How do spirits and superstitions of the Mekong Delta people play a role in the life of a farmer or fisherman?
Methodology: I asked around about superstitions and spirits, and witnessed spiritual events during my brief stay on an island in the Mekong Delta. All of the traditions and spirits have been passed down from traditions the stretch from some of the first inhabitants of the region. How do these principles play a role in their daily life? The Vietnamese people as a whole believe that spirits occupy places, buildings, objects, etc. before they were inhabited by humans. There’s also spirits of that roam the lands they’ve passed away on. There are spirits that protect them as well as the land.
I hadn’t heard of any evil spirits or demons until our host mentioned the local’s awareness of them during the tour. She talked of locals in the past getting tattoos to scare away the river demons. They also painted the fronts of boats with eyes to resemble a giant river monster to scare away evil spirits. Tactics like these are meant to keep away the evil spirits and help the kinder spirits flow more in their daily lives.
The other superstitions I ran by were the local fish farmers not eating the fish they were growing. As well as praying to the spirits of rain. Both of these superstitions were based on the catching any bad luck when it comes to farming their product. Most of these spirits they pray to are for actions out of their control. For example; a rice farmer cannot predict the rain, so will pray for the right amount of rainfall. They pray because too little rainfall will not make the rice grow, but too much rainfall can destroy the crop.
Thoughts:
The Vietnamese population, more specifically the older generation, views the world differently than many westerners view the world. They’re more spirit oriented towards what they do in life. I remember hearing that Vietnamese are a more collective people rather than the individualistic lifestyle of the westerner, but I assumed it was a collectivity of the people currently thriving in today’s world. However; the spirits are as much a part of the collective unit of the island as the locals inhabiting it. They islands we visited seemed like a flowing community-based culture like what Leigh talks about in his article “The Ecological Crisis, the Human Condition, and Community-Based Restoration as an instrument for its Cure.” It appeared as though the locals believed that the spirits also play a hand in protecting and nourishing the land and crops of the islands. It seems as though the locals prays to the spirts of their ancestors and the spirits that occupied the lands before them to send good vibes to their production. I believe that it was a matter of traditional production practices and isolation from the more modernized world, but I would need to view the world as that of one of the locals to figure the spirits role.