The Life of Tribal Life
The areas around Phongsali are home to many different ethnic groups – but getting to their areas is quite difficult. Roads can be very poor, and in many places there are no roads at all
The main inhabitants of the Phongsali region and its neighbouring villages are from the Phunoi people.
A visit to these villages is like viewing life as it was many years ago. In the Akha villages, fabrics are coloured with natural dyes. Coloured plants are mixed into water, and the textiles are dyed in the water.
Many of the native people in Laos’s mountain regions intensely dislike being photographed
However, the shyness of these Akha women about photography melts away when they want to sell some souvenirs
Mountain village of the Akha people.
Many of the villages located in the mountains have no roads suitable for cars at all. Goods are carried by hand along footpaths, or in some places you can get there by motorbike.
The Akha villages are mostly further up the mountains, while the fields they till are in the foothills. Every day the villages descend to the fields to work them. A part of what they grow is taken to the market for sale.
The majority of people in the mountain villages follow animist traditions of belief.
The head of a dog – an animist tribute
Agriculture and raising pets for sale are the two main sources of income for people in the distant villages.
Many places are off the electricity grid. The government has attempted to relocate the people closer to towns – but the plan has largely failed.
An overnight stop in an Akha village, in the home of the Village Elder. An extended family of seventeen people live here, from different generations – only quite recently there were 27 people in the family. By evening the women prepare supper over an open fire, while the menfolk drink rice wine in a different place close by, and chat around the fire.
To mark the rare arrival of a foreign tourist, the Village Elder switched on a TV and DVD, with electricity from a petrol generator. It’s almost impossible to describe the emotions of the children and adults who watched the screen – probably watching television for the first time.
Very few of the village women can read or write, or even count. They only recognise the appearance of low-denomination banknotes. However, their children now go to a small school.
