Lahu New Year

This was the second time I have gone to the Lahu village for New Year. So far, it was one of my more enjoyable trips to the village. I took a friend for her first village trip in Thailand and Eric & Gabe stayed at home. We (and everyone else in Gabe's class) were invited by Joshua and Somallay as their son, David, is in Gabe's class. Our home base was the house of Joshua's sister (standing next to Joshua in the picture). Half the village were related to Joshua. Joshua is the youngest of 12 or 13 children and it is only recently that a family of that size is no longer the norm in Lahu culture. That means that in every Lahu village we have visited everyone we talk to seems to be somehow related to Joshua. We had a really great time with Joshua's family and our other friends. Joshua spent time telling us his life story. It was amazing to me that 25 years ago, Joshua and Eric couldn't have been living more different lives. Joshua was a young jungle man without any sort of education and living at subsistence. Eric was a boy growing up in university town on the other side of the world. Yet 25 years later our sons are together in the same kindergarten. Amazingly, Joshua began attending school at 20, learned Thai well enough to graduate from Thai high school and then went on to learn English well enough to study at seminary in Singapore.

Anyway, one interesting aspect of this village visit was that while we were there, a short-term team from Australia came to set up a clinic. The whole town was dressed in their traditional holiday outfits (as you can see from the photo). These costumes seemed to make the team assume that they were talking to uneducated yokels. I was sitting by Somollay and a woman came up and started talking to her saying "I don't speak Lahu, but I have this book about the four spiritual laws and I'll speak very slowly." Wow, I was really annoyed. Somollay is studying for her master's degree in linguistics and speaks quite a few languages, including English, very well. She is far more intelligent than I could ever hope to be. I don't know how Somollay was feeling, but I eventually managed to tell this woman about Somollay's education and she was amazed and much more respectful after that. I have to be careful about my attitude toward short-termers.

Just one thing to point out in the photo: The woman second from right is wearing Somollay's wedding dress. It's hard to see from the picture, but it was a beautiful dress made all by hand. Somollay, who is pregnant (on the far left) was quite annoyed at have to wear an "old woman's dress" instead this year.