13 ~ Salt, salarium (and saola)
The Lao government’s large, Soviet-made Mi-8 helicopter paused in a hover, then eased down toward a small field that had been cropped close and hard by water buffaloes and cattle. As we descended, the rotors kicked up a dust storm, and through the swirling brown veil, out a small porthole window, I could see villagers gathering along the edges of the field, to watch the arrival of the biggest, loudest thing ever to visit. The Mi-8 settled onto the ground, the pilots shut the power, and the engine’s whine and the whir of the rotors eased as if in a long sigh.
The passengers, about a dozen of us, removed our protective earphones, unstrapped ourselves from our seats and filed out. This was the late 1990s, and we were part of a joint World Bank and government of Laos mission to assess the potential of adding some of the surrounding area to an existing protected area, to compensate for areas that would be lost if a proposed hydropower dam was built. The purpose of this particular landing was to ask local villagers their views on the matter. I was the only one among the group who had been to and worked with these particular villages, so I’d been tagged onto the mission as something of a ‘local’ consultant and liaison. I had been working on and off with some of the residents for more than a year, on surveys in the surrounding mountain forests for the rare saola, a large mammal discovered by science only in 1992, and endemic to the border area of Laos and Vietnam.
A rare camera-trap photo of a saola, taken with the assistance of the villagers mentioned in this post.
Ordinarily, it was two days’ walk to this village cluster from the nearest dirt road. That distance meant it was a particular challenge for the villagers to obtain a vital necessity: salt. Although some natural mineral licks occur in the surrounding forest, they are small, muddy affairs, of mixed chemistry, and provide no opportunity for salt production. The main beneficiaries of the mineral licks are wildlife, especially species, like the saola, with a high mineral demand for the growth of horns (or antlers, in the case of deer).
Salt is the only absolute necessity that rural villagers in Laos cannot produce or find themselves, and must procure through trade. To some degree, for a long time the need to purchase or trade for salt has influenced the extent of their interaction with the outside world.
This cluster of a few villages was a mix of different ethnic groups, and among the spectators gathered in the large, awestruck circle around the helicopter, I looked for and spotted Khoua Cha, a Hmong man who was my main forest guide for the saola surveys. We worked together by sharing Lao as a second language (Hmong, of course, being his first), and he was the best guide I’ve had in 20 years of field work in Laos and Vietnam. Part of that was his being Hmong, whom I liken in my mind as Plains Indians of the tropical forest: proud, independent, capable, and remarkably knowledgeable of the natural world around them.
Yet even among this exalted company, Khoua Cha was exceptional. Around around a campfire one evening, I thoughtlessly asked him if he’d ever attended school, and if he could read and write. “No”, he answered. After an uncomfortable pause, he lifted his hand toward the forest around us and added, “But this forest is my school, and I’ve been studying here every day of my life.”
For this story, it is important to note that in top-down Laos there is usually a very large power distance between, and in favor of, the authorities, and the villagers they visit. Yet typically for Khoua Cha, and the Hmong, he wasn’t among the intimidated now. At one point I watched him step out of the circle, and cross the open ground to the Lao government’s helicopter. To my considerable surprise, he reached up and knocked on the side of the cockpit cabin. The pilot slid open the side window, looked down at the diminutive Hmong man in black pantaloons, matching black tunic and flip-flops, and the two started conversing. What the…??
Khoua Cha’s boldness added me to the awestruck, and I was immensely curious about what he wanted with the pilots. When he returned to the circle of onlookers, I asked him.
“Well”, he said, “I was looking at this big helicopter, and got to thinking. I told the pilots that if they ever flew back up here, and brought me 1,000 kilograms of salt, I would send them back with five water buffaloes in trade, which they could sell for the meat.” Then he added with a sigh of resignation, “But they didn’t seem too interested.”
Remarkable, even by Hmong standards of trader smarts and self-confidence. It also illustrates the tremendous value of salt in these mountains – and echoes a value salt has everywhere there is human life. It is the only thing in our kitchen cupboards that we cannot live without.
Our English word ‘salary’ comes from the Latin salarium, which is derived from sal, Latin for salt. Possible explanations are that, due to salt’s importance, Roman soldiers (and perhaps other civil servants) were paid partially in salt, or given an allowance to purchase it. The oldest town known from Europe, which flourished more than 6,000 years ago in what is now eastern Bulgaria, sprung up around a salt mine. Its name, Solnitsata, means ‘salt works’.
In 2010, my daughter Alonda and I had the good fortune to tour, with Polish friends, a massive, centuries-old, former salt mine, deep underground in Poland. The volume of salt removed to meet demand, and the volume of labor required to do so, were difficult to grasp. In fact, the miners excavated an entire underground chapel from within the salt.
The miners’ chapel carved out of the Wieliczka salt mine in Poland, about 1000 feet (304 m) below ground.
My own supply of salt/sal/salz/sel/sale is now considerably less than a chapel’s worth. I’m down to less than a ½ pound (about ¼ kg; photo at top). Fairly soon, it could be the first thing I must necessarily buy. Or, like Khoua Cha, get creative to procure. I’ll be watching for helicopters over the house.