did not need to have a lot of children. His parents were originally opium farmers, but when the government banned that, they switched to growing rice and corn. Six years ago, they moved down from the mountains to live near Luang Prabang, and now they sew traditional Hmong products to sell at the night market in town. But one son works at OckPopTok and speaks perfect English. Another son speaks perfect Chinese. And still another son is
fluent in Japanese. Not bad. The Hmong are known in Laos for being very, very hardworking, and for being happy to sacrifice, wear old clothes, live twenty to a house, ride a bicycle, to ensure themselves a better future. The main Lao ethnic majority are known for being somewhat complacent, happy to get by with what they have already, preferring to spend their money now on the newest motorbike or cellphone model. It's the young Hmong people that pack the free learning centers and libraries.
I have a friend who works at a massage shop in town. She and twenty-one other masseurs hang around the shop all day, awaiting customers. In the high season, they might each do four or five massages a day. In the low season, they might not get a massage for days. Maybe one or two customers will come in each day, and the rotation has to go through 21 other staff members before it’s their turn again. They just lie around the place, taking naps, playing cards, snacking. It seems like they would be better off going to work someplace else, but in reality, they have a pretty cushy job. They could work someplace
Burning Garbage by a Temple
People don't yet understand the problem with burning plastic. They need to get rid of their trash, so sometimes they burn it. It stinks! else, where they’d have to actually work all day, and make $1-$2 a day. Or they could sleep and do nothing at the massage shop, and then do maybe one hour of work, and make about $1. They are paid only when they do a massage, 10,000 kip, a little over $1, so their boss loses nothing in keeping them all on. My friend’s family lives about 8 miles out of town and she doesn’t have a motorbike, so she and her sister, who also works there, often sleep at the shop. It’s basically a second home to them, so they’d be very unlikely to leave to look for better work, if they could find it. As an interesting side note, my friend speaks terrific English, learned completely from conversing with people while giving massages over the past 9 years. Not one of the other masseurs can speak English, including the boss.
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Frankie
non-member comment
Welcome Back, Britt!
It's nice to see you back to writing blogs, I really miss reading your wonderful and informative blogs! I am happy to hear that you've found a new employer in Luang Prabang. I just hope to see you again on my next trip to Laos! Take care.