Living with Locals: Blacksmithing Edition
The blacksmith's "shop" is little more than a yard in front of a wooden hut with an anvil, three burlap bags of tools and equipment and a charcoal fire to heat the metal. When we arrive, he is already busy heating a small piece of rebar in the fire while his wife fans flames with a hand-cranked contraption. He speaks no English, so we meet our translator, Lue, an impressive young Laotian who recently graduated high school and can speak 5 languages.
After brief introductions, we follow the blacksmith's lead as he takes the metal out and shows us how to bang it down using a large hammer. We are making two separate knives so we each take turns wailing on the metal as hard as we can. Its 100 degrees out and soon we are both dripping in sweat, but, satisfyingly, the once stout, circular piece of metal is elongated and flatter after each round of smashing. In between our turns hitting the metal, the blacksmith fixes the shape or undoes anything we may have messed up. This is a theme throughout the day. The blacksmith is smart enough to know that we would rather have a knife crafted by his 20 years of experience than a twisted piece of metal that we created all on our own. So he takes the lead in the actual work and lets us take part each step on the way.
The Knife's Edge
After about an hour we have two blade-ish looking slabs of metal and things seem to be progressing nicely. Its at this time that the blacksmith casually remarks that most tools would be almost done at this point, but a knife requires all sorts of extra tidbits. You have to carve the handle, fashion a holster, attach the blade, not to mention the sanding and sharpening. He says, in good humor, that knives are the most annoying item he needs to make. Lue, whose uncle is a blacksmith, agrees and says that just about any set of pliers or a hammer would be near done by this point.
We get to it, carving the wood for the handle by hand, sanding and sharpening the blade. As we work, we chat with our translator who is eager to talk about pretty much anything. He tells of Lao's history and about the Hmong people (we are in a Hmong village) who migrated down from Mongolia to settle in Lao. He engages us in political talk, "I hear that picking a president is a hot topic in America?" (a hot topic to say the least). We hear a Laotian folktale and of Lue's dreams to go to university and travel all around the world. He wants to go to Africa, for instance, so he can experience what it is like to be the only "one of his kind" in a given place. I must say that part of the experience was engaging in genuine conversation with locals, something that is often difficult to do in SEA countries as often you only deal with folks in the tourism industry.
It Takes a Village
Everyone in the village arrives at some point to watch, or pitch in. Young boys are constantly stopping by to watch the the blacksmith work. There are a number of babies in the yard, playing freely with all the various tools (saw included). An older man stops by to make one of the two holsters. The smith's wife is fanning the fire flames while also cooking lunch and minding the babies in the yard. At one point we are in the yard with 3 babies, four village children, two blacksmith's and our tuk-tuk driver who has taken it upon himself to sharpen our knives for us (ostensibly so he can get outta there faster and get other fares). Making a knife sure becomes a communal affair and with the oppressive heat, we had no complaints about it.
From Nothing to Something
After five hours of labor and sun, we are holding two handmade knives, but we realized early on in the day that the most interesting part of the experience would be the journey, not the destination. That is, watching raw materials (in this case rebar and chunks of wood) being molded into a finished product. Often in the States and Western countries, we shop for only finished products and have little to no conception of how they are made. We are removed from the process and therefore are ignorant of how things work. This is a point that is so glaring in a place like Asia where you constantly see raw materials being turned into useful objects at the hands of a skilled craftsman who works directly with consumers. Our economy is decades removed from this stage and it is almost unfortunate despite the obvious efficiencies we gain. For us, it's a treat to watch the process - for them, it's a necessity.
