Dust and Celebration

The bus ride to Soppong was incredibly crowded, and Malone and I couldn’t sit together. I sat behind the driver, right next to the engine, which felt like it was going to burn my feet off, it was so hot. We drove up and down winding mountain roads for about an hour. A Coke bottle was rolling up and down the aisle, and the driver asked somebody to pick it up. I was surprised to see the woman who picked it up throw it straight out the window onto the roadside. This was the first example of littering, the effects of which I would see nearly every day for the rest of the trip. Traditionally, people in Southeast Asia used natural materials, such as banana leaf, to wrap their food or package their goods. It would make sense to simply toss the banana leaf back into the forest, where it came from. The problem is that people there do the same thing with all of the plastic they use—they just throw it out the window. And they use plastic bags for everything. For example, if I bought a can of soda, they would put it in a mini plastic bag and throw a plastic straw in for good measure. I tried to avoid collecting so many plastic bags, knowing they might end up on the roadsides eventually.

When we got to Soppong, it didn’t really look like we had arrived anywhere. The street was dusty. There was something like a flea market along the side of the road, but it didn’t really seem like anyone was around. We spent a few frustrated minutes trying to figure out how the pay phone worked. Finally, it did, and we called Albert, the man in charge of the Lisu Hill Tribe homestay we had arranged. He directed us to the motor taxis that were parked a little ways down the road. If you’ve ever ridden on the back of a motorbike with a 45 pound pack on your back up a very steep hill, then I don’t need to tell you how terrifying it was. For those of you who haven’t—it was terrifying. But we made it to the top and were dropped off at a wooden gate. We tentatively walked inside the fenced area. There was nobody around. All we could see were roosters and chickens, a pig pen, and a lot of dirt. We hesitantly walked around until Albert finally emerged and gave us a tour of the place. Albert was a tall, hunched over man in his fifties or sixties. He was a former psychologist from Chicago. He had moved to Thailand about seven years ago and married Susanan, a Lisu woman. What I found most strange about this relationship was that Albert had been living in this community for several years and had learned barely a word of Lisu or Thai. Susanan spoke some English, but the whole thing seemed very strange from the beginning.


In any case, we dropped our bags off in our room. There were shutters on the windows, but they didn’t keep out any bugs. There was nothing but a mattress on the floor. We went with Albert up the street, where the community was gathered for the last day of the week-long New Year’s festival. The Lisu women were dressed in traditional costume, as they dressed most days, but the men, who typically didn’t dress in their traditional clothing, were also festively dressed. We sat around a long table, and women who had been cooking all day served us food. Most of it had meat in it, so I couldn’t eat much other than some rice and cabbage. People from five neighboring villages were there, and Albert explained that it was “courting time” for the young men and women and that they were all looking their best. He also told us that the women wearing black hats were already married. A hundred feet or so from where people were gathered to eat was the dancing floor. Albert explained that some tribes only dance in a circle, while others only dance in a wheel-spoke formation. The man leading the dance was in the center, playing a string instrument and choosing the footwork. We watched the dance for a while before going back to our accommodations, where I took a nap, then sat on our porch and read.


Our first afternoon in Soppong was a little disorienting. We soon realized that we were not there to be entertained in any way and that we had to find things to do for ourselves. The community received us with what seemed to be indifference. After a somewhat boring afternoon sitting up on our porch, Albert invited us down to cook dinner. The kitchen was a separate structure with dirt floors and tarps hanging for walls. We sat on small stools on the floor, cutting up vegetables to make a soup: onion, tomato, mushrooms, cauliflower, aubergines, cilantro, parsley, dill, garlic, soy sauce, and coconut milk. We ate it with rice, and it was actually delicious. If nothing else knocked my socks off about Soppong, the food we ate was wonderful and filling. Despite the cold mountain air and numerous wake-up calls by roosters, we managed to sleep through the night.