That Monkey with the Shoulder Beanie

My experience with the people of the Black H'mong hill tribe in Northern Vietnam has been interesting. Our frames of reference aren't even the same shape, yet there is still a respect and healthy interaction between us.

Like the octogenarian woman, with one tooth for every decade, who came to my lunch table and tried to sell me a beanie by force. With every shake of my head, she became more determined. She put it on my head. I gave it back to her. She mumbled something, then put it on my shoulder, as if this change of tack would set off something in my mind -- "No, no... wait, actually, that looks pretty good. And I've been looking for a decorative shoulder beanie!".

Then, there are the children; the future of the Black H'mong people. I ran into a few elementary school girls, dressed in the traditional, lavishly embroidered blue dresses of H'mong women, sitting on a stoop outside of a local hotel here in Sapa. I smiled at them and walked past, and then....

"Hey! Monkey!"

I turned. "Did you just call me Monkey?"

"Yeah, you look like monkey. You need shave your face, monkey!" (I have quite a bit of facial hair these days)

I was baffled. "Well, that's not very ni--"

"Hey! HEY!!" said another girl, sitting right next to her on the stoop. "I live on the moon."

"Really?" I said, naturally intrigued.

"Yeah, yeah. I fly up there at night to live. Tonight," she continued, "I fly over your hotel and kill you."

Believe it or not, that was the second time in as many days that a woman of the H'mong tribe had indicated that she wanted to kill me. The one before had wanted to kill me for her soup, so she said. Of course, it's a joke... it's all a joke, see, they don't really want to kill me. Just their way of connecting, of interacting with me. It's interaction.

I'm leaving town tonight.