They are here, the Hmong people, they are there too, blown around in China, Vietnam, Thailand, and in Laos, where Jeanne Taris met them.

In these mountains their cries still resound, of rage and abandonment, the neglect of the French then of the Americans, for whom they were allies, as precious as they were quickly forgotten, too quickly to escape reprisals.

The children’s toy guns fire only bangers now, but a danger almost  as deadly as war threatens them: malaria, everywhere, which affects eight out of every ten of the Hmong.

In this mountain village, where rats are eaten grilled on skewers, Bee and Watt welcomed the photographer and to her they opened the doors of their houses, and opened up their oblivion too. Perhaps that most of all.

Jean Berthelot de La Glétais