Laos Trekking and the Hill Tribes

We spent the last two days hiking through the Lao jungle in order to experience the traditional life styles of the Khamu and Hmong minority people. These villages were deep in the jungle and often times high up on the mountains. This meant that we were required to saddle up one more time for a mountain trek. The difference between this trek and Nepal was the altitude. But Lao trekking provided its own challenges. Many times the trail, if you could call it a trail, seemed to take the shortest route to the top or bottom of the mountain. Switchbacks seem to not have made it to Laos yet. Often times we were just bush whacking our way through the bamboo forests and river valleys. Despite the blistered feet and sore legs we made it to all the villages we planned on seeing. We even spent the night in a traditional village that was probably the most remote place I have been in my entire life.

Experiencing the older children taking care of the home duties as all of the adults went off to work in the fields really opened my eyes. Western cultures really do shelter children, when in other parts of the world it is not uncommon to have an eight year old taking care of three younger children. Also, the younger children are around knives and fire all day long without adult supervision. I guess that just means they are forced to grow up quicker than we are. Especially when most of the girls in the village are married by the age of 14. Life in the village was very simple but involved constant hard work. The rice and animals were in constant need of attention. When villagers did have a few minutes to rest almost everyone worked on weaving baskets or fixing tools. They are very resourceful and used almost everything they found in the jungle. They even used old bomb metal fragments to make their tools and utilized a old mortar shell as an anvil. We found most of the hard labor was the women's responsibility. When we inquired why, our guide informed us that men have such a shorter life expectancy and it is feared if they do more work they might die even sooner. His explanation of the difference in life expectancy (45-55 for men & 60-70 for women) was that women get to change their blood via birth or monthly menstrual cycles and the men are stuck with the same blood. Quite interesting!