Laos Essential Artistry

Lao Favorite Photo Series - What do you see?

I took this photo in Sam Tai in Huaphan Province as we were exploring the old village of Sam Tai and the trunk of this tree caught my eye. Really caught my eye! What do you see?

US Embassy in Laos Gives $16,500 to AFESIP Laos (Acting for Women in Distressing Circumstances)

Below is an article from today's online Vientiane Times regarding AFESIP. We have written on our Laos Essential Artistry website about the importance of giving back and we quote Oprah Winfrey who said that ""Life is a reciprocal exchange. To move forward you have to give back" ~  from her Stanford Commencement Address, June, 2008 and how we support two projects, Big Brother Mouse (literacy) and AFESIP. We sell silk Dok Champa flowers made by girls who are being helped by AFESIP. It's a great project and we are excited that the US Embassy has chose to financially help AFESIP. We wrote an earlier post on AFESIP here.

Human trafficking prevention program gains US support

"The US embassy to Laos yesterday provided US$16,500 to the Acting for Women in Distressing Circumstances (AFESIP) project in Laos to assist in the fight against human trafficking.

The signing ceremony was held at AFESIP's office in Vientiane , and inked by Country Project Director of AFESIP Dr Didier Bertrand and the US Deputy Chief of Mission , Mr Peter Haymond.

“The grant from the US for art therapy and awareness-raising will be set up with immigration and customs regional teams working with children. There will be two courses next month for officials on the prevention of human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of children,” Dr Bertrand said.

He said art therapy could be used in an innovative way both as a healing technique and for awareness raising.

Residents of shelters and recently reintegrated victims and survivors will join together to draw and paint to share messages with their families and the community.

In early 2010, they will use clay sculpture techniques as they work with a clinical psychologist to express their feelings in three dimensional productions, he said.

“We hope to set up exhibitions in Vientiane and in Savannakhet and Luang Prabang provinces. Details need to be finalised with those who produced the materials. We know there should be a mobile exhibition, probably at first in a district in Luang Prabang,” he said.

He said Laos was one of those nations that suffered from human trafficking, especially of young girls.

Girls were sometimes lured to work in bars, or as cleaners and then forced to offer sexual services. This could happen within the country or, more commonly, in another country.

“These girls do not know what is going to happen to them. They think they will work cleaning tables or serving in a bar. Then they are forced to become involved in the sexual trade, yet continue to suffer on a low income while the owners of these establishments gain twice as much profit or more from each transaction,” Dr Bertrand said.

“We are looking to help young girls, especially of the ages of 14 to 16, to understand the dangers of society before allowing them to work in other places.”

He said his organisation was working with Savannakhet and Champassak provinces, where police had been very active.

Champassak had nearly eradicated the situation of underage girls working in bars, because police constantly checked identification cards. Meanwhile, the situation in Savannakhet is also improving.

“By increasing cooperation with local authorities, we hope to find no more children in bars and other such places in Laos ,” he said.

There are many ways to help the victims, he said, such as punishing those who bought sex with children, ensuring law enforcement was more effective, offering women more creative jobs and giving them the chance to access education and vocational skills.

Unfortunately, trafficking in persons continued to harm people around the world in both developed and developing countries, Mr Haymond said.

“It is a problem that the US government is committed to help solve. This grant is for a new project to use art as a way to help victims of trafficking to cope with their experiences. We are proud to support this project, which will operate in Vientiane and Savannakhet.”

The US embassy would continue to work with the Lao government and international organisations in Laos to fight human trafficking, he said.

Human trafficking is the second-largest form of organised crime in the world. UNICEF statistics estimate that every year, more than one million young children and women are sold into sexual slavery and exposed to physical violence, abuse, rape and conditions of extreme physical and psychological cruelty."

By Panyasith Thammavongsa
(Latest Update October 29, 2009)

Favorite Laos Photo (Series) ~ A Pastel Rainbow of Silk Threads

Aren't these silk threads gorgeous? And they're all naturally-dyed! Just think of the work that goes into dyeing each batch of silk for each of the different colors. How many colors do you see here? The Muang Vaen weavers are so amazing, just some of the most incredibly talented artists in Laos. We find this photo seductive (we have it up on our living room wall) because of the juxtaposition of the unwoven mélange of supplementary discontinuous weft threads lying across the woven threads. Mesmerizing!!!

Our Highest ranking Youtube video of 3 young Hmong girls singing Kwv Txiahj

We hope our name, Laos Essential Artistry doesn't imply that our only focus is on woven Lao textiles, though they are our what we specialize in. But we also are interested in all things Laos, and our Hmong storycloths are one thing people constantly are asking about. Hmong storycloths are a beautiful and artistic representation of Hmong traditions and the singing poetry of these three young girls represents a dying tradition. We have had over 45,000 people view this one video and reading their comments is extremely interesting and have given us some powerful insights into what the Hmong here in America value. You can read all the comments if you want by visiting our YouTube channel, or we've included a few of our favorites here.

• "woowowowow.. man.. these girls are so talented.. I might have my phD in physics but I can never sing like that...I wished they can get a formal education."

• "I was very surprised seeing those beautiful kids. I was born in VietNam and was a part of the majority there. I used to think about Hmong people in a completely different way, well, until now. This makes me understand how ignorant we are when we're not exposed to other cultures."

• "Kheej kawg li lawm nawb! Tus siab tias nyob deb heev txhawb tsis tau kom mus tau zoo tshaj no ntxiv. It's amazing how far Hmong has changed, though I am proud of those who still keeps our culture strong."

Video of Nuaykeo Weavers in Sam Neua, Laos

These are two short videos taken of weavers at the Nuaykeo Gallery in Sam Neua, Laos where we acquire some truly gorgeous textiles. As you can see this gallery is "pristine" and everything is done with the utmost attention to detail. It's very different from the reality of weavers in villages like Muang Vaen or Sam Tai. Here it's about business and meeting very high standards as their main customer is a Singaporean who owns several galleries in Singapore and features the textiles from Nuaykeo. We feel fortunate that we have gotten to know the owners and carry some of their finest silk textiles.

The weaver in the second video is weaving using a tapestry style of weave. In this video the weaver is selecting colored yarns (different shades of green) that are then inserted into the warp in small sections making patterns or images. This flatweave has a discontinuous weft, which generally does not extend from selvedge to selvedge and the warp is a hidden structure that does not play a role in the surface design. Often times tapestry designs are referred to as "flowing water" or "lightning" designs.
Here's the link to our Nuaykeo Gallery Textiles:

Yin Sibai Saonaa

In looking through some of our photos showing various rice activities I couldn't help but think of the classic Lao song, Yin Sabai Saonaa, "The Contented Rice Farmer." I'm not sure how many Lao rice farmers are truly contented, but if all goes well, no droughts, no floods, few weeds, few snails, few rodent/insect pests, plenty of labor to plant, maintain and harvest the rice, then I think there definitely is contentment. Rice, is life in Asian countries and to know in whatever way one is an important part of that cycle, can provide contentment. And of course the song celebrates Lao patriotism and reflects a socialist viewpoint, but regardless, the song has a great melody and is loved by the Lao people.

In the Animoto video we made above using some of our photos from Laos we use Yin Sabai Saonaa as the musical track. Do you like it?

You can ss our set of photos from Laos showing a wide variety of rice activities on our Flickr channel here.

In reading the book Rice in Laos published by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research I came across the lyrics to Yin Sabai Saonaa and will include them in this post along the a popular version of the song. Enjoy!

Yin Sabai Saonaa (The Contented Rice Farmer)

We are rice farmers’ children
We take plows and buffaloes to the fields.
We look for food in the forests.
We look for food in the forests.

After sunset, we go home.
Everyone in our village is very happy and contented.
Very happy, very contented.
In our village, there is rice and there are fish in the rice fields,
When the wind blows, we have fresh air,
Contented, contented farmer; contented, contented farmer.

In the afternoon, we ride wild buffaloes,
We sing songs, dance, and play the “khaen.”
We urge everyone to come together to play, work, and develop the nation.
Contented, contented farmer; contented, contented farmer.

The direction of our lives is a happy thing.
In the fields, our skin becomes dark, but we are still happy to work for our nation.
To work to fight hunger and poverty.
Contented, contented farmer; contented, contented farmer.


We are proud to use our work to develop our nation,
We have buffaloes as powerful friends,
Our leaders direct us on the right path,
Contented, contented farmer; contented, contented farmer.

 

Lao Sinhs Need to be custom measured and sewn

We often get asked if we have sinhs pre-sewn and ready to be worn. Unfortunately that's not the way it works. Yes, in the old days women would wrap the sinh (material) around their waist and then tuck it in or wrap a cloth belt around the sinh to hold it up. An example is in the photo above of Bai dressing in the traditional clothes (sinh and blouse) of a Tai Wat woman, a small tribal Tai group located in northern Huaphan Province (somewhat similar to the Tai Dam style).

But for many, many years sinhs have been custom sewn and it is crucial that the seamstress has to take three measurements of the woman who is going to wear the sinh so the sinh will fit correctly and look stylish, without wrinkles and mis-matched patterns. You can see in the photo we use on our Lao Sinh Section that the sinhs of the two young women on the right display perfectly, while the one on the left shows some wrinkles, which ideally, if sewn correctly, will not show.

In the three photos below you see Bai being measured for a sinh that the woman will sew for Bai. The three crucial measurements are the waist, hips and length, which vary of course with each individual.

Our hand-woven silk fabric is beautiful in its own right and the fabric doesn't just have to be used for sinhs. The average sinh fabric length is call in Lao "pheun neung" with one "pheun" being about 30 x 70 inches. But if you want the sinh fabric to be sewn into a sinh for you then you'll have to locate a seamstress that will sew the sinh for you

We had a manual for sewing sinhs translated into English this last June in Vientiane and will be referring to it in future posts.

 

 

Laos Hmong Storycloth Description

 

We recently sold the above storycloth and the person who bought it asked if we could describe what was being depicted in the storycloth so we decided to define areas and activities within the cloth we thought needed explanation, numbered them and below we provide an explanation of what's happening within each numbered area. Of course we encourage you to check out the variety of Hmong storycloths we carry on our Yahoo store site.

 Area 1:  Here a Hmong woman is picking corn against a backdrop of mountains. Corn is an important crop for the Hmong, and in fact for all Lao, and they use corn both for eating (always steamed) and after grinding to feed their pigs (see Area 10). The backdrop of the mountains is important because when the Hmong migrated south from China beginning in the 1700’s they settled in the mountains and have been classified by the Lao government as Lao Soung, the Lao of the mountaintops (along with the Mien and several other ethnic groups).

Area 2:  Collecting wood. Here a Hmong man is collecting wood, though often it is children and especially teenage girls who are given the responsibility to go out and collect wood. Sometimes it means collecting dead wood on the ground, while often it means chopping down small trees or splitting small logs. Wood is collected during the dry season, from about January through early May, or whenever the rainy season begins. Even where there is electricity, almost all cooking is done over wood fires (food tastes better that’s cooked over wood fires they say).

Areas 3, 5, 16:  For the Hmong their mountain rice fields and gardens are often one to three hours journey by foot and so they spend a lot of time on trails and will carry back harvested vegetables, rice panicles, etc. in bamboo packs on their backs and sometimes on horses. In area 5 the Hmong are obviously traveling to their gardens and mountain rice fields and in Area 3 and Area 16 they are coming back to their villages with their baskets/packs full.

Area 4:  Planting rice. The Hmong and most rural Lao living in mountainous areas (80% of Laos is mountainous) plant rice similarly to what one sees on this story cloth. Traditionally the men will have a pole where they poke holes into the ground and the women will drop in a handful of seeds. Sometimes there will be a large group like this, sometimes just a couple by themselves. On some of our storycloths you can see the fallen trees they’ve cut down and after burning the cleared land (cut and burn/swidden agriculture) the bigger trees and stumps are just left in place and planted around.

Area 6:  I don’t think the Lao or Hmong could live without hot peppers. Most rural Hmong and Lao rarely eat meat and hot pepper provides a spiciness to otherwise “bland” rice when it is made into some kind of jeaow (a mortared mixture of hot pepper and salt at its simplest and then often with added ingredients like cilantro, fish sauce, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc ). Hot peppers are grown in these remote gardens and if they plant enough of them then they might be able to sell the extra for a little extra cash. There are lots of different hot pepper varieties grown in Laos, but most are similar to what we know in the states as the Thai hot pepper.

Area 7: Chicken or Pigeon House. Chickens are raised most often for use in ceremonies and as a source of meat to be offered to special guests. And occasionally they're butchered for an average family meal. The Hmong also like to raise pigeons, but I'm less sure about how they're used. My wife says we’ve eaten pigeon meat in her village (she’s Lao).

Area 8:  Raised wooden storage unit to keep rice or corn dry and safe. Sometimes the legs are made from cluster bomb canisters in regions where the bombing was heavy during the Secret War.

Area 9:  Hmong houses are built on the ground with dirt flooring. Mien houses are similar, unlike Lao and Lao Theung houses which are built on posts, with enough space underneath the houses for women to weave, or to keep their animals at night.

Area 10:  Here a Hmong man and woman are grinding corn on a grindstone to make a gruel they can feed the pigs or they will use it to cook for a meal. Most Hmong villages will have at least one grind stone like this and I’ve also seen them grinding soy beans and have some great photos taken in a remote Hmong village in Luang Prabang Province I’ll post on our blog sometime.

Area 11 and Area 14 are connected: In Area 14  they are using a rice pounder to separate the rice hulls from the grains of rice. The woman in this storycloth keeps turning over all the rice until all the hulls are separated. They then take the rice and rice hulls that are now mixed together and the woman in Area 11 is sifting the rice so that the hulls fall on the ground and then the rice is left in the tray. They also are able to make the broken rice grains gather toward the front of the tray where they are removed to a bowl and later fed to the chickens as the boy is doing next to the woman.

Area 12: Feeding pigs: Here the Hmong woman is probably pouring the mixture they’ve cooked with the tubers they’ve grown in their gardens and dug out of the ground when they’re up to 18 inches long and three or four inches wide, plus they will add rice hulls. Most Hmong and Lao families have pigs which they will use for sacrificing for ceremonies and parties and to sell when they need money.

Area 13:   Here the Hmong woman has dug up tubers that she is cutting up to be put in a pot where they’ll cook the tubers in the afternoon over a fire and then when it cools they’ll add rice hulls and feed to the pigs.

Area 15:  Pineapples:  Pineapples are raised best in mountainous areas of Laos, and although they can be picked anytime, the main harvest season begins in the rainy season around June. Pineapples grown in Southeast Asia are incredibly delicious and sweet, with none of the sourness Americans are used to with pineapples shipped by air from Hawaii.

Area 17:  Mother taking care of child in field dwelling. Because rice farms and gardens are often far away from villages the Hmong will build small structures that provide shade and where they can rest and eat while taking a break from the demanding work out in the field. Often time older siblings will take care of any babies, but perhaps here they’re out weeding, or helping plant or harvest the rice…

Area 18:  Here a man and woman are hoeing weeds in a mountain rice farm and/or garden. Once the rainy season begins the weeds grow as fast as the rice plants and the Hmong have to be vigilant in keeping the weeds at bay so the rice can grow tall. A mountain rice field will be weeded usually two times during the growing cycle, sometimes three times.

Area 19:  Feeding horses. Horses don’t seem to be as common as they used to, when roads were non-existent or mud tracks at best and the easiest way to transport goods was by horseback.  Here the horses are being fed stems from rice that has already been harvested or some kind of grass.

Area 20:  Here a man and woman are in their garden picking long green beans that you can see that are grown next to a pole where they can twine around the pole as they grow just like our green bean plants do here in the states. The Hmong and Lao like to pound them in a mortar with fish sauce, hot peppers, garlic, and lime juice and then a variety of other ingredients can be added depending on the season, availability and taste preferences, like small tomatoes or carrots. And if they let the beans stay on the plant they’ll turn yellow and then they will take the seeds and steam them (like rice is steamed) and eat them. They are considered very delicious, sort of like eating peanuts.

Area 21:  In area 21 the rice is being harvested with a sickle (everything is done by hand) and then is laid out in small groups in the field to dry. After a few days the rice is then thrashed in a wide variety of ways, sometimes the panicles are hit against board set up in the rice field where the grains come off the panicles and gather in a pile on the ground (probably some kind of burlap-type fabric they make by weaving bamboo strips together is laid down first). The rice grains are then put in a basket and when there is a moderate breeze the men will climb a ladder and pour out the rice and the empty hulls will float away and the solid grains of rice encased in the hull will fall straight to the ground. These are then gathered to be hulled as seen in Area 14 using the rice pounder.

Area 22:  In this area the woman is picking eggplant. There are many kinds of eggplants that are grown in Laos. They have purple and green eggplants, some long and narrow like cucumbers and some that look like our traditional eggplants as seen in this storycloth. Actually most eggplants grown in Laos are the size of small and medium-sized tomatoes. They can be eaten raw or cooked. They are really good when they are made into a jaeow as explained in Area 6 with hot peppers.

Area 23:  Cooking over a fire. For the Hmong and most Lao, cooking is always done over a wood fire. Sometimes they’ll use charcoal that’s made by villagers, and if they had electricity and the money to buy a small stove, they could cook on a stove, but most Hmong and Lao will tell you that food tastes very different when cooked on a stove and they prefer food cooked on a fire.

Area 24:  Here they are picking corn and cucumbers. In Laos this is what they call the “farm cucumber.” It’s grown and picked when it’s big and people like this one because it has a lot of flesh and the skin is not too thick. They love to eat it raw and like to dip the slices in salt and it’s also used in the kind of salad where the ingredients are mortared similar to the papaya salad once can get easily in Thai restaurants.

Area 26:  Here the man is cutting a bunch of bananas. The bananas are grown in people’s gardens and one tree will yield one bunch of bananas and then you cut it down and many small banana trees will sprout from the base of the big banana tree. The Hmong and Lao prize the banana tree just not for it’s fruit, but the leaves are highly valued for cooking and wrapping food and using in ceremonies.

Area 27:  Here the woman is stacking the harvested rice panicles in a rounded pile to dry before the next process of threshing the rice as seen in Area 21.

If anyone has anything to add please leave a comment. We're always ready to learn more!

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A Favorite Photo from Laos (On-going Series)

Favorite photo time! I think all photographers get goosebumps when they see monks and constantly are seeing one compelling composition after another. And often when you look at a photo, like the one above, the viewer doesn't know the story behind the photo, and there usually is one, and one of the advantages of this blog is being able to tell the story! In this instance, this photo was taken in a small wat in the village of Muang Vaen where some of our most beautiful Lao textiles are woven.

Sometimes it's difficult to find the time to actually leisurely walk through a village when you're there for "business," but we always try to find the time because you'll never know what you will see and discover. It's really what I enjoy the best. When we walked by the building above, the sleeping quarters for the couple of monks for this wat, I saw this monk look out the window opening and then disappear. My wife was talking to the other monk who was on the porch by the front door where this monk then joined the other monk. I kept thinking, wow, that window opening is a great frame for the monk, but how am I going to get him to come back? Sometimes it's easy to just let it slide and move on, but I couldn't pass this up so I asked Bai if she could ask the monk if he would come back and peer out the window. Sometimes they are shy or just don't want their photo taken, but most monks will accommodate to "visitors" and this one quickly went back to this window where I took several shots. I would have liked to see him smile a little, but he wouldn't "nyeem" (Lao word for smile), but I still really like the shot.

I wonder what is he thinking?

UXO YouTube Video in Laos

Part of what Laos Essential Artistry is about if "Giving Back" and one of the causes we support is an awareness of the huge UXO problem in Laos. We have had emotional meetings with families devastated by the death of a family member by UXO and have talked at length with people from MAG (Mines Advisory Group) and PCL (Phoenix Clearance Limited) two of many groups, NGO and commercial, involved with clearing UXO from heavily bombed land in both northern and southern Laos. On this blog, under our page on "People Making a Difference" we highlight the work of Jim Harris and his NGO, We Help War Victims, who works tirelessly to help villages and people living daily with the threat of UXO.

We are writing this post now because we just became aware of an excellent video on YouTube that clearly communicates the problems Laos faces with UXO.  The video appears below.