Cat-Cat - My and Mo
10.15.2009 Greetings,
Cat-Cat village is down a long meandering rough flag stone step path, descending into vision's river, bamboo forests, rolling green hills, mountain ranges. A range of endless possibilities in an unlimited universe.
Steps lead past frail farming family bamboo homes, some with wooden siding. Women wash and dry the long streamers of blue indigo cloth used to make clothing. It stains their hands, from all the washing and dying, a dark grayish blue shade.
Naked H’mong kids play, pee, run, stare, take care of siblings. All the homes have small tables in front selling “silver” (cheap Chinese tin) jewelry, standard woven bags, wall hangings, shirts, rough hand carved stone souvenirs and trinkets.
The steps lead down into forests near a wide river and the waterfall. More shops, drinks, trinkets. Tourists from Ha Noi run around taking photos of each other with cascading water in the background.
There is a small H’mong theatre behind the shops. I wander in. A team from OCSI (Open Community Solution Investment Joint Stock Company) is filming H’mong girls and one boy dancing and playing a small mouth harp.
A group of H’mong girls sit and embroider. Boys smoke and watch the action. Everyone shifts outside where the “star” sits with two girls and they show him how to move the needle through fabric. What they do as the waterfall roars down behind them.
I visited the Chocolate & Baguette place to speak with Ms. Tao about their humanitarian work and hospitality training school. The C&B is a boutique hotel with four rooms and extensive menu in Vietnamese, French and English. The headquarters is in Ha Noi. They have long and strong connections with the French.
The hearing impaired, blind and destitute children from around Vietnam come to the Hoa Sua school for training and education in embroidery, hotel services, bakery, housekeeping and English. They return home with skills to find meaningful employment. They are empowered.
Standard operating procedure is for the young girls (I never saw any boys selling on the street) to canvas hotels and restaurants where tourists go. They wait.
Mo, 10 and My, 8, two little H’mong munchkins I remembered from yesterday waited outside near the sidewalk. My is a real street urchin wearing a dirty green t-shirt, jeans and filthy yellow perforated sandals. Everyone wears these cheap sandals except some older girls who lead treks and wear stable Teva sandals. The map is not the territory.
“Buy from me!”
“What do you have?”
My pulled out long embroidered wallets, colorful cloth wrist bands and postcards. “Look, here, cheap,” thrusting them at me. Miniature vultures descending on a hapless victim.
“Ah,” I said, laughing, “I remember you from yesterday.”
Sapa’s a small place and it doesn’t take long for all the street sellers to make your acquaintance.
“Sorry. Not interested,” I said. I walked away down stone steps. I stopped to watch men laying new stones in the stairs, looked through a rusty gate at a “museum” and turned around. The girls were coming down.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Down to the market,” said Mo.
“Ok,” I said, “let’s go together.”
Down we went past small sidewalk vendors, past the circle of grass ringed with Vietnamese blue tarps, trinkets and sleepers. Teams of H’mong and red Dzao women.
“Would you like a soda? I’m going to the market for coffee.”
“Ok, said Mo.
So we hung out together in the market I had java and they had fantastic soda in a place overlooking valleys and fog - cloud covered hills, steel blue gray and dark wisps of flying water. A watercolor heaven.
So I suggested we meet the next day for lunch in the market. They said they had a good selling day - belts, bags, purses, handiwork - how their reality is destined to be “on the street.”
How the 8-year old said she has limited opportunities for school.
“My mom said I need to make money.”
Metta.
