Lying alongside the poetic Dak Bla River is Kon Ko Tu, the oldest
village in Kon Tum city in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum.
Located
in the Dak Ro Wa Commune of the Bana ethnic minorities, the village is
considered the key point of gong culture in the Central Highlands, with
dozens of houses on stilts featuring specific characteristics of the
Bana architecture, where many residential houses surround a communal
house.
Living through and surviving the
changing fortunes of history and the impact of socio-economic
development, Kon Ko Tu village has managed to retain its specific
cultural features. Every day, male villagers go to their fields in the
mountains and hunt for deer while female villagers weave fabrics and
make baskets.
The village organises its own festival with gong in the Rong house, considered as the community or communal house.
Kon
Ko Tu now has more than 20 houses on stilts which were built based on
traditional Bana architecture. Each house is rectangular in shape, about
10m in length and built on 12 wooden pillars. Three or four generations
of a family live in a single house, each of which serves as a strong
attachment of the community and a source of pride for the Bana.
The village has more than 100 households with a population of about 600.
A
Xep, the village patriarch, revealed that when the village was first
set up, it had very few people. So the patriarch named the village Kon
Ko Tu, meaning desolate village.
He then chose a place to build
the Rong (long communal) house while residents chose the locations of
their own houses around the collective house.
At that time, the
forests yielded large quantities of durable and valuable timber, so
people were able to harvest enough wood for their needs.
The
Bana people in Kon Tum province have a charming traditional culture.
Besides gong, they have various kinds of traditional musical
instruments, including the t’rung, which is similar to the xylophone,
and the ting gling and tingning, which are stringed musical instruments.
They also have numerous smooth and passionate folk songs.
The village celebrates annual festivals, including the harvest festival and buffalo-sacrifying festival.
Traditional
dishes that are attractive to tourists include bamboo tube rice. Bamboo
tubes are used as a cooking pot, and after the rice is cooked, the tube
is broken and the contents are removed.
Other dishes include
chicken baked with salt and chilli and fried bamboo shoots. A
traditional drink offered at festivals is ruou can, wine which one
drinks from a jar using pipes. All these dishes and the drink convey the
flavour that is uniquely Bana.
Huynh Duc Tien, Director of
the Kon Tum Tourism Company Ltd., said most tourists to the province,
especially foreigners, have chosen to visit the village first before
going to other tourist sites. Villagers are known to be quite hospitable
and experienced in pampering prissy visitors.
A Tao, the village
chief, said a good number of visitors have asked villagers to let them
stay overnight at the Rong house to study the Bana people’s culture.
At
the long communal house, tourists can enjoy the sound of the gong and
dance around a flickering fire. They can also go by dug-out canoe to the
Dak Bla River that meanders along the Kong Muk Mountain.
Recently,
the State built a network consisting of traffic roads, irrigation
systems and schools in the village, which has since been converted into
an ecological and cultural site, so the residents’ living standards have
improved, Tao said.
The village lads are trained to work as tour guides while women weave brocades to sell to tourists.
Mari
Helene Hauze, a French visitor, said she was impressed with the
peaceful beauty of the village forests and the hospitality of villagers.
To
develop tourism in the village, local authorities should implement
policies to preserve and exploit its strong points. Ecological tourism
should be developed to help tourists experience the forests’ natural
beauty.
Nguyen Nhu Quynh, a tourist from Ho Chi Minh City, was
impressed with old villagers legends and was interested in practising
the weaving of baskets and brocades with Bana women.
Phan
Thanh Nam, Chairman of Dak Ro Wa commune, said a lot of traditional
cultural features risked being lost to oblivion as the number of houses
on stilts have been gradually reduced.
Rich people have been
asked to purchase houses made of durable and valuable timber, and the
weaving of baskets and fabrics has become commercialised, with women
focusing more on quantity rather than quality.
Villagers still practise slash-and-burn cultivation, so forest resources were eventually exhausted, Nam added.
Kon
Tum province has improved a campaign to raise residents’ awareness of
the need to protect the forests and their culture, including traditional
festivals.
Groups of fabric weavers have received financial
support from local authorities, and houses have been built to display
their products.-VNA