-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.zolatimes.com/V2.43/pageone.html <A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V2.43/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City Times - Volume 2 Issue 43</A> The Laissez Faire City Times December 21, 1998 - Volume 2, Issue 43 Editor & Chief: Emile Zola ----- Travel in Laos: Topless Women & Burning Chickens by Richard S. Ehrlich Asia Correspondent BA WAI GAU, Laos -- In the center of a sharp-peaked hut, an Akha tribesman grasps a dead chicken by the neck and dangles it over a campfire, allowing flames to lick the bird's flesh. This post-plucking pyre sterilizes the chicken's skin, and incinerates leftover feathers. Dogs wander into the hut, and sniff their way along the flat, stone hearth, while dinner is prepared in traditional Akha ("AH-kah") style. A topless woman, snug in a waist-high sarong with a turban quickly tied through her hair, bends over a huge rattan scoop, which offers billowing white rice. Nearby, in dimmer light, youngsters chop vegetables and edible forest plants. The hut -- made of wooden beams, rattan walls, and bamboo poles -- is almost invisible in the darkness, except for the cooking fire and a few candles. Blackened meat, hanging from a ceiling hook, is smoked in the stove's rising, spark-studded soot. Underneath the stilt-legged hut, pigs eagerly root for any food or garbage being tossed through the floor's cracks. Traditional Crops: Rice, Corn, Opium Akha, Lahu, Hmong, and this region's other tribes, are believed to have wandered down from Tibet and southern China into the forested mountains of northern Burma, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Akhas built their villages at elevations of 3,500 to 4,000 feet, a height which bolstered their security against potential enemies and enabled them to grow rice, corn, opium and other traditional crops. Akhas are also keen hunters, trapping small edible animals. Delicacies include iridescent beetles and dog meat. Larger game involves tribesmen hunting with machetes, light shotguns, or US-made M-16 assault rifles. Meals, including tonight's, are washed down with water or tea. Off-limits to foreigners for decades, Laos recently opened its countryside to tourists, including tribal zones, often referred to as "minority and ethnic areas." As a result, you can now fly to a nearby airport, taxi to a town in the foothills, and start trekking virtually anywhere you like. One of the most rewarding treks among the tribes begins near Luang Nam Tha, capital of northeast Nam Tha province, from where a two-hour taxi brings you to the rustic outpost of Muang Sing. After gearing up for a forest trek, simply wake up early one morning and stroll out of Muang Sing, north towards the Chinese border. The dirt path, amid lush green tranquility, winds through villages where tribes open their well-constructed huts to visitors. Tourists are offered a mat for sleeping on the floor, and an invitation to join a family dining on a rudimentary cuisine of rice and what little food is available. Some foreigners marvel how most tribal huts are devoid of plastic items or commercial name-brand packaging. This also means toilet facilities are non-existent, so visitors copy villagers and wander into foliage to perform their ablutions. Though the mountains of northern Laos create a rugged border along China and Burma, many trails are relatively easy to hike, with no ropes or vertical scaling required. It is advisable to employ a local resident as a guide -- no matter how many days you plan -- to translate, navigate from village to village, and help with emergencies. Laos is the size of Great Britain, but populated by only about five million people. Listed as one of the "least developed" nations on earth, landlocked Laos ripples with steep mountains. The surface flattens only to create a small, central Plain of Jars, and a sliver along the Mekong River, though some expansive low-level pockets grace the south. This mostly peasant nation skipped the Industrial Revolution of the West and has no railroads and few highways. More than half the population is scattered across mountains, and about 70 ethnic groups add to the variety. As a result of their remoteness, these minority tribes are often aced out of power by so-called Lowland Lao who live in the flatlands, dominate politics and the economy, and claim to project a more than 50 percent bulk of the nation's population. Gates Against Bad Ghosts Most Laotians worship, and tremble in, a religious brew of Buddhism and Animist spirit cults. Akha and other tribes protect their land and homes with totems, magic, altars and other Animist concepts. Family and ancestors are also important in Akha spiritual life. Ancestor worship enables an Akha to proudly look at one's past generations, and estimate their total number of relatives by saying, "With a strand of hair from each ancestor, one would have to hold nine handfuls of hair." To protect oneself and one's ancestors, Akhas rely on good spirits and a pair of god-powered gates. The two wooden gates, carved only by males, are erected at the upper and lower entrance paths of each Akha village, to guard against bad ghosts. The supernatural gate -- two posts and a crossbeam -- is a portal, linking the vulnerable pod of a human village and the larger, spirit-dominated universe. As a result, the gates also act as demon-detectors, similar to a metal-detector. If an Akha has the creepy feeling that a demon is somehow hitching a ride and can't be shaken off, the tribesman can purposely walk through the village's entrance gates. The evil spirit has to leap off, because the gates are imbued with sacrifices made to appease mightier, protective forces. Acquiring gates strong enough to guard an entire village is no easy task. Every year, usually in spring, Akhas construct a new set of gates, and perform elaborate rituals, and animal sacrifices, to saturate the gates with celestial power. Gates often feature enlarged phalluses and other fertility symbols, amid hopes of a boon. After the gates are positioned, no one is allowed to touch them. Such defilement would mean new gates must be built, and another animal sacrifice performed. The totems and carvings on the gates can also symbolize terrible items which the village wants to protect itself against, such as predatory animals, weapons and other viciousness. Gates sometimes display carved, wooden weapons such as guns, grenades, and AK-47 assault rifles. Carved birds represent any troublesome, flying seed-eater. Gate ornaments include bamboo strips fashioned into a chain of circles, or starry designs. Inside a tribal hut, however, a family's personalized cluster of spirits can be symbolized by a basket hanging in a special place in the home, or a prominent wooden post deemed holy. When disease strikes an Akha, worried relatives will call a shaman to fix supernatural vexations, often with opium, bloodletting or other traditional methods, amid cryptic prayers to the families' spirit clan, and to the shaman's more masterful, paranormal forces. Akhas are identifiable by the clothing and jewelry the tribes' women wear. Elaborate headdresses, of silver coins and half-globes, are fashioned onto a conical hat, which is sprinkled with white and red buttons and beads. Some women attach a strip of monkey fur or chicken feathers. Except when sleeping, women must wear their hats at all times. Premenstrual girls get a simple cloth cap decked with a yarn pom-pom. Cowrie shells, and old coins from Burma bearing a mythical lion, are also among Akha women's favorite jewelry. Like many of the region's tribes, Akhas also use geometric designs, stars, waves and elaborate mazes as decoration for spiritual items, and on embroidered clothing. During the day, women painstakingly spin cotton into thread, and weave fabric, to create the clothes -- including multi-hued sarongs. Akhas are also famed for the big swing which they love to hoist in front of each village. An amusing ride, especially during the Swing Festival which heralds the Akha New Year, the swing is comprised of four tall saplings, jammed into the earth in a square. The saplings' tops are lashed together to form an arch. A swing dangles from the arch, which is strong enough to bear the weight of a man. Akhas in Laotian Context In the modern history of Laos, tribes' weaknesses and strengths played a major role, especially in government-versus-rebel domination over autonomous swaths and fiefdoms. French colonialists twisted Laos into a protectorate about 100 years ago, but no government was ever able to subdue the isolated, northernmost tribes. In 1953, Laos broke free and became independent. But disaffection against the US-backed royal regime helped fuel a communist rebellion. The ensuing insurgency, coupled with an expanded US-Vietnam War, resulted in lengthy, saturation bombing of Laos by the Americans. Today, many of the communist rebels who defeated the Americans in 1975 run the one-party government of Laos. Though Marxism reached some mountain villages, it was poorly understood and difficult to enforce among the tribes. Tribal culture relies on kinship, twined with household-based leadership. As a result, communism failed to convert many tribesmen. This close-knit tribal network also appears whenever a foreigner treks through the hills. After stopping at one or two villages, you may soon discover future villages are not surprised by your arrival -- having heard who you and your guide are, the route you tread, and your intentions. They will probably be more curious about what modern items you display, such as a water-pump purifier or photography equipment. Akhas are among the poorest of the poor in all nations they dwell. Mostly illiterate and subsisting on slash-and-burn farming, female's work includes numbing routines of stomping on foot-powered mortars to monotonously pound rice out of its husk. Women and children straggle up and down the dirt-hewn trekking routes, fetching drinkable water, firewood, foodstuff and anything else they can carry atop their heads. Some tourism officials worry an influx of foreigners to near-pristine regions will wreck tribal lifestyles. Though tribes are often among the most vulnerable whenever a nation rapidly modernizes, or opens to settlers, Akhas up here in Nam Tha province seem pleased to mix with exotic trekkers. One reason is necessity: distribution of goods and cash is skeletal along these twisting climbs, so tribes are interested to deal with whoever may be passing through. If you do go, at least bring some basics to provide for your needs, such as a water bottle, purifiers, first aid kit, extra food, and in winter, very warm clothes and a sleeping bag. Rain falls May to November, while the dry season stretches from December to April. About 5,000 Akha live in Laos, out of a total Akha population of 125,000. Thailand is home to 25,000, and the rest are divided between Burma and southern China, with a smattering in Vietnam. Akhas are known by a xylophonic progression of similar-sounding names: Aka, Ak'a, Aini, Ekaw, Ikaw, Ikor, Kaw, Ko, Kha Ko, Khako, and the grand three-syllable Khao Kha Ko. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Richard S. Ehrlich has a Master's Degree in Journalism from Columbia University, and is the author of the classic book of epistolary history, "HELLO MY BIG BIG HONEY!"--Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews. His web page is located at http://members.tripod.com/~ehrlich. -30- from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 2, No 43, Dec. 21, 1998 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Laissez Faire City Times is a private newspaper. Although it is published by a corporation domiciled within the sovereign domain of Laissez Faire City, it is not an "official organ" of the city or its founding trust. 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