A Dao family in Khuoi My – Vietnam by Ana Abrão

We've been going for about 4 hours on a mountain hike. Lim, my guide, carries a few kilos of vegetables, meat and rice in his backpack for our lunch. I don't dare ask for details about why you have to carry the ingredients.
Finally, we arrive at the door of the family home that will cook for us: padlocked from the outside. They are working in agriculture. Did you call? I ask Lim. No. They don't have a phone. I sit on the floor, tired and literally dehydrating from my pores. Lim asks the next-door neighbour anything and says:
- let's rest in that house.
We entered and introduced ourselves to the owners of the house. I must have missed some part of the conversation in Vietnamese because the next moment, lunch starts to be prepared by Em, a nice lady from the Dao ethnic group (pronounced “zao”), and by Lim.

I watch them work. Bonfire lit, dishes are patiently prepared one at a time. Naturally, the last course is the only one we eat hot.

I decided to check how they buy the food they don't produce. It is clear from this why the guide brought lunch on his back: they walk to the nearby village on local market day. They go down the mountain to go and come back with the purchases on the way up.

The couple speaks Vietnamese and the ethnic language. They communicate with me through smiles and, from time to time, Lim gets the translations right. From the very first smile I notice that Em has kept the tradition also with regard to the habit of chewing betel leaves to protect his teeth. When chewed together (areca nut and slaked lime. You can also add tobacco), the mixture turns red. When used for many years, teeth become black. Though black and unsightly, the teeth are strong and protected.

When Em understands my interest in Dao culture, she hurries to don the missing black robe to complement her traditional attire. She proudly displays it to the camera.

I end the day with a firefly flying towards me and landing on my shirt. I was 10 years old when I last saw a firefly.

Technical comment: I generally prefer the use of the gold reflector to illuminate the main subject. However, for these images, I chose to use a flash with a diffuser, due to the practicality of carrying it while walking and also because, with the unstable day, there was little natural light to reflect. I used the flash in the manual, with the intensity of 1/128.