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Laos - Land Legislation Disempowers Women PART II
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LAOS: What People Cannot Eat is of Great Importance to Women-Part 2


Date: Tues, Sep 22 2009
VIENTIANE, Sep 21 (IPS) –

 

"When I was born my mother could not eat
anything but tiny fish and tea made from herbs for one whole year,"
says Dr Bhounsouane. "She was so weak that she could hardly walk. Post
partum food taboos (phit kam) are a major problem in Laos for women,"
he said.

Depending on ethnicity, taboos can last two weeks or a year, can
exclude some meats, some vegetables and fruits only, or be extensive
and debilitating.

This is borne out by many people and the practice is not confined to
the smaller ethnic groups. A women carrying her baby from hospital in
Vientiane fainted at the smell of a certain taboo vegetable, and had
to be readmitted.

An Australian married to a Lao was horrified when after the birth of
their child, her family insisted she lie over a bed of hot charcoal
for two weeks and eat only roast chicken and rice and drink tea made
from tree bark.

The 'hot bed' is said to close and repair the birth canal. Women fear
that non-compliance will lead to illness in their children or death of
the new mother. The 'hot bed' is considered as an opportunity to rest
and regain strength, particularly women who are weak from the
debilitating effects of poor nutrition and hard work.

Food taboos not only debilitate recovering women but compromise the
amount and quality of breast milk. Breast feeding is often delayed
until the women leave the 'hot bed'. In the meantime the baby is given
pre chewed rice by relatives, a practice identified with undersized
children and infant death.

Sally Sakulku, director of U.K. NGO Health Unlimited, was at first
sceptical of the dire consequences if food taboos were broken. "But
when I worked at Mahosot (the major hospital in Vientiane) I saw many
women being admitted with post partum anaphylaxis. Some died. It seems
to be a real and unpredictable problem in Laos. I admit that I
listened to my mother-in-law, and avoided a lot of foods when I had
the kids."

"I agree it needs more investigation, but it's the mother-in-laws that
have all the power. We need to educate them. Only then can women's
health improve," said Shui Meng Ng, a sociologist and ex-UNICEF
staffer.

Women and men of the Katu group in Lao’s south could identify and use
over 700 separate sources of food, Jutta Krahn discovered while doing
doctoral research. Her groundbreaking work indicated that traditional
diets which included dry-land rice, herbs, insects, roots and tubers,
forest fruits, wild animals and birds, were not only diverse, but
yielded all the nutrients needed for health and well-being,
particularly for women and children.

Modern Katu now eat more paddy rice and less forest foods, and are
showing previously unknown vitamin and micronutrient deficiencies.

Since the 1970's when logging and forest destruction gained commercial
scale, ethnic groups such as the Katu have had their food sources
seriously eroded.

"As climate change bites deeper, we will need more Katu type knowledge
rather than less," Dr Sean Foley, a human ecologist, told IPS. "Forest
systems, high in biodiversity are going to be far more resilient to
climate change than for instance rice, which demands water. Allowing
forests to be cut for short term economic gain might be sentencing
Laos to long term hunger."

Dr Krahn from the Department of World Food Economics at Bonn
University is critical of both agricultural and land use policy in
Laos. She was unavailable for this story, but her writings are clear.

Krahn suggests that new food security strategies are required. Her
starting point "would be the ethnic groups, their diets, and food
cultures because the government and donor agencies focus too much on
food production especially wetland rice."

Hunting, swidden (slash and burn) and foraging are seen as signs of
underdevelopment, of backwardness and deprivation rather than another
food security choice, she wrote along with Arlyne Johnson of the World
Conservation Society. To date major agricultural projects are largely
focused on wet rice and livestock that favour men.

Foraging is deeply entrenched. People still forage in city gardens as
they pass, snipping off edible tips and flowers. Swidden and forest
foraging entail highly sophisticated forest farming of food and
medicinal plants usually led by women, based on plant conservation
skills acquired over hundreds of years.

Krahn's concerns were borne out last year when donor agencies
including the World Food Programme, filled a major wetland in southern
Laos in order to increase rice production. What they failed to
question was the role the wetlands had in local diets.

They saw a swamp; the women saw snails, fish, water weeds, frogs,
eels, and edible roots to be eaten and bartered for rice. Filling the
wetland resulted in protein and micronutrient malnutrition for the
rice farmers, whose supply of other foods had gone, and hunger and
dependency for the people who neither had goods to barter nor food to
eat.

Two years ago the government announced that wetlands encircling the
national capital Vientiane, were to be developed by the Chinese into a
new industrial city. Thirty thousand poor urban Laos, in particular
widows depend on the wetlands for food and income to buy food.

After rare public outcry, the government conceded, making far less
land available. Nevertheless, the wetlands are being incrementally
developed.

(*This is the second of a two-part series on chronic malnutrition in
Laos. Part one focuses on structural reasons for the crisis.) (END/
2009)


_______

REALITY BITES!

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Jungle boy

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This report should concern Lao leaders. Sounds like Lao government needs to work  harder with United Nation Partners to educate people, provide help people with land, tools, and technics to grow more crops. Learn from  Meo tsedong's Chiness Argiculture Revolution what made them became now. 2020 poverty reduction goal  will not be met if they don't solve this main problem of Lao people. 

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