The Buffalo Sacrifice...

There was a well-organised welcome for foreign visitors at Khiantanglae last night, at the party held as part of the annual buffalo sacrifice. The keyboard karaoke was preceded by an announcement in English, inviting foreigners to take a table close to the soundsytem and enjoy the evening with some Beer Lao. The sacrificial dance began within a few hours of sunset, and the men danced around the buffalo tethered with thick vines to a stock and a thick bamboo which had been split into a cascade of red and white palm streamers. Moving slowly to the beat of a buffalo skin drum, two men beat gongs, followed by eight men holding ceremonial swords and shields.

The next morning at 5.30 am, we arrived back to the village, where the only activities were butchering cattle and buffalo, and clearing the tables and chairs by the silent speakers. Eventually, assuming that we had once again misunderstood the Lao perception of time, we started walking back to Tad Lo to sleep. We met a number of people on the way back, one of whom was a Lao man who was sure that the sacrifice was to take place in the early morning. After much uncertain waiting in the village, activities began to spring up around the dusty square, and a game of dice erupted into the quiet shade of the village tree.

The square began to fill up with young boys and motorbikes, and girls returning from the river. Finally, the dancers dragged themselves from their hangovers and into the central meeting hall, which was painted with flowing swirls of ash, and topped with two buffalo horns emerging from the thatch. The young men were given Lao Lao, their cheeks painted white, with red lines drawn into the contours of their faces. They were wearing the same red cloth and wielding the same weapons as the evening before, and they were led by a cheerful man who'd greeted us warmly as he crossed the square earlier, holding a bloodied machete between dark red hands. We had a beer with him later, and the black clots of blood had dried hard when we shook hands.

The ceremonial dance seemed to follow the same pattern, around the buffalo, and around the village hall. The men were being given Lao Lao as they circled in the morning sun, and each time their orbit left the tethered buffalo's, the animal would receive a kick or the threat of a long, curved dagger. When the sacrifice began, the buffalo was hit with a bamboo stave to send it around the stock-post, and the leader of the dancers made a long slash  along its left flank, before stabbing it in the side as it ran from the bamboo lashes. The buffalo began to ooze dark, dehydrated blood from a cluster of stab wounds between its ribs.

The young bull stood strong until its lungs filled with blood and it collapsed, bleeding from its nose. Its head was propped on a rock, and as its shortening breath pushed blood pulsing down its ribs into the dust, its right ear was cut from its head. When this was done the long blade was pushed deep between its ribs, and its flanks fell, and the big black eyes stooped looking at the crowd. As the bull died, the palm fronds above were cut and pushed against the dying stream of blood, and the closest village boys ran with them around the village, shouting in triumph.

The leader of the dancers then began to throw the buffalo ear into the top of the bamboo weeping coloured palm fronds over the fallen buffalo. The man's coordination was no longer under his control, and eventually an official from Salavan threw the ear deftly down the woven funnel and into the bamboo, ensuring prosperity and happiness for the village in the coming year.

When the ceremony was complete, and the buffalo dead, the children gathered round with their festive balloons, and poked their fingers into the buffalo's wounds. We sat with some local men, and the men from the Salavan Tourist Authority, and  bought some beer. The leader of the ceremony came for a drink, and we were invited back to the chief's home for Lao Lao and some food. The steady supply of Lao Lao over the morning took its toll later, but it was the perfect accompaniment to the buffalo meat and fiery dips, sticky rice, and superb buffalo-blood paste seasoned with galangal, lemongrass and chili. It was hard to mentally accommodate the agonising fifteen minutes of merciless violence meted out to the buffalo, while simultaneously experiencing the warm intensity of Lao hospitality.

I had been prepared, and relieved, to miss the actual sacrifice of the buffalo, and resigned and content to leave after an extended and absolutely enjoyable buffalo chase that ought to have continued the comedy and remain unfulfilled. The enormous range of misinformation, mistranslation and incomprehension experienced in pursuit of the buffalo suggested that the occasion of the ceremony was a mystery beyond our understanding. When it became clear that the buffalo's reprieve was only a figment of my imagination, and the knives began to draw blood, I expected a greater surge of pity and compassion than I actually experienced. I felt immeasurably sorry for its predicament in a detached and distant way, and I imagine that the effect of the Lao Lao  I had been given after the dancers received their affected us all in a similar way. I didn't feel entirely able to hold compassion for the bull within my mind without also making judgement of the people and culture in which their treatment of the animal was a matter of social and spiritual necessity. When the buffalo finally died, I was so wholly relieved that the horror of its tortuous death was concluded, that I ceased to identify with its suffering almost immediately. I saw it instead as a process of skinning, butchering, cooking and eating, and not as a being whose process had ended in the suffering of captivity and the terror of a slow and agonising death. Sitting with the men in the chief's house it was mercifully impossible to make a moral judgement of these people, despite the moral horror I believed I should feel when faced with a spectacle in which I would under no circumstances actively participate. Perhaps my observation of it is nonetheless an active part of the ongoing process. I wonder how many years will pass before the ceremony takes place in front of a paying audience, shuttled in air-conditioned comfort to the village to be horrified by the morbid pleasure of torturing an animal to death in the name of spiritual necessity.