Sa, Mo, Mi

I rescued a brown moth from room 402 to fly free.

A white yellow dawn sun explodes over mountains. A brilliant rainbow arches over high green western hills in perfect harmony.

I met Sa, a Black Hmong woman. We walked around the cloth market discussing fabric quality.

She said, A Hmong woman in the far north mountains was kidnapped by Chinese men from Yunnan, taken over the border and forced into prostitution. When she became pregnant she was taken to a remote cabin in the mountains and kept there as a prisoner, one day she escaped with her child and returned to Sapa.

She’s the one over there crying and sewing her life story into cloth. Human trafficking is a persistent world problem.

Sa talked about the lack of Hmong shops in Sapa. We sat with mountains, sky, clouds, kids and stories.

Sa and daughter Ku

Sa’s Home

Small steps wind down steep trails. Sa identifies wild plants used for indigo colors and their clothing. The undulating terrain of rising rice terraces supports people harvesting rice. People cut, thresh, stack yellow stalks and burn them. Isolated puffs of black smoke signals wave in the valley below green forests and purple mountains. They have one crop of rice per year. The south has two.

It’s a long simple home with a dirt floor and bamboo walls. Wooden walls are expensive. The home is divided into a kitchen, main room and bedroom. The main room has a TV and DVD. Under the roof is a storage area. Outside is a water faucet, a bamboo holder for toothbrushes, a water buffalo pen, a pigpen and a writing pen. 

Imagination’s pen rearranges words. Words are masks to conceal fears of speaking the truth.  

The more words the bigger the fear.

Words hide in bamboo clouds, foliage, in flowing rivers, on slippery rocks, slithering inside important life experiences. Words form languages speaking indigo cloth, dyed in a large vat and hanging to dry on a wooden wall.

Stacked sacks of straw for winter’s feeding are ready. Twenty-five kilogram bags of rice in blue, white and orange plastic bags marked Made in Indonesia are piled in a corner. Sa’s husband drives water buffalo home.

We share a simple lunch prepared by one of Sa’s three daughters. She is 19, a mother and a trek leader speaking fluent English. Many girls marry at sweet sixteen. We share rice, tofu, greens and stories.

Cat-Cat Village, Mo and My Munchkins by Tao

Cat-Cat village is buried down a long meandering rough flag stone steep path descending to rivers and bamboo forests below rolling hills and mountains.

Steps lead past bamboo homes. Women wash and dry long streamers of blue indigo cloth for bags and clothing. It stains their hands a dark gray-blue shade. Naked Hmong kids play, pee, run, stare and take care of siblings. All the homes have tables outside selling silver, woven bags, wall hangings, shirts and hand-carved stone souvenirs.

Steps lead into forests near a wide river and a waterfall. Hanoi tourists run around taking photos of each other with roaring water in the background yelling, Look, a waterfall, Jump!

There is a small Hmong theatre behind shops. A Hanoi team from Open Community Solution Investment Joint Marxist Hit Them With A Stick Company films dancing Hmong girls.

A Hmong boy plays a small mouth harp. Hmong girls sit and embroider.

Boys smoke watching the action. Everyone shifts outside where the Hanoi dwarf star sits with two Hmong girls. They show him how to move a needle through fabric as the waterfall roars behind them. It’s the most complicated action he’s ever rehearsed.

The director yells, ACTION. The star embroiders. The girls help him.

CUT, yells the director. He gives directions.

Take two. ACTION!

Just get to the verb, said Tran.

Young girls carry baskets loaded with kindling up steep stone steps to their village home. One smiling girl hauls two gigantic logs on her bamboo basket. Her laborious elementary education hauls the world on her young back.

I visit Chocolate & Baguette 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 Hanoi. 

Hearing disadvantaged, blind and destitute children attend the Hoa Sua School for training and education in hotel services, bakery, housekeeping and English. They return home with skills to find meaningful employment. They are empowered.

Mo, 10 and My 8, two little Hmong munchkin friends work the street. My is a street urchin wearing a dirty green t-shirt, jeans and filthy yellow perforated sandals. Everyone wears these cheap sandals except older girls leading treks in stable Teva sandals.

Buy from me, she pleaded.

What do you have? She pulled out long embroidered wallets, colorful wristbands and postcards.

Look, here, cheap, thrusting them at me. Miniature vultures feast on a hapless victim.

Ah, 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 if you are friendly and curious.

I walked down stone steps to a rusty museum gate and pivot.

Where are you going?

Down to the market, said Mo.

Ok, Let’s go together. We passed sidewalk vendors on a circle of grass ringed with blue tarps, stuff, dreamers and teams of Hmong and red Dzao women bargaining over hemp quality.

Are you hungry? I’m going to the market for coffee.

Ok. SOP is for the young girls to canvas streets, hotels and restaurants where tourists go. They wait.

We hung out in the market overlooking valleys, fog, hills, and steel blue wisps of flying water. They were hungry. The chicken soup was delicious. I suggested we meet the next day for lunch in the market. They said they had a good day selling belts, bags, purses and handiwork.

Their reality is the street. Mo has limited school opportunities. My mom said I need to make money.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged