Kon Klor Communal House

In the Bahnar language, kon means village. And K'lor is a wild tree, the gòn rừng, a tree that once grew in great numbers across this land. That is how people explain the name Kon Klor: the village of the gòn rừng tree.

Today only a few gòn rừng trees still grow scattered around the village. But what remains clearest, biggest and tallest is the communal house standing in the middle of the village.

The Kon Klor communal house, called a nhà rông, stands in Thắng Lợi ward. This is in the area of the old Kon Tum, now part of Quảng Ngãi province. The village lies beside the Đăk Bla River, near the Kon Klor suspension bridge that crosses it. It is a Bahnar village that has kept many of its traditional ways in the middle of a city.

For the people of the Central Highlands, a nhà rông is not a building made for sightseeing. It is the heart of the village, the place where the community meets to talk things over, holds its festivals, welcomes honored guests and keeps its shared ways of life. Without a nhà rông, a village lacks a gathering point, a space that the whole community accepts as its own.

The Kon Klor nhà rông as it stands today was rebuilt in 2011, after the old one burned down. In 2019 it was repaired again. According to the Kon Tum city web portal, it is now 22 meters high, more than 6 meters wide and more than 17 meters long. These are notable measurements, and they make the roof a landmark that can be seen from far across the village.

From the front of the house, the first thing to notice is the soaring roof. It is the most striking feature of Bahnar nhà rông architecture. The roof slopes steeply and rises high. The whole building is made of traditional materials: wood, thatch, bamboo, nứa and leaves, with patterns carefully worked across every surface.

It is a reconstruction in the traditional Bahnar style, raised again from the ashes of the old house. That rebuilding is part of the story: the community did not let its nhà rông vanish, even after fire destroyed it once.

At the Kon Klor cultural nhà rông, the Thắng Lợi cooperative group does its work. It weaves thổ cẩm cloth. It makes two kinds of wine: jar wine, sipped through long bamboo straws, and a wine made from the chòi mòi berry. And it teaches these trades to the younger generation. When there is a festival, the yard of the nhà rông fills with the sound of gongs and with circles of xoang dancers. These are not performances staged for visitors. They are the real life of a Bahnar village that is still alive in the middle of a city.

From the yard of the nhà rông, the eye goes up to the steep, soaring roof and out to the Đăk Bla River glittering in the distance. Not far off is the Kon Klor suspension bridge, a cord that joins the village to the far bank, swaying gently in the river wind of the afternoon.

The Kon Klor communal house has a thatched roof reaching high, and wood and nứa deepened in color by the years. Beneath that roof, a Bahnar village is still living, weaving, playing gongs and handing down to its children what belongs to them.