ABSTRACT
Grandmother See was not born in Ban Som Hong but it is hard now for her to remember just how long she has lived here. Her family had moved three times already, looking for food, looking for land, and they found it finally in Som Hong. Perhaps 40 years ago, she says, leaning down to spit betel juice in a neat arc over the edge of the low wooden platform under the house on which everyone sits to talk in the cool shade. Her family was one of the first to arrive and, like the others, Lao-speaking migrants from Srisaket province. They claimed the land as they cleared it and now there are almost 50 houses in the village. It was all forest then, she remembers. There was water, there were animals, food was to be gathered everywhere. Today, she looks out across the road to where the dry field begins, knowing it stretches on and on. True, it is dotted with old and beautiful trees – shade-givers, fruit-bearers and fuel-providers – but the field rolls on and on and perhaps she would find that it never breaks against the feet of a forest again, not if she walked for the rest of her lifetime. For this is the Weeping Prairie – Thung Kula Ronghai.
