Padaung Weavers
Burma 2011: A floating village on Inle Lake
There are several families of the Padaung tribe who live in the Inle lake area. They live in floating villages and keep souvenir shops where the women, with their brass neck rings, are a tourist attraction. We visited this same shop twice. I think the family was a favorite of our guide. I must admit the older woman was attractive. She knew how to pose and fulfilled all of our requests.
I never got the shot I wanted. I had seen a great shot of this woman on the net…a profile portrait and I wanted my own version. It was a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth and me not being assertive enough. I have many photos of the woman and her daughters but none of them have that spark. I went along with the guide’s ideas, hoping that my time would come, but it didn’t.
Note to self: Insist!!!
I’m not an expert on the customs of this tribe, so I looked them up on the net this morning. I read one article where the writer says that to punish these women for a serious transgression of the tribe’s mores, they would remove the neck rings and the woman could do nothing but lie on the floor the rest of her life. The writer claimed that her vertebrae had been damaged and would no longer support her head.
BUT, I read a book written by Pascal Khoo Thwe, Land of Green Ghosts, who is a member of this tribe and he says that when the Padaung women are old, they remove the rings. After a few days, they are able to go about their lives normally. I belive him.