The floor’s cement, the walls are wooden planks. A gong
bangs, a horn’s wails, and there’s a heavy chanting passing around. Dig the guy
dragging on what can only be called a bamboo tobacco bong. I’m in a Hmong village
about 10 km’s outside of my town, and tonight we’re praying to the Old Gods.
You can see posters of them on the wall. They’re wearing
stately Chinese robes and bare human forms, excluding the ones with green or
blue skin. Some of the Hmong worshippers sport traditional clothing over
T-Shirts and jean, the silver jewelry jangling while they sway and pray.
The village’s name is Ban Nam Gohn, which translates into
River Bend Village. Hmong have a long history of working silver, and some
enterprising Bangkokians send gold to be shaped in this village. They practice
a version of the Dao religion, and have posters with Chinese characters hanging
next to the gods. I think this is part of the reason my host dad has brought me
here tonight. He practices Buddhism, but feels a strong connection to his
Chinese heritage. He’s officially Thai, and would no doubt call himself that,
but I still get the feeling he finds a kindred spirit in the ambiguous
nationality of the Hmong people.
Tonight is more than just a religious gathering, and
arguably it serves more of a social purpose. Men talk their patriarchal
business while women titter in the corner and serve food. It’s revealed that I
speak Thai, and soon I’m chatting with some of the men. Their first language is
Hmong, but most speak Thai or the Passa-Muang (local northern dialect), which I
speak a bit of. A few even speak broken English, having spent time in the
Sates. One of them asks about how much it would cost him to fly to Sacramento
and see his daughter’s family. His face falls when I give him the lowest reasonable
estimate I can.
Outside of the makeshift temple, Thailand is raging. You’ve
probably heard something about the protests, and I wrote about marching with
them over hear. That’s a thick issue to tackle, and the simplest summary is
this: both sides are corrupt, both sides are led by some very power-hungry
people, and most of their supporters don’t understand the issues at hand. But
the government supports democracy and the protestors are interfering with the
election, so that tips my support to the government.
That same election is happening tonight. Voting was pretty
easy in my town, seeing as most everyone is a Red-Shirt and supports the
government. In the south polls are being blocked off, and Bangkok is in a state-of-emergency/state-of-mess
right now. But it’s easy to forget that in Ban Nam Gohn. The people live
quietly, loosely attached to Nan, much less Bangkok. They carry a religion
separate from the rest of Thailand, they have their own (backwards) standards on
how to treat women, and they speak their own language.
I won’t say that this detachment from the broader world is always
a good thing. But it’s a more than reasonable stance for these people. They
don’t care about Bangkok power struggles because they’re unaffected. The world
is only moving closer together, and there will come day when they will need to
care.
