Ahka Wedding

For those of you that don’t know what the Come With Nothing, Go Home Rich trip is about, I will sum it up for you. The kids show up to Bangkok with hopefully just a small backpack holding the essentials. When they are settled up in Chiang Mai, we give them the equivalent of $50 and take them to a local market where they can buy everything they will need over the next 3 weeks. Most families in the villages we visit will live off of less than $50 a month. When the kids have everything they need, we head up into the mountains spending a week in 3 different villages in 3 different regions of Thailand. During this week in the village, we have a budget of $250 to use for some sort of community service project. The project is decided upon as we get to each village and talk with the village elders about what they need.

This year, the rain wasn’t falling as much as usual, so almost every village we went to wanted a water storage tank, a well, or water pipes to the houses around the village. Usually during the rainy season, villages can collect enough rainwater to meet their daily needs, but not this year.

Our third village of this trip was a small Ahka village in Chiang Rai province. Ahka people migrated to Thailand from Tibet many years ago and have a very distinct look and dress. One of my best friends, Bay, was our local guide for this trip. He is Ahka and the village we were working at, was only a 5 minute drive from his village. One night at dinner, Bay came over and pulled Brooke and me aside and said he had something exciting to tell us. His cousin was getting married in a few days, and they had invited our group to come to the wedding. Bay had also been chosen as the best man, so he had lots of functions to go to over the next couple of days.

The couple was very poor and couldn’t afford much of a ceremony, so we agreed to buy a cow to slaughter for the wedding feast. A few of our kids were really excited about this and woke up at 6 am on the morning of the wedding to be a part of the actual killing of the cow. One of the boys was given the knife and the villager hit the cow over the head while our student stabbed it in the heart. He was so excited to be a part of that.

The rest of the wedding day was great. It was a small ceremony as the village only has around 12 houses. The village is also Christian, so the ceremony wasn’t the traditional Ahka style. Bay told us that traditional weddings last several days and involve lots of ceremonies and dancing. For the wedding, all of the ladies were in their tradition Ahka dress that is extremely elaborate and takes years to sew by hand. Bay’s mom showed us the wedding clothes for Bay’s future wife and told us she has been working on them ever since he was born.

During the ceremony, many of the old people in the village stood up and gave a blessing and or advice to the newly married couple. As this was going on, Bay got up and insisted that I get up and give a blessing to the couple. I stood up, not knowing what to say at all and rambled on for a few minutes. I still have no idea what I said, but it seemed to be accepted well.

Then came the feast... The cow that we bought had been used to make many different kinds of traditional Ahka food including my favorite, Larb (raw beef mixed with lots of spices). After a day of eating, drinking tea, and eating again, the Ahka ladies brought out all of their instruments (cymbals, drums, and bamboo poles) and all of their extra traditional clothes for us to put on. Many hours of dancing and music ensued as we congratulated the newly married couple.

written by  brookejason on August 14, 2009 from Chiang Rai, Thailand
from the travel blog: Thailand 2009
Send a Compliment

comment on this...