Preseving the oldest village of Bana people

(Cinet)- Kon Ko Tu village has managed to retain its specific cultural features. Kon Tum province has improved a campaign to raise residents’ awareness of the need to protect the forests and their culture, including traditional festivals.

The oldest village in Kon Tum city is alongside the poetic Dak Bla River is Kon Ko Tu, in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum. The village is considered the key point of gong culture in the Central Highlands, with dozens of houses on stilts featuring specific characteristics of the Bana architecture, where many residential houses surround a communal house.

Kon Ko Tu now has more than 20 houses on stilts which were built based on traditional Bana architecture. Each house is rectangular in shape, about 10m in length and built on 12 wooden pillars. Three or four generations of a family live in a single house, each of which serves as a strong attachment of the community and a source of pride for the Bana.

The village has more than 100 households with a population of about 600.

The village organizes its own festival with gong in the Rong house, considered as the community or communal house.

A Xep, the village patriarch, revealed that when the village was first set up, it had very few people. So the patriarch named the village Kon Ko Tu, meaning desolate village.

The Bana people in Kon Tum province have a charming traditional culture. Besides gong, they have various kinds of traditional musical instruments, including the t’rung, which is similar to the xylophone, and the ting gling and tingning, which are stringed musical instruments. They also have numerous smooth and passionate folk songs.

The village celebrates annual festivals, including the harvest festival and buffalo-sacrifying festival.

Traditional dishes that are attractive to tourists include bamboo tube rice. Bamboo tubes are used as a cooking pot, and after the rice is cooked, the tube is broken and the contents are removed.

Other dishes include chicken baked with salt and chilli and fried bamboo shoots. A traditional drink offered at festivals is ruou can, wine which one drinks from a jar using pipes. All these dishes and the drink convey the flavour that is uniquely Bana.

To develop tourism in the village, local authorities should implement policies to preserve and exploit its strong points. Ecological tourism should be developed to help tourists experience the forests’ natural beauty.

Preseving the oldest village of Bana people Related image(s)