Vietnam’s least populous ethnic group, the semi-nomadic Ro Mam of the Central Highlands, almost disappeared a few years ago due to poor hygiene practices and inbreeding.
In 1975 the Ro Mam were listed as having the fewest people among the nation’s 54 ethnic groups, with just 159 members.
They had been following some practices that can only be described as unhealthy.
They did not cook their food, instead eating the raw meat of the animals they hunted and nuts and fruits.
They married within their small tribe’s 26 families, causing newborns to usually have congenital defects and die young.
A Gioi, the tribe’s Party secretary, said couples normally gave birth to seven to nine children but only one or two of them survived.
Realizing that their days were numbered without change, he decided to help his clan get rid of their worst practices.
For the Ro Mam, the foot of the mountain and plains are the realm of the ghost, and the top of mountain is for the gods. So they lived halfway up the mountain and refused to step down, A Gioi explained.
But in early 1976 he began to persuade them to give up their nomadic ways, find a fertile area to settle down, learn to grow rice, and irrigate their fields.
He and three others volunteered to descend from Yang Sit Mountain to build houses on a plain at the foot of a mountain in Mo Ray Commune in the central highlands province of Kon Tum.
They were the first occupants of what has since grown into Le Village, named after a kind of bamboo.
After a few years, by which time they had developed cultivation and animal husbandry at the new place, A Gioi returned to persuade his tribe to leave Yang Sit Mountain for a better life.
Though most eventually followed him, he was fined many cows by tribe elders for disobeying god’s rules and climbing down the mountainside.
“The law is the law,” tribe patriarch BLong explained.
But he admitted that since the Ro Mam settled down and began to farm, their life has improved.
He told Lao Dong (Labor) newspaper that it was A Gioi who saved his people, adding he was able to choose the right way for them since “the Gods love him.”
The Ro Mam’s population has now doubled to 397. They have stopping marrying within the family while all 97 households have many cows, buffalos, cattle, and ricefields.
In Vietnam, the Viet (Kinh) people account for 88 percent of the population of 86 million.
The other 53 ethnic groups total over eight million and are mostly scattered over mountainous areas all over the country.
Like most other ethnic peoples, the Ro Mam men wear long loincloths and women wear skirts falling to below their knees and short-sleeved shirts made of coarse cloth and earrings, bracelets, and necklaces made of glass beads.
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