07/28/2003

BY S.I. ROSENBAUM
Journal Staff Writer

SMITHFIELD -- Under the red and blue tent, Kim Kounlavoth dances the dance her mother taught her in Laos, her hands turning slowly at the wrist like leaves in the wind.

She remembers when she was 13, old enough at last to be allowed to dance. Her mother pulled her to her feet at a family party. "She said, 'Come on, stand up, I'm going to teach you how to do Lao dance,' " Kounlavoth, 33, recalled.

Journal photo / Connie Grosch Melissa Trichanh, a student at the Laotian Community Center at the Watlao Buddhovath of Rhode Island, the Buddhist temple in Smithfield. The school offers classes in religion, Laotian language and performing arts. At right is Davina Phouthakoun.

That memory is many miles and years away. But yesterday, at Watlao Buddhovath, the Laotian Buddhist temple on Limerock Road, Kounlavoth danced the elegant fone dance with a crowd of other émigrés.

In Laos, it's the start of the rainy season -- time for Boun Khao Phansa, the beginning of the three-month Buddhist Lent, when monks withdraw from the world to chant and pray. In Smithfield, Rhode Island's only Buddhist temple marked the celebration by holding its first South Asian culture festival.

The field behind the temple was lined with booths selling Laotian silks, slices of salted mango and bamboo tubes of sticky rice, and Thai and Laotian pop and rock music CDs. In the center, a stage under a tent hosted live music, dancing, and a fashion show.

Journal photo / Connie Grosch Sengchan Miller, center, sells a traditional Laotian dessert Ñ kowlam Ñ that consists of sticky rice, coconut milk, and black beans stuffed into bamboo, then steamed, during the first South Asian Multi-Cultural Festival Sunday.

Vendors, performers and festival-goers came from all over the state, as well as from Connecticut and Massachusetts. Toy Chumpul drove 15 hours from Orlando, Fla., to worship at the temple and to sell his potted plants of desert roses, kaffir limes, young persimmon trees.

"Buddha in temple called," he explained with a smile, miming a telephone call. "So we came here to get people to enjoy with food in the temple. We enjoy together."

Watlao Buddhovath started out in 1985, holding services in a Victorian house on Eddy Street in Providence. In 1995, the Laotian Community Center bought the parcel in Smithfield.

Construction of the new temple began in 1997, and it has been in use since 1998, said Thongkhoun Pathana, president of the LCC and an architect who designed the temple.

Since its founding, Watlao Buddhovath has provided a center of gravity for Rhode Island's 5,000-strong Laotian community. Pathana said that he had intended this celebration to bring all the South Asian cultures together -- Laotian, Cambodian, Hmong, Thai, Vietnamese, Sri Lankan. Still, most people here are Laotian.

Journal photo / Connie Grosch Paul Ratsabout, of Providence, and his daughter, Sandy, sell clothing, CDs and more at the first South Asian Multi-Cultural Festival at Watlao Buddhovath, in Smithfield.

The temple is a place, many said yesterday, where they can nurture their culture and traditions -- always a challenge for any immigrant population.

Ning Thadavong, 19, said she grew up with the familiar double life of an immigrant's child: holding to Lao customs at home, living by American ones outside the house.

"My mother taught me to have respect for everyone," Thadavong said. At home, she said, she looked down to show respect to her elders; at school she looked her teachers in the eye, the sign of respect in Western culture.

How much of her still belongs to Laotian tradition? Seventy-five percent, she repiled promptly. She comes to the temple for every celebration. But like many young adults, she doesn't dance the fone.

"We're the audience while the elders go up and dance," she said.

On the stage, Naline Thammakhamty is singing. She's a Laotian pop singer who flew to the United States for the first time to perform here. She's wearing apricot silk; gold glitter is sprinkled over her forehead.

She found the Laotian community in Rhode Island "very nice, very kind," she said in halting English before her performance.

"Here they never forget Laos," she said. "Because of my singing, I give one song for them, and I speak to them: don't forget Laos."

Below the stage, the older people dance slowly, their hands gently turning in the warm afternoon breeze.