flags and mountain, originally uploaded by c_p_lew.

It's nice to feel well again. My staff have all recovered from their illnesses yesterday - sufficiently so they could attend a wedding party at lunch time. I decided to pass on it, just handing over an envelop with lucky money inside. The above picture (which won't upload right now) is of the front of the hospital from the front of our office, which is up on the second floor of the hospital.

My boss sent me a link to pictures of the "Death Highway" in Boliva, which got me thinking of my trip to Ecuador in 1974. I'm lazy to copy and paste so here's the link to my post in my LJ.

Whoops! It's Friday and I forgot Thirteen Thursday. Will correct that in the next post.

Thursday medical report

I had a Skype appointment with a home office person so I got to the office early. It was very quiet and rather pleasant in the early morning. Then my staff said that one of the project assistants had a fever and stomach upset. A little while later, the other staff person started looking very pale. After she had run to the bathroom three times, I told her to go home.

I still think that the fermented fish we ate on Monday was the cause of all ills. The alternative is that they caught a virus from me - after all we were in the car together for nine hours. But I prefer to think it was the pa daek.

Road to Recovery - my amazing thing of the day

Although I'm still a little spacy, I realized that there's an inverse relationship between health and boredom. When I could sit up or look at the computer because of my illness, I didn't feel bored. I just kept my eyes closed and nodded off while listening to an audio-book. There's only so much sleep that one can sleep This morning, I started feeling better and started to miss our field office - so I'm here now, catching up on all I missed while I was sleeping through my illness.

I guess the amazing thing of the day was just how much I like my job and would rather work than take a sick day!

Feeling more alive today. After having slept all day yesterday, I slept 12 hours last night. I had a funny dream just before waking up - I visited the health center where I used to work and they started to give me treatment for a sickness. When I woke up, I felt much better - fever gone. I think I got medical treatment for this sickness in my dream.

For some reason, I got hit by a high fever during the night. This was after thinking, "Strange that I haven't gotten sick for a long time." Spent the day in the guest house while my staff did all the work. Then we drove back to Salavan. That's my journal entry today.

I'm sitting in a restaurant in Pakse, after a nine hour trip from Vientiane. I'm feeling very tired, so no real post today or pictures. Stay tuned for more tomorrow.

For those who like to wander through someone else's picks of the week, here's two can't misses:

Dynamics of Cats has the Space Pick of the Best for the week - Carnival of Space #36

There's been all sorts of strange astronomy news this week, some of which was announced at the American Astronomical Society meeting this past week. In about 20 - 40 million years a giant gas cloud will crash into our galaxy. And the risk of an asteroid vs. Mars collision is dropped to nearly zero. Black holes are in the news: Middleweight Black Holes roam the Galaxy Undetected. No, while this article may sound like a tabloid headline, it comes from New Scientist reporting of the AAS meeting. And they may be an amazing number of planet in the universe if the news in the article Wherever a Planet can form, it will  That's good news for science fiction writers! And the article, Biggest Black Hole in the Universe Discovered just about makes my head explode - is 3.5 million LY away, is part of a binary with a smaller black hole and has a mass equivalent to 18 billion times of our sun (the smaller black hole has a mass of only 100 million suns).  And the strange heat in a distant planet may be due to a collision between it and another planet.

Back to Earth, and things I can wrap my mind around. Other Things Amanzi hosted last week's Online Ground Rounds. He's a doc in South Africa and has beautiful pictures of wildlife to go along with the introductions to the various blogs highlighted this week. The picture of the lionesses drinking at a pond is really beautiful.

This week's Grand Rounds is hosted by Path Talk. Yes, us medical types like to talk about pathology - but also in this week's line up are the usual blogs about medical articles of interest, medicine from medical staff point of view as well as the perceptions of the people receiving care.

Amazing thing for Saturday

Of course I had great plans for getting out of the house early, going for a bike ride, cleaning, shopping, reading, doing some school assignments (I'm in a distance learning public health program). Stayed up too late last night, woke up at 9:30 am and dawdled. Read some more of Mortals but haven't gotten out of the house yet. Though I did get grossed out by the carelessness of kittens so spent a few hours cleaning.

My landlady's daughter in law came over. I don't know her real name but everyone knows her as Mae Waew or "Waew's Mother." My landlady's other daughter, Keo, who went to the US as a refugee now works in a casino in Atlanta City (I don't know her job position and have never asked) either comes over here or sends money with other relatives every year. Mae Waew just told me that she had come in person during the time that I was in Xieng Khouang. But she thought of me and had brought a Christmas gift - a one cup coffee maker in a bright red. 

I'm still smiling.

Amazing things for the day - Thursday and Friday

Someone asked me why I've stayed in Laos for eleven years. I answered that my work is meaningful and fascinating and something amazing happens every day. So I decided I should keep track of the amazing things that happen.

Thursday's thing

I spend all my time in the provinces and when I come to Vientiane, it's for meetings. I don't often get a chance to look up from what I'm doing to meet up with friends. So on Thursday, I walked to a restaurant for lunch. I ran into my boss who told me that a friend of ours was at that restaurant. Along the way, I met up with another friend who had, I thought, left Laos for good - and now he's back. In front of the restaurant, I bumped into another friend and we were joined by a third. By the time I got into the restaurant, the person I wanted to meet was gone but I was happy to have met the other folks.

So today's amazing thing was:
I had to get some information about inclusive education and called someone I had never met. We talked about her program and how my project could help kids with disabilities get into the schools supported by her project. Then we talked about general things. At the end of an hour, we finally hung up and I felt happy to have made a new contact - and a new friend.

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Cats 1. Cicero was the first cat I ever had when I was a kid, a black tom cat. He was an outdoor cat, who couldn't stand to be inside. We tried taking him to the vet for shots and he ran away. We lived about 20 miles from the vet's office so thought we'd never see him again. Six months later, he returned. That was about 1965. 2. Cluster and her sister, 3. Nebula were two tortoise shell cats. We learned our lesson with Cicero. These were indoor cats. 4. Irving was a gray cat. We thought she was a neutered male and thought that she was a banker's gray so that's how she got the name Irving for Irving Trust. Well, we couldn't trust Irving. One night he was acting funny and the next morning she had kittens. Around 1968, she took off to bestow kittens on another family I guess. Maybe she thought we'd neuter her. 5. Woody was the first cat I had as an adult (1972). I carried her in a suitcase on my bicycle while she yowled all the way. She was a nice gray tiger cat. 6. Peggy was a Siamese cat, whom I adopted in 1973 as a humanitarian, or rather felinitarian gesture. She had been in an accident in which she lost a hind leg. Her owners wouldn't take her back. 7. Saita was my first Seattle cat, after fast forwarding a few years. In between cats, I got divorced, moved to New York City, hitchhiked around the country and finally, in 1978, decided to live in Seattle. One day I was walking around Green Lake and a nice looking young man with soulful eyes convinced me to take this kitten. When I left Seattle for another long trip, not sure if I would return, a friend took care of her - and wouldn't give her back. 8. Hatty - in 1983, some friends who had moved into a loft together had cat wars. She had two big cats and he had Hatty. Hatty became absolutely catatonic and refused to eat or come out from a hole in the wall. By that time, I had moved into a house which I shared with a friend so I took her on. She remained neurotic - she didn't like to be outside so she would climb up on the roof and yowl for hours until I got back home. Equally embarrassing was that she would get on the fire escape of the apartment building next to our house and yowl into people's windows. Fortunately, I worked night shift so I didn't have to meet people's eyes. When I went to work in Thailand, I had a traumatic experience trying to find a home for her; it eventually worked out all right though. 9. Unnamed Cat in my Office who had three kittens under my desk and then they all disappeared one night. When I worked in a refugee camp in Thailand, I was amazed to open my office one morning and find a cat family there. While the refugees were not allowed to have pets, many managed to find cats or bring them from other camps. The mother cat was quite aggressive and when she felt my office wasn't secure enough, she dragged the kittens across the outpatient department and into our field coordinator's office. The following morning, she would not let her get into her office. Pretty wild! 10. Som - again more fast forwarding. I left Thailand in 1990 and returned to school. After graduation, I worked in rural community health centers in Arizona and California. Finally, when I returned to Asia in 1996 and got my own house in 1997, I could have a cat again. I inherited Som (which means Orange in Thai language) from a friend. Unfortunately, in the upcountry site where I was working, there were too many rats and people bought rat poison to take care of the problem. Som caught a rat which had been poisoned and then he died. I almost didn't want to have cats again. 12. Neung, Song, Sam- Then someone gave me these three black and white kittens. The names mean One, Two and Three since I couldn't think of what to name them. Sam eventually ran off, and other people in the neighborhood absorbed the others. I was doing a lot of traveling at the time so the cats found families to adopt. 13. Shadow was a tortoiseshell cat. My landlady in Vientiane decided that I needed to have a cat so she brought Shadow to me from a Buddhist temple. Often people will leave kittens and puppies at the temples because there is always surplus food and a lot of mice and rats. She was my constant companion for five years and a very Buddhist cat. When people in the neighborhood had ceremonies where the monks came to the house to chant, she would sit in the back of the room, listening. She had many litters of kittens who found homes around the country until two years ago, when she was run over. I still have three cats from her last two litters. So that's my contribution on a Friday. But since I still have work to do tomorrow, I'll consider this a Thursday and date it so.

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Resorting to cat pictures

This is my entry for today


My kittens are really scaredy cats. They tend to run into the pots and pan cabinet whenever I even look in their direction. I guess since I'm so tall, it's scary for them. On the other hand, they seem to be able to dissemble this mountain into parts - the parts that feed them are fine. Maybe my fingers look like cat legs.

The black one has decided that the safest place in the house is the basket of my bicycle. I should take him for a ride.

Stone Jars

This is a post I never got around to posting because it took me awhile to get it together to upload and edit the pictures. I took the pictures when I visited the Plain of Jars on Saturday.

POJ 5 jan 08, originally uploaded by c_p_lew.

I think I've been here thousands of times, but somehow I never get tired of visiting the Plain of Jars.
The first day I arrived in Phonsavanh in 1996, I suggested to the staff who had been working in the project, that we go out there. The expatriate who was working there at the time rolled his eyes. "You'll get tired of it soon enough," he said. "I'll take you but you have to promise that you'll bring guests out there when they want to go." I agreed.

That day was freezing cold with a wind that spun around the jars isolated on the wide hills. Since it was in November (and the dry season), the grass was already dead and dry, and looked as gray as the sky. We ran around the hills and the jars. I felt exhilarated to be out there, in the wind and weather. I think the staff were grumbling but if they were, their words dissipated in the wind.

Since then, I've brought guests out there, including people who live in the province and had never been there. And I often go by myself, on days like this, when the light of the setting sun sets the landscape on fire.

So who made these jars, and how did they get there? There isn't a lot of information - there are about fifteen jar sites around the province. At some of the sites, there are remains suggesting that the jars were funerary urns. This site, also called Ban Ang (Basin village) is the largest site that has been excavated since it was close to Phonsavanh - which also meant that it was easy to be vandalized. And it was also a main battlefield during the 'Vietnam War.' There are big bomb craters scattered among the jars, the aftermath of 2000 lb. bombs.

Some links:
Wikipedia Article

Article from the American Air Force Association

Historical article which also talks about the effects of the bombing both on the jars sites and around Xieng Khouang

Article from the Telegraph

Unesco article. A few years ago, they contracted the Mines Advisory Group to clear the main foot paths of UXO.

biggest jar, originally uploaded by c_p_lew.

view of the Plain of Jars, originally uploaded by c_p_lew.

Books

I've been working on my reading list for 2008, which I posted a few entries back. Since not very much happened today - other than meetings - I thought I'd thrill everyone with my choice of reading.

The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Banks. Some reviews I read had classified this book as chick-lit. If that's what it is, it's a cut above the rest. It's a series of short stories dealing with Jane (and she seems to be a plain Jane at that), who watches her brother with his new girlfriend - then she enters her own series of love dramas. There are touching moments with her family and the regrouping that takes place at the Jersey Shore.

I also just finished listening to Contact by Carl Sagan. The first 3/4 of the book was incredible. Since he was a scientist, he wrote about the minute details in the life of a radio astronomer. This would seem to be a boring job, except one day an unexpected signal is picked up the radio telescope - and changes the course of the world. Towards the end of the book, there's some fuzzy religion wrapped up with the aliens. It's a fun book to read - I enjoyed Sagan's superlatives about the universe.

I'm now reading Mortals by Norman Rush. It has an interesting plot - tangled American lives in Botswana though it is full of densely carved characterizations and relationships. It reminds a lot of Dom Delillo but more plot driven.

One person's journey

I was looking at the Legacies of War website when I came across this video. One of the main people interviewed on this film is Bounmee, whom we had helped with vocational training and providing funds so he could study the three-year English language program at the local teacher training college. 

Bounmee was injured in 1995, when he was about 13 years old. He's fortunate that he had a supportive family, and they encouraged him to continue with school. When he finished high school, he stopped by our office and asked if we could help. He didn't have funds for additional school. "I really find it difficult to be a family with only one arm," he explained. "I'd really rather study a subject where I can use my mind."

For the next few years, we provided the funds so he could study basic English and computer use and then helped him get into the Si Keurt Vocational Training School for the Disabled, where he graduated with a certificate in IT. Since then he's been helping us on and off, interviewing other UXO survivors and talking with guests who visit our project. For the past two years, he's been a volunteer with the Lao Disabled People's Association, helping with disabled people's groups and attending their training programs. Now he has been working at the Khun District Community Radio, the first community radio in the country.

Every time I go to Xieng Khouang, I spend some time with him and his family - he brought his father to my baci ceremony, where as an elder, he joined his voice with the mor phone who led the ceremony. When I happened on this video, I felt very proud of him. He's a very confident and articulate person now.

 

baci ceremony

Our trip from Xieng Khouang to Vientiane went more quickly than usual - I nodded off most of the time though I intermittently jumped away to take in the clear skies and far vistas along the road.

On Saturday, I had a baci at my house. This ceremony is also known as a Suu Kh-uan, or ceremony to call the souls. Most Indochinese cultures believe that each person has several main souls - the soul of the physical body, an eternal soul which continues on to rebirth, and an intermediate soul which can linger after the body dies (This is the soul which can linger and haunt people). Some people also believe that each of the openings in the body and organs have a spirit, or vital force as well (32 in all). Imbalances in the body can lead to sickness when one or more of the souls can wander so a baci ceremony invites the souls to return.

While Thai and Khmer culture are more strict about when they do string tying ceremonies - it should only be done for major changes in life when the souls are apt to wander, such as birth of a child, inviting the souls of the baby to stay with the family (the naming ceremony at one month), weddings, moving into a new house and major sickness, the Lao tend to have ceremonies for other occasions. They are an excuse to have a party - but they also function in welcoming or sending a guest, celebrating holidays or other occasions. My baci was just to bring people together to welcome the new year - and also to send back the old year, the end of which was very sad because a close friend of ours was killed in a road accident.

The Mor Phone are usually elders in the community, and usually older men who had been monks at some earlier time in their lives. Usually one man will 'officiate' the ceremony but for my ceremony this time, two elders came, plus the father of another friend. The role of the Mor Phone is to chant Buddhist chants, starting with the chant, "I seek refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha" - the person of Lord Buddha, his teachings and the community." Often call out the bad - taking a stick with the baci strings on it and passing it over the back of the person's hands, then burning one of the strings to destroy the bad luck. Then he will continue to chant, or tell a fable, and calling the spirits back to the body by the soft words and good thoughts. At the end, he will brush the strings - and good luck - back towards the person's body with the person's hands palms up to receive the blessing.

After that, it's fun and games. After the Mor Phone ties a string on to the main person's wrists with more chanting and wishes, everyone else does the same. Usually, you hold out a plate with everyone's offerings in one hand, with the other hand raised in thanks for the blessings as the people tie the strings to the wrists. Meanwhile, people add food and fill up a glass of alcohol to the plate - which you're expected to eat and drink everything on the plate.

Following the ceremony, the flower arrangement is carried to the person's bed room and you're supposed to sleep in the room with it for the next three days. Marigolds do have an interesting scent, which seems to affect dreams. Unfortunately, we had to return to Vientiane so the flower arrangement stayed in my room.

I'm having a baci at my house today, to bring in the new year. My neighbors started coming by at 6:30 am. Now we're in the throws of setting everything up. Stay tuned!

It's been a quiet day. Again the temperate was mind-boggling this morning 5 deg C. I kinda suspected something when I see my breath when I exhaled - while I still in bed. In order to get the ice cubes out of my blood, I took a walk in the am then a hot shower, which steamed up the whole house.

Once the sun came out, my shivers stopped. But you had to be directly in the path of the sun beams - sitting inside and working on a report on the computer did not work. In the afternoon, the building had warmed up enough to be tolerable.

Finally in the early evening, a person who had attended our animal raising/ veterinary workshop called me to say that he had gotten his neighbors and their chickens and ducks together so he invited me to watch him vaccinate the lot (it's recommended that chickens get vaccinated for Newcastle Disease and chicken cholera every six months). So I hung out behind his house, next to the fire, while the kids ran around and gathered up chickens, hugging them to their chests. Once he had finished with vaccinating one bird, a child would gather it up and talk to it, making the hurty go away. I really had to laugh at the kids crowding around to see the birds gets their shots; Leu's brother told me that they had just gotten their shots. The Ministry of Health organized a countrywide campaign to vaccinate all the children. I imagine that they were now really interested to make sure the chickens all got their shots - it's always more interesting when you're not the one getting poked.

This morning, I woke up at 3 am, feeling really hot in my double layers of sweat pants and sweat suits. Went outside and the sky was blazing with stars - I think Xieng Khouang has the best night skies during the cold season than any place else in SE Asia. After checking the thermometer - it was 6 deg C - and looking at the sky, which looked like the sun was coming up - I decided that it was getting close to sunrise so I heated up some rice and water for coffee. 

It was still dark when I finished breakfast, so then I decided to look at the clock. Groan: 3:30 am and I felt wide awake. I started reading Mortals by Norman Rush (which is on my book list) until I fell asleep again and woke up late. Of course.

I've been living in Laos for eleven years now. When I first arrived, I lived in an old battered wooden building. We had electricity for four hours/ night. While we had a small electric generator for the times we really needed to prepare for a workshop or write reports, we wrote most things out by hand, which were typed out later. So, even if I woke up very early, I was thankful for 24 hour electricity allowing me to read. 

2 January, in retrospect

The temperature has dropped down in the single digits (Celsius, that is but still plenty cold). It's strange to think it can get so cold in a tropical country but Xieng Khouang province is up in the mountains (1,300 M. in altitude) and during the winter, the wind can blow. Our office is in an old wooden building and my house is concrete, renovated about 4 years ago; however, none of the houses here have any indoor heating. Whatever temperature it is outside, is just about the same temperature inside. And during the day, while it warms up outside, it doesn't warm up inside my house.

The main heater available is staying active - doing sit-ups and push-ups during the evening. Otherwise, I'd just settle in my quilt and read all night.

Also as part of the winter special package, the cold affects the phones, internet, fax and all that. So I'm just posting quickly for today, that we're still alive up here. Just cold that's all.

Happy New Years

Quite a great day yesterday. It started out at 2 pm for the annual report of the province hospital - number of patients seen in each service, goals for the coming year, and awards to the hospital staff. At about 4:30 pm, we went outside and snacked on the barbeque that people had whipped up for the party, while the sun dropped towards the horizon and a cold wind started to pick up. 

I returned to my house to get a warmer coat and noticed that the outside temperature was already 50 degrees F, before returning to the dept of health. From that point on, I went back and forth between the parties at the hospital and at the dept of health. Just about midnight, the hospital staff were doing a medical quiz game - "Is leptosporosis caused by a virus, bacteria, toxin or food?" - when I noticed that it was already 12:01. When the person questioned corrected answered that it was caused by bacteria, the band started up and everyone popped corks on the Chinese champagne (like Listerine but with bubbles). I finally returned home at 2 am.

Today we were supposed to go to a friend's village but everyone woke up with sore throats. We all croaked to each other that maybe we should rest today. So that's what I'm doing. Already starting with my reads for 2008, which are lying on the floor next to my feet.

My Resolution #1: Book List of Must Reads in 2007

I read about this book challenge on Names Have Been Changed

Anyway, since I'm always trying to read at least one hundred books per year, I'm giving it a shot as part of the The TBR Challenge

My list of twelve books is:

1. The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk

2. The Pakistani Bride by Bapsi Sidhwa

3. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

4. Mortals by Norman Rush

5. Carnival by Elizabeth Bear

6. The Vision of Emma Blau by Ursula Hegi

7. Was by Geoff Ryman

8. The Biographer's Moustache by Kingsley Amis

9. Brasyl by Ian MacDonald

10. The War of the Nerves by Ben Sheppard

11. Baghdad Burning II by Riverbend

12. A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski

Alternative Books:

1. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen

2. The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank

3. Shriek: an Afterword by Jeff Vandermeer

4. Ammonite by Nicola Griffith

5. The King of Torts by John Grisham

6. Dark Sun by Richard Rhodes

7. Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury

8. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West

9. The Terrorist by John Updike

10. Farthing by Jo Walton

11. Wandering through Vietnamese Culture by Huu Ngoc

12. Espresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith

Most of these books I've had knocking around in my book cases in Xieng Khouang for a while. It's time to finally get them read.

More books - Suspected Spoilers

I just finished reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. She gave one of the pep talks for NaNoWriMo, saying that the first draft of the book was writing for NaNo - though there's no mention in the interview in the book. Whatever - I really did enjoy the book.

The idea of Circus was intriguing but I particularly liked the way, this world floated through the landscape of the Great Depression. The story of the old man bracketed the action. I had read reviews about the book, saying that it was a pot-boiler and too catastrophic - but I didn't find this an overwhelming problem. There were realistic and sympathetic characters against a background that wanted to believe that there was something more than hype behind the glittering lights and the promise of an elephant.

The one thing I found a little strange was the triangle of characters reminded me too much of Sophie's Choice, with the charismatic alpha male, the young innocent male and the wounded young woman.

Brilliant Dave Berry quote (or at least I thought so):

"The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl."

Now I really think I'll be able to understand quantum mechanics.

Some Books and some future plums

Today was a very quiet day - cool and sunny. I did a survey of my back yard, which my landlady had cleaned up, taking out all the dead weeds between the trees so the dusty soil is exposed. I always get a little nervous walking there because of snakes or other crawly things in the underbrush, but it's dry season now so all the creep crawlers have the good sense to go underground.

I finished "Inda" by Sherwood Smith. I liked it towards the end because the plot started to capture me but the beginning was slow going. This is one of the books I really wanted to like, even though I don't care much for fantasy - but it was worth it. The end of the book, once the sheltered MC is banished, was more interesting. Smith does some great world building and I enjoyed how gender roles and the emerging sexuality of her characters developed.

I'm trying "Water for Elephants" next, and when I go out for my morning run, I've started to listen to "Contact" by Carl Sagan.

Last week, I also finished "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry. I think this is in my list of top ten for the year. He captures a year of hope and misery, which takes place during "The Emergency," a bad time in India's modern history. The characters, their developing friendships and the tragedies, are all well written. It has the sweep of a Bollywood film too - especially when everyone comes together at the end. Some reviewers said that this book was too 'raw,' but I felt it was India - the most sublime and the most horrible.

Plum blossoms in my back yard:

plum blossoms, originally uploaded by c_p_lew.

Try this again

I can't believe that yesterday's blog got eaten by the phone line - thought it had gotten published but it didn't appear. So now I'm in the office, using our new high speed line; should know to avoid dial-up. So I'm dating this for Friday anyway:

Finished the second day of our meetings. Strange but true, I really enjoyed the meeting, although the title of this event: "Quarterly Project Management Meeting" sounds very dry. We've been working together long enough that the management stuff is pretty much taken care of - reporting, organizational structure, systems for doing things - are pretty much set. So we actually talked about substance - how to help certain people, how to make referrals happen more quickly, and content for next year's village chiefs meetings.

I gave a class on mental health, which started off with a discussion on 'what is mental health?' Most people assumed the term for mental health means pathology. We discussed cultural definitions of mental health and illness. People brought up their difficulties in interviewing people about mental health issues and we talked about what seemed to help, such as taking the person to a quiet place to talk, waiting for the person to answer, asking questions more than giving answers, listening rather than speaking. We've also been analyzing information on people's lives through six dimensions - health, mental health, family/ society/ environment, education/ vocational training, economic, culture/ religion - and we went through a case study that one of the people in the meeting had brought up the day before.

At the end of the day, I hosted a small party - Lao grilled fish 'burritos' - take a piece of fish, place it on a piece of lettuce, add some fermented rice noodles and herbs, wrap it up and dip it in a sauce made from fish sauce, chile peppers, peanuts and herbs - and wash it down with Lao beer.

I would insert of picture of the food-laden table right here - but I forgot my camera to upload the pictures. Edit: OK, got everything today so here's a picture of the spread. Yes, those are rolls of toilet paper on the table, much better than napkins!

fish feast, originally uploaded by c_p_lew.

The day in Xieng Khouang

We finally got our high-speed internet connection in the XK field office. I'm listening to the BBC 'The World Today' program while checking e-mail. Could be any where in the world while surfing the web. However, it's nice to relax after conducting a day-long meeting in Lao.

The 2004 Tsunami

It's difficult to believe, but it's been three years since the tsunami tore apart lives all through Asia, Indian costal cities and even spread to parts of Africa. Us modern people forget that whatever we do to warp the environment, the world's climate and politics, nature can take over and wipe everything out.

While life has returned to normal in most places, there are still wounds.

And people have forgotten. Maybe that's good, it can be a sign of recovery, returning to 'normal.' When I meet tourists who have visited Phuket, the resort area in Thailand that was severely hurt by the tsunami, I ask them what it's like now. They often stare at me blankly, not realizing the scope of the devastation just a few years ago. I haven't had a chance to go down there, though I've looked at the web site of the Chamber of Commerce, which emphasizes that the beaches, and the services that support going to the beach, are all back to normal.

One of my friends used to work with an NGO in Aceh, the province in the northern tip of Sumatra, where she had trained many health care and education staff. When she was able to get in contact with her old staff members, she learned that, by luck, some people had been visiting families or had been out of town on that day. Other people were not so lucky. Along with the 300,000 estimated deaths during that time, there are also the indirect impacts of natural disasters, which last much longer. Teachers who died leave students with knowledge, doctors who died leave a health care gap. Parents who die leave orphans who will always have a hole in their beings.

What happens after that? A crisis can be devastating, or can spur communities to pull together and help everyone. In the aftermath of the tsunami, there have been spots which have one response and places with other.

In other news, the World Bank has a report about its assistance together for Sri Lanka. The amount that it provided - 150 million USD is modest but seems to have made an impact. On the web site, it mentions that there are still 15,000 people who still need homes, but this will take more funding. There are also human interest stories that show the human impact of this natural disaster.

A lot of people have not yet received assistance though, even now. Although there was a great outpouring of aid throughout the region, local people often did not see the results. There were 'bottle necks,' where the funds were available but between local capacity (limited number of construction workers to rebuild houses) and logistics (lack of vehicles to transport supplies), people have been waiting for their lives to return to normal.

Some links:

Indonesia, Thailand mark Tsunami with Prayers

Asia Marks Anniversary

World Bank Support to Sri Lanka

Merry Christmas

Christmas was a quiet and thoughtful day. My Lao friends from all over the country called me. Christmas is not a public holiday so most of my friends were working. I could hear the children in the school behind me house as they shouted out their drills on the alphabet, and their happy shouts during recess.

I walked down to the office in the morning and rode my bicycle back home on the river road, then cutting inland for a tour of the rice fields. Farmers flooded some fields and have started the dry season rice farming.

offerings.jpg, originally uploaded by c_p_lew.

This is my one Christmas photo. I'm not sure what the story is behind these offerings. Was someone killed here? Or is this a site that has traditionally be a place to make offerings to the spirits of the place? There are always offerings here - whether several bottles of Pepsi or a line of shot glasses filled with rice whiskey next to balls of sticky rice.

Christmas Eve

I always bring my camera around with me. All locations in Lao are photogenic. I was walking back to get my bicycle from the repair shop this afternoon when I saw these monks walking towards me. All Vientiane roads used to be lined with these big trees - though many have been cut down. Many are diseased but many have to make way for the new road building projects. 

People used to wonder about why trees in Asia are painted white. Some people speculated that it's to prevent beetles from getting into the tree at their bases. But most people laugh and saw - the color prevents vehicles from crashing into them, especially during the time when there were no street lights.

After taking the overnight bus to Vientiane, I spent the day trying to stay awake at the office. There were a lot of little things to take care of, so the morning slipped away with phone calls. Organized a meeting for later in the week, got information on activities from four provinces for my quarterly reports, received an evaluation report. Etc and etc. Very productive, but I had planned to go up to Xieng Khouang for Christmas but the planes were full and I didn't want to spend Christmas Day on a ten-hour bus ride.

I took my bicycle for an overhaul. When I returned in the afternoon, I sat with the shop owner, who told me about how she and her family, although Buddhist, had gone to Christmas activities at various churches in the past. "They would have singing or skits, give out gifts and have food."

My own staff in Salavan plan to have a Christmas party with our counterparts.

Some other scenes around Vientiane:

While the Pratuxay - the victory door - is similar in structure with its French cousin, the bas relief molded around the structure are all Lao images. This view is taken in the late afternoon, looking up Lane Xang Avenue.

During lunch time, I stopped by the old Talad Sao, the morning market. Although the outside of the buildings look old, they were constructed about 13 years ago. Now, with progress, a new mall is going up next to the old market. Those vendors who can afford the rents, have been moving to the new building, which has air conditioning and fancier stores. The old market continues to function, with a section for silk and traditional handicrafts, another section for household items such as washing machines and flat-screen TVs, and food stalls. This market below sells Hmong embroidery and applique and is pretty typical of the stalls in the market.

Sunday morning bicycle ride

I woke up early, while the sky was still dark. While sipping coffee, I watched the raising sun mold the shapes around Phou Ka-tae. I went out on my bicycle before the sun got up to full speed and went to survey the changes that the seasons were making near Salavan.

I left the main road at Na Khoy Sao Village. Although everyone laughs when they say the name, which means 'the rice field waiting for girls,' no one can tell me the history of the name. Did the men come first and they had to wait for their wives? Did they send for women once the fields were opened up? Was it an old military camp during the 'Vietnam' War? I could speculate on and on. 

While the dry season is easier for bicycling - didn't get stuck in mud at least - the dust can be just as bad. This fine material can be several inches thick and it's difficult for pedaling. And if a car or motorcycle goes by, it stirs up the dust so that I can't see for several minutes. I took this picture of a herd of buffalo a farmer had just released so they could forage for the day.

There are always interesting vehicles crowding the roads - two-wheeled tractors pulling trailers packed with families and neighbors going to town for the day, motorcycles pulling handcarts, with the passenger sitting on the cross-bar of the cart, or motorcycle vendors, like those below. They are mostly Vietnamese vendors who stock up and go to the most remote areas to sell their wares. Rural people rely on them for buying pots and pans, new clothes, or motorcycle batteries which they can use to power a small light bulb.

You would think...

After all the worrying about whether the team got to Salavan, which was not relieved by calling their cell phones because they were turned off, you think that my staff would have the consideration to call me when they returned to town. Forget it! They got back at 3 and finally answered when I called them at 7 pm. The original plan was to have dinner before our guests returned to Vientiane; however, they had left just after returning from the district.

I've worked with one of these people for seven years, the other for three years. You would think...

Never mind.

Grump.

Saturday at the office

In spite of the designation of "cold season," the weather in Salavan has not cooled. It must be about 30 degrees C outside; my house collects the heat so it's probably about 35 degrees C inside. The sun beats down on the roofs of the houses, already covered with dust. The world can look gray though in the distance, the mountains stand out clearly.

It's quiet at the office, except for ambient sounds from other areas of the hospital. Earlier, I heard the distinctive cry of a new born - we're right above the delivery room. A couple of people stick their heads in through the open door, looking for the place where they get get their health exams signed for their drivers licenses.

This morning, my neighbor's daughter stopped by, with two gigantic fresh coconuts, which had just fallen off the tree in front of my house. The coconut juice was so sweet and the coconut meat was the highlight of my breakfast.

It all turns out all right in the end

Yesterday, I was perturbed because we had difficulty coordinating vehicles. It meant that instead of taking two trucks, with some technicians, I got left behind and the techs will go next week. I hadn't been out to this remote district for a while, so I was looking forward to the trip, even if it meant an eight hour trip, including the lunch stop.

At the end of the afternoon, I found out that our truck got stuck behind another truck that had broken down, blocking trucks in both directions. I substituted my feelings of disappointment with worry. I hope they get out to the district town all right.

This road is horrible. And the eight hour trip is for a distance of 80 kilometers. I could bicycle faster than that!

Our Office

I spent most of the day in our little office in the province hospital. Although it's one room, it's very comfortable and when most of the staff are out, it's quiet and cool. We just got a high(er) speed internet connection so hopefully, the staff can start to access the internet more often.

One of the problems we've been having is that people are curious about spam messages - and they click on the links. So I spent a good part of the morning cleaning the computer with Spybot, Ad-aware and Norton as well as updating Windows. In the afternoon, I gave a talk on how to avoid problems, and also the uses of the internet. I showed them how to use our newsgroup, especially uploading documents so they don't get lost if the computer crashes.

A Day in Pakse

Overnight buses are getting to be more comfortable. When I first arrived in Lao, there were only the ordinary buses, with straight backs that rattled along the highways. A twelve hour trip in one of these buses seemed to both loosen my joints, so I couldn't stand or walk properly for an hour after getting off the bus, and create muscle spasms in unusual places of my body.

Then, as the roads to the south improved, the quality of the buses improved too. There were overnight sleeper buses, first with seats that could go back a little way - just enough so that when people slept, they tended to fall over on their neighbors - and then with seats that could really lean back. Now there are buses with double decker bunk beds, and I have learned to be able to sleep in them.

I usually set my iPod to the latest audiobook I'm listening to. Several hours later, I'll wake up and find that the story has really jumped and I don't remember anything. So I rewind and start over again.

By the time I reached Pakse, this morning, I had listened to the same section of Rohinton Mistry's book, A Delicate Balance, about four times. Ate breakfast, went over to the regional hospital to sit in on part of a training, spent some time updating files on the internet, and then we returned to Salavan.

A day in Vientiane

After returning to Vientiane on Monday night, I was greeted by a temple fair in my back yard. This fair was organized by a family doing a Maha Krathin. While this ceremony is usually done by a family once every five years or so, the temple fair, with its games of knock-over-the-can and and bingo, are usually not part of the deal.

Maha Krathin is usually done in the month before or the month following the period of Buddhist Lent (though it can be done at other times of the year, outside Buddhist Lent time), and involves a day of preparation followed by feeding the monks at the house during the morning and then going to the temple with donations in time for the monks mid-day meal. The community members walk around the temple with their donation and then offer food to the monks for the mid-day meal and prayer together.

My temple is working on finishing the Boht, the building housing the Buddha images. The building looks like it's about half done now, but still needs the community to do fund-raising like this. So, in spite of not being able to get my car out of the driveway to go to the office, I didn't mind the fair.

So this morning started off roughly. I had been upcountry for three weeks, and there was no one to start up the car every day. So the battery was quite dead. At the same time, a group of guests arrived at the office - one of them had urgent business back in Vietnam, so my staff were helping them get all that arranged. I finally arrived at the office around 9 am, and spent the morning with our guests. In the afternoon, I was snowed under paper work and running to make meetings with various people in few moments I had left in Vientiane. I had planned to attend a lunch meeting - but when I tried to start my car, it was dead again. I think a belt or something in the alternator is broke - even after getting a charge and running to re-charge the battery, it still didn't work.

In the evening, after a happy hour with friends, I took the overight bus to Pakse, leaving the car behind for our office mechanics to figure out!

Yesterday, we picked up a consultant at the airport. While waiting for him to collect his bags, I met two friends whom I had not seen for a long time. These chance meetings reminded me of the old days, when the telephone system was severely limited. We had three digit phone numbers and because phones were not available, we had to either make calls at the Dept of Helath or go to the downtown post office and line up before a crowd of other people trying to call their relatives in the US. It was often easier to drive over to make appointments than to try to call to make them - and half the time you ended up meeting the person you wanted to see, so in a strange way, it did make things easier.

The most effective way of meeting up with people for a short meeting was to go to the airport. If the person was not flying or returning from Vientiane, they might be picking someone up. Sometimes I'd go to the airport three times/ week. The discussions were helped with a bottle of Beer Lao.

The picture above is the current Thong Hai Hin Airport. May not look like much - but the old air terminal was made of wood with woven bamboo matting for walls.

Christmas image?

This is a Christmasy an image that we can get around here. It's cold season, meaning that we have flying dust all the time rather than snow flurries. But the poinsettias are out - they're not like the little potted plants that people buy for a two week period and throw out in January - but they grow into thick hedges, often standing two or three meters tall. I guess you'd say that they are poinsettias with an attitude.

This hedge is around a house in a Hmong village, about a half hour drive from Phonsavanh, the capital of Xieng Khouang Province.

Some Links

It's been an intense week - wonderful events, Hmong New Year, grief and a funeral.

Trying to take my mind off it by posting a few links.

I just discovered Uncyclopedia. It had me ga-fawing, in spite of myself.

Article on Astronomy

My favorite lines:
Every school kid knows that you can't create something out of nothing (unless you're an accountant), but creating EVERYTHING out of nothing seems to be OK, presumably as long you don't try and fit it through the eye of a needle. But this is all actually wrong, because mass and energy are interchangeable.

Astronomers currently believe that the universe is made out of space, which itself is made out of nothing.

A few articles on cluster bombs. This past week, 140 civil society groups and countries met in Vienna to discuss the initiative to ban cluster munitions. Already 83 countries support the initiative, with the major exceptions of the US, Russia and China, who are the main producers of these weapons of mass destruction. These mini-bombs are dropped in a canister which opens in mid-air, spreading the cluster bombs over a wide area. They were dropped in Laos and Vietnam, and the explosive is still active after 30 - 40 years in the ground, ready to explode if someone picks them up or even moves them.

Unfortunately, I've seen too many examples here in Laos of kid vs. cluster bomb.

The article from uncyclopedia on Cluster bombs is black humor with a kick; the article is written as a marketing strategy. "They will not explode when dropped, only when picked up by a child or other innocent civilian" the spokesman promises. Strangely enough, it gets to the essence of the thing - children in countries destroyed by war don't have the playthings found in the US. If they see the bright yellow of a cluster bomb, they'll pick it up to play with it.

A more sobering article on cluster bombs is on Wikipedia.

5 December 2007

Xieng Khouang in the early morning is amazing. Usually, the fog coats the hills so I can't see further than a few feet. In the early morning, the poinsettias provide just a bit of color in the gray air. However, over the past week, the weather has been backwards - clear and cold in the morning and cloudy in the afternoons.

One of the nicest meals in Lao is grilled fish wrapped in various fresh vegetables. The meal is do it yourself - tear off a piece of fish with your fingers, wrap it in lettuce with your choice of fermented rice noodles, star fruit, peanuts, tomatoes, garlic and more, and dip it in a spicy sauce before placing in mouth. The restaurants are very nice too - this is an old grilled fish restaurant, where the owners used to pull fish out of the pond. It closed a long time ago, not sure why because it was a nice place to eat dinner and drink a beer while the sun set.

Pastoral scene in Phonsavanh, Xieng Khouang Province

Today was a day off, because the Lao National Day fell on a Sunday. It was very welcome time off, which I spent writing and puttering around the house. I tried to figure out where to plant my new rose buses, finally deciding to drop them off at the front of the house.

I took a long bicycle ride today, just to see what's changed since the last time I did this, a month ago. Well, the weather always changes. It's cold season, and the clouds hover close to the ground. This picture of water buffalo grazing in the stubble of the rice fields turned out very strange - but the colors were very strange, the sunlight just leaking through to light up the foreground, while the background remained ominous looking.

Xieng Khouang Friday

We finished the second date of our project management meeting. In spite of its dry title, dry enough to suck any creative thoughts out of ones bones, it was a lot of fun. We've been working long enough together that we leave the assumptions along - the organization structure, reporting and coordination - and get right to the content. I gave a half day training on mental health concepts since all people who have had a UXO accident, including family members, have issues.

After all that, we had a party. Grilled fish wrap-ups - take a piece of grilled fish, put it on a piece of lettuce, add fermented rice noodles and herbs and dip into into a sauce made of sweetened fish sauce, chile peppers, and peanuts. When further washed down by Beer Lao, it's a great feast.

A wedding

The wedding starts off with a procession to the bride's house. Leh's sister and her best friend are on either side of him, with an uncle playing music on the tradition Lao reed instrument, called the khaen. The groom carries a collection of symbolic things needed for a marriage - such as soap for purification and a needle to mend arguments - in the red shoulder bag.

At some point the bride's family will challenge the groom. Does he really want to do this? Is he willing to pay whatever price? Here, the challenge is 12 crates of beer, 2 bottles of alcohol, and some money (all of these were waiting in the back of the bride's house, for the reception.

Then he also has to get past the bride's female relatives. The banana leaf is placed for the groom to step on, and his relatives symbolically wash his feet before he tries to enter the house. A woman's metal belt blocks the wait - and the women will only let him pass if they approve.
The actual wedding ceremony is led by a Mor Phone, an elder who has been a Buddhist monk and chants both Buddhist prayers and special wishes for the marriage.

After the party in the afternoon, there's also a reception in the evening. Everyone has a good time.

Drove the long trip down from Xieng Khouang back to Vientiane. We had some meetings in the morning, so didn't leave till 11 am, and then arrived in Vientiane around 8 pm. The final stretch of highway is poorly lit and difficult to navigate after sunset. The stars were out and quite beautiful, kept me from playing backseat driver.

I'm glad that this vehicle was not on the road. We were just rounding a bend when we passed this elephant. We don't see them as much as we used to, and they're not so common in the north. I suspect that this is a working elephant, being used in logging. Anyway, it provided an interesting break from the usual animals we have to dodge on the road, such as chickens, cows, water buffaloes and goats.

People think of Laos as being exotic. Well, it is exotic but I've lived here for so long that most of the exotic things are pretty normal. Not willing to get into discussion of by whose standard one should judge normal, I'll just post this picture of a normal cat and her kittens. Well, she's my cat and her name is Alpha. She had her kittens on the 14th and they are very cute.

kittens, originally uploaded by c_p_lew.

I try not to post too many cat and kitten pictures, but I can't help it. My cat does produce some very nice off-springs.

With all the problems in Burma, I was amazed to find this book of matches that made me remember more peaceful days. I stayed at the Strand Hotel in Rangoon in 1987. Don't know how I managed to hold on to the matches for so long.

it was a pretty interesting trip. I had been working at a refugee camp in Thailand for over a year at that point. All the expatriate staff lived together in traditional houses in a town near the camp; there wasn't much to do there so we all became good friends, going to Bangkok together after work on Saturdays and taking vacations together. So I went to Burma with some of these friends.

At that time, there wasn't any hint of the upheaval to come - everyone was uniformly depressed and struggling to get by. I knew a lot of Burmese who were working as medical staff in the camps and offered to bring a letter or say hello to their relatives. One woman gave me a bundle; I didn't even think to question what was inside. So I was rather surprised and weirded out to be questioned by customs as we entered the country. I opened the paper bag and all the gift wrappings on the presents - which turned out being wrinkled apples and scraps of brightly colored fabric. The guard lectured me on bringing this junk into the country. I felt ashamed that my friend was sending what seemed to be valuable to her - the love behind the sad little gifts.

Meeting her relatives was awkward. They came to the hotel - the Strand - and left as quickly as they could, maybe before anyone could report them. The Strand itself was ten dollars/ night with the three of use staying in one room. The plumbing was shot and the paint peeling from the walls. The finest hotel in the city at the time.

You were allowed a one week visa, which was barely enough time to spend a day in Rangoon, travel to Mandalay, Pagan and back. But the images just stayed with me. The people were radiant for all their troubles and very happy to see tourists, just because of the connection with the outside world.

Some of the highlights of the trip included the train ride from Rangoon to Mandalay - one of my friends and I had gotten off the train, and when we got on, we realized we were in the wrong car. There was no way to move between cars - so we had to wait until the next station. Meanwhile our other friend tried to sit still, wondering if he'd ever see us again.

Climbing up Mandalay Hill, the whole hill covered with staircases and temples until we got to the top after making offerings at many shrines along the way. We flew from Mandalay to Pagan. Pagan, an ancient city, is one of the most beautiful and haunting places in the world. We hired a horse cart to take us around the temples.

Anyway, those are just a few thoughts that came back when I found this matchbox in my desk drawer. May the Burmese find peace and happiness - and democracy very soon.

Our donor trip has started off well. Quite a bit of champaign and wine, because the restaurant was slow in preparing the meal. I think we all bonded well.

We'll all meet each other again in the morning - 5 am to be exact - when we go to the airport and get on the early morning flight and then drive two hours to the project site.

Off to bed now.

What happens after boat racing

The boat races have ended. The boats in our village were dragged up the river bank and parked in the shelter next to the temple. This is one boat, about 50 feet long, carved out of a single log. The workmanship is quite amazing.

Tonight we were eating dinner at a restaurant on the river. The sun had already set and there was no light at all on the water, except for the distance lights across the river reflected on the water. I could hear the voices of the rowers on a long boat, shouting in unison to coordinate their strokes. I couldn't imagine what they were doing on the water, after dark, at the end of the boat racing season. When they floated down the river, I thought that maybe their were taking their boat home. But they returned, paddling upriver.

Maybe it was a ghost boat. And only my friends and I had seen it. Maybe they will come for me tonight, since I know their secret.

Time to go to sleep, if I can dare to sleep.

Such a day today, checking details, making charts. Not the kind of stuff that anyone would want to know about. So that's my blog entry for the day.

Traffic...just saying...

Most of my friends have one of two impressions of Laos. They think of stereotyped images of developing countries - impoverished, vultures flying overhead ready to swoop down on people if they don't keep moving. Or they'll chirp," Oh, Asia. How fun!"

Needless to say, the reality is between the two extremes. And so my illustration, and rant for the day, is Traffic. Not human or drug traffic but motor vehicle traffic.

I do have a car. And most days I drive the four miles to work. It can be a drag to arrive at work, sweaty and dusty and have to run off for a meeting with government officials. And since I'm in the medical field, I'm terrified of motorcycles.

When I first started working in Laos, most people rode 1-speed bicycles. There were a few motorcycles and the people on bicycles stared at the rare car when it went by. Now, it's the other way around, cars are common in Vientiane and the drivers don't stare, much less look, at anyone. The drive to work this morning - motorcycles passing on the right just as I was making a right turn, having to stop suddenly because a recycling technician had pushed his cart into the traffic lane, and having vehicles driving towards me on the one lane road - totally depleted my stock of swear words for the whole day.

On the other hand, I should remind myself that driving in Vientiane traffic can substitute for aerobic exercise when I haven't gotten up early enough to go running. And I also have to remind myself that traffic has started to go faster as the roads have gotten paved; I'm not about to advocate to returning to the roads with the car-sized ruts in them.

I guess I'm crabby because I prefer being out in the provinces. But it is true that motor vehicle accidents are rising all over the world - the WHO figures that trauma, of all types, will be the number two cause of mortality and morbidity by the year 2020. Is that an improvement over diarrhea and acute respiratory infections?

Well, time to rest up before the next excursion into mayhem.

Si Khai Boat racing update

The festivities around the boat races continued at a frantic pace all day. After I returned from the office, one of my neighbors came running over to my house with a bowl of Khao Phung, a spicy curry made with coconut milk over fermented rice noodles with fresh vegetables. After being refreshed with lunch I walked along the levee, going to the river side when I noticed that people were looking out over the river and jumping up and down. Last year, I had a much better idea of the villages and the rowers in the festival but since I've been upcountry so much, I've been out of touch.
One thing I was amazed to see was that there were corporate sponsorships of several boats. Last year, one of the villages around my temple had made their own boat. Although it was an amazing process of hollowing out and carving the log and making struts to support it, the boat was slightly twisted, so it took on water easily. It didn't get too far in the races last year because some of the rowers had to bail. This year I saw the bowl sporting a "Nissan" plaque instead of the name of a village. I was scandalized. Then I noticed that the EU had sponsored a boat - they all had on the blue tees with a pattern of the circle of gold stars for member countries. They also had their own tent and band by the river side.

The problem with corporate sponsorship is that they tend to draw from a wider range of people within their offices rather than people in a village. And the competition becomes less for for and more for profit and maybe exposure for the organization.


I was about halfway between the start and the finish lines when they had the last race - between the EU and a local village boat. And the village boat won!

It's Saturday morning and the day started quietly - the neighbors calling each other as they went to the Wat, summoned by the booming of the large drum. The monks walked past my house, silently walking in bare feet and carrying their metal begging bowls filled with sticky rice and different kinds of curries.

It's now about 7:30 and the sounds are different - loud music and the whirr of air compressors inflating the bouncy castles. The Si Khai boat races are happening today and by 9 am, the temple yard of Wat Meuang Wa will be filled with people. And at noon, the traditional long boats will be racing.

The tradition of boat racing goes back a long time. During the Buddhist Lent, people are supposed to follow the "Ha Sihn" or the five basic Buddhist precepts more strictly - no alcohol or other drugs, lying, naughty activities, stealing or killing (some people are vegetarian for the three months) - and they should stay close to home and work in the rice fields. While modern life is a little different, the world is quieter during the rainy season; fewer cars on the road and there are only wedding parties if it is essential. At the end of the season, there are many Boun, merit making ceremonies at the temples, which include the above reference temple fair.

And the boat racing. The legend is that the Naga, snake spirits who live in watery areas, also lie low during the rainy season but at the full moon in the tenth month, they are ready to have a little fun. The Naga King had protected the Lord Buddha from a thunderstorm when he was in meditation under the Bodhi Tree and since then, all Naga follow Buddhism. The boat races and special offerings (floating little boats made of banana leaves, filled with flowers, candles and incense) are dedicated to the Naga spirits. And the boat races have a special function - people in villages teams practice during the last month of the rainy season and then compete up and down the river up to the big boat race in Vientiane on the day after the October full moon (that was last Saturday). Not only do villages on the Lao side go back and forth and socialize but teams from across the Mekong river, also compete. In the late 80's, while I was working in a refugee camp in Thailand, I traveled to Nong Khai for the boat races - Laos was just starting to open up after its years of self-imposed isolation so the big thing was seeing the Lao teams competing on the Thai side of the river.

For some reason, the Si Khai races are after the big race in Vientiane. The main race has gotten much more corporate - the teams are not villages but mostly companies. In the past few years, I've skipped the main races but I do like my neighborhood races - they're entirely from villages and the event is smaller and much more fun. Last year, I sat at the finish line with some Lao friends, one of whom was the main sponsor of his village team.

This year, I'm not sure. In a moment, I'll be heading to my office and hopefully will get back for the afternoon activities.

Just a bit about daily life

Friends are always asking about what I do every day. It's difficult to give an example of just one day because I work in three areas of Laos. Our main project, doing medical upgrading and assisting people injured by unexploded ordnance, is focused in the south in the provinces crossed by the old Ho Chi Minh trails. I spend at least half the month there and end up taking the overnight bus to Vientiane, the capital of the country, for meetings and report writing. And then we have work in the north - strengthening the systems of providing UXO survivor assistance which includes immediate medical treatment as well as providing vocational training and economic funds for people who have been injured by unexploded ordnance.

There's a lot of travel involved. So on Wednesday, we returned to Vientiane by truck, an eight hour drive along twisty mountain roads. This is what the road looks like just north of Vang Vieng, one of the most beautiful places in the country:

On a travel day like this, I wake up about 5 am, usually with the intent of going for a run; however, I most often end up packing the things I had forgotten the night before. We planned to leave at 7 am - however during the evening people kept calling, asking to send things with us or trying to get a lift. So starting at 7, my field assistant went around collecting people and things. Then we had too many things, so I told them to unload some bags so we could put the rain tarp on top of everything. So about 8:30, we set off.

Our first stop was at a school, to meet the father of one of the UXO survivors we helped. The child had been taking medication so I wanted to check that he was still doing all right. Problem solving done, we continued on, stopping at another village to check in with another UXO survivor. As usual, we had lunch in Kasi followed by four more hours of driving to Vientiane - where it started to rain. Got home at about 7 pm. I wanted to conk out right away - but NaNo was going to start at midnight. I stayed up and starting writing at midnight. And that was my day!

I'm planning for a lot of writing for November. First, I've vowed to post to this blog daily, cause there are things I like about blogspot and other blogs on blogspot so why not? And I'll still be participating in NaNoWriMo as well. I live in a place where the days get cooler in November and its dusty and dry but the real thing that makes November feel like November for me is NaNoWriMo.

It's going to be a crazy month. We have a big guest coming next week, I'll have to go to the project sites both in the south and in the north, and try to write on top of all that? We'll see how it goes. Always up for a challenge.

In Vientiane

Since my last post, I've been down to the south and back up here to Vientiane. I took the overnight bus in both directions. Every time I travel, there seem to be new bus options. When I first came to Laos, the buses were old, uncomfortable and crowded and while there still are these old buses on the road, there are also newer options. Now, there are sleeper buses - double bunk beds, each bunk narrower than a single bed and two people can sleep on it. Fortunately, in both directions the bus was not crowded so I had a bed to myself.

back home, in time for more rain

kThe return trip always seems shorter. At least this time it was more comfortable - I got an economy plus seat, with no one next to me so I could put my feet up. Watched two movies on the flight, one of them excellent (Away from Her, with Julie Christie, based on a story by Alice Munro). It seemed like no time we were in Tokyo, where we had too much time, like three hours, to wait for the connecting flight.

And readjusting to time zones always seems easier in this direction. Well, I have to stay awake for work so I force myself through jetlag.

When I left Seattle, the weather was gray and rainy. Since I've been home, we've gotten the leftovers from Typhoon Lekima. At least the rain is warm, though a bit of it. This was the view from my bedroom window yesterday afternoon: