http://www.akha.org/upload/video/swingfestival.qt

This year they didnmt build a swing.  I wasnmt sure what it was all about, something about there being too many men still in the fields and not the four required to haul the heavy bamboo out of the jungle and build it.  There was great argument about it at any rate and the elders were quite angry.  But the festival went on anyway, with four days of dances.  Now it seems in this village that there were two nights when they danced in the early evening and then began again about ten that night and danced all night long until dawn.  I think it was something about the rice.  When you live in it this becomes quite easy to see, the system here is quite easy. You plant rice and live. You get your rice from the land and if you donmt get your rice you die.  You better know something about what the off years are about and picking the right "kaw" for planting rice and for planting corn.  You get the wrong "kaw" (or plot) and the rice isnmt going to grow and then what will you eat? The neighborms rice? Guess again.  So each family, unlike much of the west, is directly connected to the earth, to produce the rice that they must eat.  One might argue that less land could be used but that is quite hard to imagine.

For the most part, an Akha village, for people who live in the mountains, is one of the most sustainable ways of feeding people that one could hope for.  The time and effort that go into preparing, planting and caring for the rice leave little time for people to be doing things that donmt relate directly to this.  The earth is like some living part of onems self that they must care for, must build, must repair, must listen to, must get along with, and must never take for granted.  Not so many generations have lived on this earth and so the effects on it are real, and one cares for it.  Trails, watering holes, wells, springs, when they are "wet" and when they are "dry".  What time the bugs come out. When the rice got planted it happened over two weeks and everyone had to have their rice in by then.  In this village.  The elders then count between 12 and 13 days.  The days each count for ten, sorry, not sure how this works, but between 120 and 130 days after the planting of the rice, the swing festival happens.  The reason for the two dates is that the elder in charge of this counts 12 days (120) but if he had a parent that died on that day or some other item that he doesnmt want to combine with it, then he moves the date one more day so it can end up being 130 days. This is the end of the work.

The Akha also say that the Akha came down from God through the swing.  And now it is a celebration of the end of the hard work on the rice (not that this day has actually been born yet).  And to this they dance, to their relationship to it all.  In this village they laid out four old planks from the forest and the women took bamboo tubes about a meter long and as they danced around this square they pounded the bamboo tubes on the plank which let out a ressonant sound.  One man works a drum, it looks simple, it is not.  With easy blows to the top of it in a rythmic manner he works out a cadence that ties into the lisping sound of the hand cymbols which they call "wind". (the hand cymbols).  Actually the sound from the cymbols appears to mimic the sound that the rice makes when a woman tosses it in the tray, while it is yet dry, working the tiny stones and the debri to the edge which she then lets bounce over and out onto the ground.  You can make a lot of sounds with a cymbol, the Thais make one very different to that the Akha do with it.  But once you hear the sound the Akha make with it, you realize that it just didnmt happen, that it is being played with a signature.  So there is the drum and this rythmic pace of cymbols and the sounds of the bamboo and the women going carefully and methodically in a circle.

I think it better drinking to watch this, think of far away thoughts, your mother as when you were a child and the first time you saw her cry, and life moving on timelessly and you not being any more able to change much as an adult than you were as a child, and the Akha women, their backs to you, facing in, dance first to the left where they meet back to back there, and then to the right where they meet back to back there with the woman on that side, but always moving to the right. And it goes on, hour after hour, no one stopping.  And when you see the daily commitment they have to the rice they plant and the earth they plant it in, you know that they mimic this, left side, right side, but always moving on, yet always the circle is the same.  And to this they danced, and they danced all the way till dawn.  Not hard to figure out to do that, the cadence captivates you and pulls your heart onto the Akha soul train and you could stay there a little longer than just dawn.  Being Akha.  The mountain, rice for another year, the rain that feeds it all, and the wind that cools them as they work.  What magic.  The dress was colorful.  The women in this village are always much fully dressed in their traditional dress anyway, but these nights are special as the other festivals are and so much effort goes into making the dress complete, the men with fancy embroidered jackets, and the fantastic silver head dresses of the women, which they started building when they were a child.  The work is sweaty and long and muddy and dusty and itchy and biting ants and bees and by God you got reason to warm it up and dance all night to this one.

An Akha swing is built using four tree sapplings of long length, or four large bamboos and then a water buffalo yoke is used at the top or some such shaped wood, and a long rope made of heavy woven vine and bark strips is hung down with a loop woven into it.  The women may swing on this with a stick slid through the loop or men swing on it by standing in it with one foot and using the other to kick themselves high into the air.  Since the swing is quite tall it throws them considerable length out into the air and the swings are built on the edge of a hill so this adds to the rush.