my choice- Erin Comerford

In May of 2009, I had the opportunity to travel to Laos and spend some time trekking through the highland villages. These places that we trekked through definitely had sacredness about them that even if you didn’t personally experience it, you could see others experiencing that. One challenge for us was the language and culture barrier. We were outsiders being fully immersed in a culture that we knew nothing about. In terms of Turner’s rites of passage, the separation phase was immediate and intense. Having that kind of separation led to a difficult liminal phase. Since we as a group were not in the right liminal position, it was difficult to fully experience the sacredness that this place had to offer because it was so different from previous experiences. Another reason we had such a hard time entering into the sacred place rather than simply tredding upon it was because we didn’t have an identity like a trail name to cling to in the liminal phase. Our perceptions of ourselves were still the person we were before we came to Laos because of our names. The only identity we were able to cling to was the identity of who we are in America. Without a Laotian identity of some sort to cling to, we were unable to enter into the sacredness of Laos. This wasn’t necessarily a negative experience though because I was able to see just how connected these people were with their place. You can see the sacredness of the place through the people. This is because of their connection to the place with identity. It can also be said that, from our perspective, these people are in a liminal phase of their life because they have been separated from the rest of the world basically by being so isolated but they have yet to reach an aggregation phase where they can live a mundane social life. The combination of the identity connection and the liminality is what allows for the sacredness of their place to show through so clearly to an outsider.