A clash of spirits
Christians are bringing development to the far North, but the Lua people fear their traditional animistic way of life is under threat
The houses of the Christians stand in stark contrast to the rest of the households where the roofs are thatched with cogon grass. Located on the lower end of a mountain range in the remote North, the homes of the converts are equipped with television sets and have roofs of corrugated iron that glisten silver in the sun, which are forbidden under animistic Lua beliefs that centre on spirits.
That 38 residents of Ban Pa Kam have converted to Christianity in the past six years has put pressure on village chief Kam Jaiping, who is struggling to preserve what many believe is one of the last villages with remnants of the original Lua identity.
“The old and new beliefs cannot coexist,” Mr Kam, 37, said in central Thai with a faint hint of a northern accent.
Missionaries from the Baptist Church first arrived six years ago in Ban Pa Kam, located in the remote mountainous district of Bo Kluea, across the Mekong river from Luang Prabang in Laos. Nowadays, only two visit on a weekly basis.
“They want to come ‘up here’, but most of us don’t want them to bother the ‘top zone,’ ” Mr Kam said.
Segregation is apparent through the language Mr Kam uses. The Christians are the ones “down there”, while the rest of the population are “up here”.
“People forget their feet,” he muttered under his breath, twisting the Thai proverb wua leum
teen, or “a cow that forgets its feet”, to mean a person who distances themselves from their roots or origins. “People who leave their brothers and sisters behind are those who forget their own feet.”
CUT OFF FROM THE WORLD
In 2003, HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn visited Ban Pa Kam on a helicopter to observe their way of life, but a gravel road leading to the village was not built until last year. Even with a new road, the 7km path from the main road at Bansawa School to the village takes about 40 minutes on a pickup truck. Before the construction, it would take an hour and a half to two hours for locals to walk the path.
The two-metre-wide road means that only one car can pass through at a time, although cars are hardly a common sight, apart from when nearby residents volunteer to drive tourists to the village for a visit. The path is so bumpy, and at times so steep, that regular vehicles are warned not to take the risk.
The Lua people are a minority group native to Laos, although there is now a sizeable community living in Thailand. The Lua of Nan province mostly live on the mountains of the Thai-Laos border, in Bo Kluea district.
Anthropologist Cholthira Satyawadhna recorded that in 1987 there were 146 Lua communities with a population of 28,516, comprising 51.7% of highlanders in Nan. Now, the population has grown to at least 35,000, according to the most recent research available.