10/11/2021
OF K'HO
Village (bòn) is the residence unit of the people, like the village of the Vietnamese. Each bòn usually has from 5 to 10 long roofs, each house is usually about 40m - 50m long, including many families living in one house. To know how many households are in a house, they only need to count the kitchens in that house. The families in bòn belong to many different clans, but most of them are related to each other. The area chosen by the K'ho people to build must always be associated with 3 factors: water sources (rivers, streams), fields (swidden cultivation, dry fields, water fields) and forests (primary forests, sacred forests). The traditional society of the K'ho people had not had a clear class division, and there was no land dispute between one bòn and another. Previously, each bòn had its own name, often called according to the characteristics of topography, rivers and streams, flora and fauna, such as: bon Đưng Ơ (bamboo village), bon Lieng Ka (fish waterfall village), bon Ka dứt (snakehead fish village) beef D**g Ya Jieng (chicken valley village),... Nowadays, the appearance of village nouns according to local administrative units. However, there are sometimes overlapping administrative boundaries between hamlet and “bòn”. Due to the community's view of the boundaries of the past. In the 60s of the twentieth century, the K'ho community was cornered in "strategic hamlets" under the regime of the Republic of Vietnam. After the unification of the country, the people returned to their old place. In the community's memory, the name of Bòn was still there, but their area of residence had a new name of hamlet…, a hamlet may include many bòn.
The K'ho, according to the matrilineal system, form a large family consisting of many generations, living together in a longhouse, which can be a long stilt house or long ground floor. Each couple after marriage, they connected the back of the long house with one or two more rooms for the new family. Each large family usually has a head of the house (husband of the eldest mother in the house) representing to be in charge of rites and ceremonies as well as deciding on common affairs. Later, the form of small family established and became popular, forming houses on stilts or ground floor with smaller scale and area.
The K'ho don't keep rice in their house, they built a rice granary outside. The K'ho's rice granary was built after the long house had been completed. Every K'ho family has a granary near the house. Rice is the main food crop value. They did not leave rice with humans for fear of defiling the god of rice. The granary is large or small depending on the amount of products harvested and the number of members in the family.