if you lean above the clouds in laos that's often the bright brian thomas will be back at the top of the hour with more news and there's more on twitter at b.w. news dot com i'm jared greenberg by. my own nails and i'm gay i'm with the brand new delusions are most books it's personal devices it's about so place that affects us all water pollution climate change and the return of the. phone would ring fence check out.

a remote village in laos high above the clouds the people here speak their own language. time seems almost to have stood still. we need a family that is holding fast to the old traditions while also making small steps out into the wider world. today is a special day a photographer has come to the village. when

i was over there right away. the father how caring has wanted a family photo like this for a long time. he wants to put it in a golden frame and hang it up at home. and on. his youngest son is only rarely here he's been living on his own since he was 11 when he moved to a town in the valley to attend school. the girls of the family will probably spend their lives here on the mountain like their older brothers. the family have pinned their hopes and the youngest son as their best hope for a different and easier life for the younger generation.

for the women of the family the day begins with starting a fire cooking and feeding the pigs. you yeah. yeah yeah you gotta look at them on a saturday. not much of clashing sometimes they sell a pig to a neighbor to bring in a bit of money. that goes to help support the youngest son. apart from that the family are subsistence farmers. one of the neighbors pigs has snuck into their yard. and has plenty of time to relax. his wife. your choice has chores that keep her

busy from dawn to dusk. and. among the all cut people of the mountains of laos fetching wood is women's work. for the women of the family walking without carrying a heavy load on their back is too leisurely so they spin cotton along the way. and in the past aka women were not supposed to wear shoes. and your choice still prefers it this way. when a. little. girl.

it was hard. i went to school until 3 then my father died and i had to work with my mother. and i had to do all the men's work such as chopping down big trees. i built myself a letter out of branches so i could reach them. i worked very hard as hard as i possibly could and we still didn't have enough rice to last the family the entire year. long after my mother died i married my husband he's rather old but he said that if i married him he would take care of me and my younger sister. he's 12 years older than me. he now. how. you troll is 59 years old. i got him way in. the

morning. i had my 1st daughter when i was 23 my 2nd when i was 24 and my 3rd at 25. after that i had a child every year 15 pregnancies in one year not because they had so many children i looked much older than my age almost like i had to work very hard because they didn't want my children to go hungry. while in la that you might. you know you. never want to. go along. the line of battle hide on. the moon.

and her. that. her mother. this morning. one of her daughters in law has stayed home to cook a midday meal for the family. gets me to do it with that i got away because while i could probably. do it. to do mom anywhere my

one mind. for my head or close. to that would you want. to chunk. oh i do as i would every meal includes vegetables and rice breakfast lunch and dinner sometimes there are eggs and rarely some meat. allowed in family eat in the kitchen. the parents and the oldest son said it one table. invited to almost there was a little bit on the other son the daughters in law and the grandchildren sit at the other. 12 people live in this house and all. at. much of life is governed by custom and tradition from the seating arrangements of meals to the women's dress to the work they do their daily routine and their

festivals. of the future. how can keeps a close eye on things. he's a member of the village council of elders and a former village chief. and although no one says so directly he's also the shah men. name and this is for fortune telling. yet not if someone is old and very sick that i can know the day of their death by looking at this now to make it. so i mean it's fine that i can make these predictions but he would not be good for me to tell someone else that bad luck is coming your way johnny would be off. with a. neighbor

comes to fetch him a child a sick with a high fever and the family says the boy was frightened in the forest and his soul left him. now the spirits are trying to lay claim to him they want the shah meant to prevent this. instead of entering the child the spirits will be lured into a doll made of paper goal tobacco and rice will entice the evil spirits. to good food right. the soul of the baby chick is supposed to enter the child.

the chick is also sacrificed to the evil spirits. when you get. him. down there for the idea of. god or might you have thought oh my god you know you like i now do with all due to. our doing. it to them to get. the evil spirits are now inside the paper dog the shaman is removing her from the village. because the sword will ensure that they remain banished from the village that afternoon the fever is gone and the child feels better he took a pill

a fever reducing medication but as far as the villages are concerned that's an irrelevancy. more than 30 years ago pal can pick this hilltop as the location for the village carrion sung by. 3 sacred trees marked the spot. that. we're not allowed to cut these trees. even the tiniest cut is forbidden no one can cut any of these trees and if you cut there you're also cutting here. the trees are sacred. if someone cuts them by somebody in the village will get sick but tigers will come from the forest to eat

or kill our animals. there's no electricity running water roads or neighbors. the anchor have maintained their traditions over centuries c. but how can also experience the different way of life when he served in the military. he who say so i thought in the vietnam war for this country and for the people of laos for 16 years . my pop of the night before to liberate the country in the people being on my home i was a soldier fighting our enemies mali when i was in the locker company shut down 6 airplanes. over there behind the hamilton that's where i was when the planes arrived i thought. my who we were not. is. i fought harder than anyone in the province. want to.

quit if i hadn't returned to the village i'd be a government official by now was i me. man. pucking 2nd son has just become a father again it's his 5th child he lives next door. so sad. because it did your wife give birth already. knows how much how long is the baby crying how much why the car is she in the baby a well. that's why they. also. it's.

ringback not my mother i learned after the harvest the rice needs to dry under the sun every day at night it's put back into the sacks. when the women work the men take care of the youngest children.

women moved to their husbands village when they married. they began wearing the traditional dress and start adding to its decoration.

that's. the ringing of the. detroit had to sew each of our 3 daughters in law a full costume. thank you what. i did. my mother in law is old so she doesn't want to wear bright colors like us she doesn't want to outshine her daughters in law ringback. then you can. have it that we can't take off the headdress even when we go to sleep . to lead them at that and we can't comb our hair or wash it when we want to only

on certain days. the most forbidden day is the birthday of our parents and our parents in law. that would mean they wished for their deaths. in one year to not yet women have a lot of work i can't even listed all. i had the only time i would go to the rice fields cut firewood carry water do the washing. feed all the animals. there's no set bedtime who just go to bed when we finished all our work hard what are you thinking. that also includes their highly skilled production of textiles. they make dyes for their clothing out of wild indigo plants and slike to mine.

during the day one of the women is always at the wooden machine to separate the cotton from it seams then comes the spinning weaving and dying every family in the village produces their own clothes and. often we can't find a white limes so we have to buy from someone else and we make our clothing out of cotton fabric the fabrics have to be hung to dry for more than 12 months before we can make clothing out of them but i get them. in a. good shape and her husband have 5 children. the youngest is 2 the oldest 10. i can't remember the 1st time i went to have billets. until i married when i was 22 years old. she was 21. then i 1st met her at the new year. we shouldn't talk about such things.

of the here when our parents are around it's not good to talk about things like this. it's embarrassing. even sitting next to each other in front of the parents is considered unseemly. they've been living in this house as a married couple for 11 years. king and you choi 2 of their sons their wives and 6 grandchildren live in this house they make up. we are the parents. we can sleep in the same room but others have to be in separate rooms by nor. after that. and i know. my 1st daughter in law sleeps over there. separate from my son this is the room of our 1st son's wife she sleeps beside the kitchen. putting the 2nd son

doesn't live here anymore. the 3rd son his wife leaves here and he sleeps over there. you have. no doctrine no may sleep on this site is not allowed by you know. 3 how king has sent his sons out to look for a location for a new rice field. after

3 years the soil is depleted. then the old rice field is abandoned and forest is cleared for a new one. the men also have a task to do when they head out on a longer mission. they hunt for wild animals and birds. their brother in law was accidentally shot while he was out hunting. thank. you they found a spot for the new rice field how can told them they need to start clearing the ground straight away.

and i give you what day is it today and now that i know today is the day of the pig which is a good day and that's why we need to start clearing now we want to start on a good day. and that there will come back in about 2 or 3 days' time to start clearing properly. it was. halt it will take 20 days to finish clearing this field homu of any value and. until i don't think it's enough time you know. it. will clear all the way to the crest of the hill as soon as the rice is growing well they will conduct a sacrifice to the spirits. of all but when the rice plants have grown to about 50 centimeters we slaughter for chicken skin all for the ceremony one will have to be

a white chicken body like chickens to feed the spirits in this area the 2nd chicken is for the heart in the field the chicken is for all the animals around the field and the 4th for all the plants in the trees. they all need horses and cows to bring the harvest in later in the year being. this year our rice field will because to the village last year was over there this year it's here but this year's harvest brought us more than $100.00 bags of rice but it takes around one to 2 hours to get them up there. by you know. before they head home the brothers put markers down. that way the other villagers will know that their family is now farming this section of land.

at. the family's youngest son 18 year old ken long has come for a visit. he brought with him some t. shirts jackets and trousers which people from the town of gave him a. letter

. to celebrate the visit the women are making a large meal. today they were in the kitchen. only in that. job but they wanted to limo but from phone survey and they have a flat tire on the way they look once they reach park song village of new one from an old man and trying to put all they have no courage so i have to change myself yes. but he has to and they get out of the little one that was. his best childhood friend has come over. he wants the same haircut. kenya home is one of only 3 boys who left the village of 300 residents to continue their studies after finishing primary school. it's based place and we would like him to go to university but we don't have money for that he'll finish high school

this year when many here i don't want him to come home i want him to work for the government you would have to help in fact i used to work for the government but i gave that up to come back to the village me to be so i want my youngest son to continue what i began that. path me. cornel west and i. think you get the. money i used to be in love with a girl from the uk i don't know any more than they love you but you might live in forms of it where there are many different ethnic groups in asia now look. i'm not just limited to the aca you do any and you to enable of a nato. and

. i don't want american girl i'm alien functionally and the women of beautiful there . now know. anything that's in town that he can choose whether to follow our culture or not that's fine for him but not for us for us older ones we can't stop anything according to our traditional set. to be in the future if my parents are still a lot of our own invite him to live in time with me i'll take care of them once i have a job and earn some money and they know they have years of. long in the cool call contingent i don't know what i'll think they will move to turn over again but i'm not sure of my brother's will go to it by now it will find i'm going to before i knew know.

the question of who might want to move away as a hot topic in the village. every 3 months a medical student visits the village to carry out vaccinations and to distribute vitamin a and medications against war. on the. village is remote far from any hospital or doctor. when someone is seriously ill and the path is impassable due to heavy rain there's no way to get medical help. that's why the village chief wants to have the village relocated further down the mountainside. they would have access to a paved road as well as electricity and running water.

30 families live in the village not all of them want to move some because they don't have the money. others because they fear that they will lose touch with their culture and traditions. they. call longing on. the governor said but it's really chief accounts and we leave the village we have to move together you know if we're going to move on my own i would have done that already at. all including on that day if they want to move left by we have enough to stay here if they go they'll go but we'll stay home i have a chief isn't here anymore we just keep living here and now baba you know you.

they hold fast to their traditions the ceremonies the sacrifices of animals to ward off bad luck and their relationship to the spirits and to their ancestors. oh. cool. words. the biggest taboo in our culture is one that they are not permitted to mention within the confines of the village. it is. it's a topic that the older people always told us we shouldn't talk about at the level

of only the elders can talk about it. well you who when there are pregnant women in the house they must never hear anything about this topic it's so terrible i mean people hated as much as well maybe through. pope paul one of the cali it's always been this way. if you give birth to twins the family can't stay in the village. and they can't move to another village either. you know they know you but i wasn't in the old village had twins once and we took them away and carried out all the ceremonies he. might one of them or the parents who give birth to twins have to build a small hut in the forest next to a small stream and. even when we bring them food we can't look at or talk to them we just say here is food for you. we're not allowed to say anything about their family when we bring them food. we talk as though we were talking to ourselves and

to the trainees. not blowing up. almost trying to talk to us we're not allowed to respond. oh you know what. that's what we believe. we mustn't talk about this topic in the village it's forbidden. we can't raise twins even if someone wanted to force us to. that's our culture. of the you know all along that. the. 4 years ago government officials came to not post sun village. they came to ask if we could change. i was told but even if the government requests this of us we can't change this. we can't raise twins we have to respect our traditional culture. if poor elgin otoh for all people are never allowed to step across the river where

they buried the twins their own mobile did last a common life move. did. not yet get an idea of. the parents of twins are permitted to return to the village after they have killed their newborn twins. their home is burned down and everything it contains a comma for an entire year no one is permitted to speak to the couple. people believe that only animals can give birth to more than one baby at a time in our minds that when a woman gives birth to twins an evil spirit must be at work.

for all. your choice cousin has died. a member of the family must attend the funeral which is being held in a village on a nearby hill located partway to town. to get close to the king mum the youngest son is leaving. he won't visit again for a month. the funeral ceremony began a week ago. the

figure on the horse represents the deceased. on the 2nd horse some of his belongings will accompany him on his final journey. the deceased rides into the forest where he will be buried at night. the shaman must kill the water buffalo with a single stab of the spear as part of the ritual sacrifice. to make sure the family continues to prosper the head of the buffalo must be noisily brought to the rough.

cut the that. the more prosperous the deceased the longer the funeral ceremony lasts and the more animals there are sacrificed. the. cut. off. that was. the. whole. when i die i will have 2 horses to ride. and about 6 or 7 cattle will be slaughtered sure but the about big nice i'll go here any i've done so much and i work for the government but somebody saw that my funeral isn't the biggest i won't rest well he partly i want my funeral to be the biggest holiday

yet maybe if a call would you know. can long still has a 3 hour drive ahead of him. he has to go into the valley and cross the lake in order to reach town. hall. he can. it's a journey into another world a world he's been living in for 7 years now in which he hopes to make his future. living it. has some rice in his bags.

the news. every morning the residents of fung sally are woken by a news broadcast through the loudspeaker courtesy of the socialist government you. can learn remembers how coming to live here on his own at age 11 was a bit frightening but also exciting. back then he found a grandmother an elderly woman without any family in town. she cooked for him sometimes and let him watch t.v. . he only comes to the market hall to shop on special occasions he can't afford most of what sold here. he has the rice he brought from home and cooks meals for himself in his room in 6

months will finish his high school degree oh. god saying i'll do my best to get a high score on the leaving that day so that i can go to university to be and see that he says a full on. only the top 3 in his class will get a scholarship. 37 students are competing for king long doesn't want to disappoint his father a fine. young. man my dream is to study something about i t v he and yes we all might be become a police officer you have been but my father doesn't really should pull those oh it is only my own dog shit but you know as a people in the end my financial situation will determine whether i can go to university you will note we don't have the money for it. you know and.

he can't imagine returning to the village. after 7 years in town he's left behind the customs and traditions of the village high above the clouds. gets up early every morning to exercise. the go go to university then i say overcome a dry. oh if he can come and. what would that mean for his family who have such high hopes for him. call coverlid bad.

was at work as a chauffeur to earn money to. you know i want to have money a bar van and overwrite a shuttle service. is determined to earn a living. he and his friend from school are making plans for their future. returning to the village is no longer an option. even if he leaves the traditions of the uk a people behind will have fulfilled his father's hopes. his life in town will certainly be easier than in the village above the clouds. who. move.

to go off. on cool gather fire in a high flyer for germany's national t.v. series canal and put him in a way to the previously playing that's right there the time and where josh sargent is in the starting blocks and ready to go. on w. d 2 you know that 77 percent. are younger than 6 of us. that's me and me and you. and you know what it's time all voices. on the 77 percent to talk about the issue. this is where you cut. to

77 percent this weekend on d w. sitting rooms are a. symbol of a long conflict in the philippines. between the muslim and the christian population last night as fighters occupied the city center in 2017 president to church's response was called. by different. names took over. the reconquest turned into tragedy is not the kind of freedom that we want. how did we become a gateway to islamist terror. exclusive report from a destroyed city. phyllis in the sights of our u.s. starts october 24th on d w. this

is the news live from berlin u.s. president donald trump imposes sanctions to halt turkey's offensive in northern syria now this comes as the conflict there approaches a dangerous escalation with syrian government troops advancing towards turkish positions the u.s. is calling for turkey to withdraw also coming up. while and on the rest breaks out in barcelona protesters on the streets after spain's supreme court delivers long prison terms to catalonia separatist.