Sunday - travel to Vientiane

Yesterday, we got messages and phone calls throughout the afternoon and evening about the road conditions along Route 13. Many areas are flooded and the crossings are difficult. I vacillated whether we should travel today or wait until tomorrow. Finally I talked with the driver once he had arrived home - the inside of the trucks got flooded but as long as you're careful, and use 4WD in these sections, it should be all right.

So we left at 7 am. The road was fine until we got to Tha Bok. In fact, around Tha Khaek, everyone was picnicking by the side of the road, swimming and fishing (and drinking Beer Lao). The Lao have the amazing ability to shove aside worry - if they can't do something right away, they try to enjoy themselves, and return to the problem relaxed and with more energy later on. Westerners have got a lot to learn.

In fact, at each of the flooded areas, a little village would spring up. First, there were tok-toks parked at each end. These two-wheeled tractors can be hooked up to pull a cart, so they took passengers and towed vehicles across the flooded areas. Then vendors also set up shop, because waiting passengers need to eat.



This vendor had nearly sold all her food.

A tok-tok with passengers and towing a van across the worst flooded stretch of road:



View once we passed them (a little out of focus):



The best way to travel along sections of Route 13 was by boat. And you could fish along the way:



The worst crossing was at Pak Ngeum - we couldn't see the road so drove slowly to make sure we didn't go off the side. This is a view of one of the restaurants:

Saturday in Salavan

On Saturdays, it takes me a long time to get myself today. Even in laid-back Laos, I feel like I'm operating on split second timing and multi-tasking. While the people in my seminar would working in small groups, I was in our office, working on e-mails and reports.

So today, I'm in the office, mainly to use the internet. We had a small meeting with my staff to talk about issues for the coming month. The hospital wants to start having a continuing medical education program, so we discussed setting up a schedule. My mental health trainings will be once/ month, with other trainings offered by the hospital staff and my medical staff themselves.

The mental health training finished yesterday. Everyone was very happy about it - they all said it got them thinking. And the psycho-social development part was useful even in their own families. The last activity was to design a small interview form to assess psycho-social issues with one patient in the hospital, then try an interview. With the next class, the people will discuss the issues they had with interviewing - did they feel comfortable, what information did they get... And then I'll do the section on interviewing. Since they had this experience, they should have a lot to share!

I did take a long walk in the morning, and took a few pictures. There are several I'm going to post on Kilometers because I haven't posted there for a while.



I should have posted the above on ABC Weds - 'D' is for dangerous. It's a common sight though - one person drives the motorcycle, the passenger sits on the handle of the cart so they can pull it along behind. Surprisingly, there aren't that many people coming into the hospitals for treatment of these potential kinds of injuries. They don't happen? or are people embarrassed to go to the hospital for treatment?

This is a better way to use the cart:



And pictures from the TV. Earlier this week, the Mekong started to rise. In fact, on Monday, one of my staff got a call that the Mekong was starting to top the levee in a few places. This is a picture of the TV coverage on Lao Star:



We've been a little concerned because we decided to travel back to Vientiane by car on Monday. One of our groups, having finished a meeting in Savannakhet, are going back today so they'll tell us how the road is.

Skywatch Friday - really for 15 August 2008

I don't know what got into me last week - I originally posted the date as 15 August although it was 8 August. Must have been watching the sky too much.

The skies have not been nice to Laos since the beginning of the month. While we had a long period of drought in the south, to the point of threatening the rice crops, it's been raining heavily in the north. And coupled with releases of water from dams along the Mekong, particularly from Chinese dams, the water level has been very high. In 1966, there was severe flooding in Vientiane - and this year, the water level has been even higher.

Last Saturday, we drove down to the south. This is at Pakkading:

Usually, there are 5 meter high bluffs along the river, but now they are maybe 5 cm. high bluffs.

This is the Sekong River:

Its most recent claim to fame is that it seemed to be the source of a cholera outbreak earlier in the year.
Route 13 looking south:

Keep going a little further and you're at the Cambodian border.

And back in my house, looking out the back window on Thursday:

Nearly full moon and perfect sky.

Meanwhile, in Vientiane, everyone's been working on fortifying the levee, which was built after the 1966 floods. There are low areas to the west of where I live and to the south but my own house is dry. I've been calling my landlady for daily updates. I'm a little worried about my mother cat and her kittens!

This is my contribution to Skywatch Friday. For more views of the sky from around the world, click here.

Back in Salavan

I returned to Salavan and started in on the next piece of work. While we've been upgrading medical and management skills of medical staff and administrators, everyone's been asking about mental health. There are few mental health services in Laos - and everyone confuses the term 'mental health' with 'mental illness.' So I've been teaching very general courses on psychosocial issues and culture, and how people can talk with people and offer constructive help. This course is not designed to create psychologists but to spark interest and support people's natural abilities in offering support.

Yesterday was the first day and everyone was really enthusiastic. I had them break into small groups to discuss the questions, "What is health?" "What is mental health?" The assignment at home - observe a member of the family who falls into four main age groups and gets some ideas of level of development.

Today, they all had ideas on developmental levels. I added a little bit about Erikson's psychosocial stages and we discussed the challenges for each age group. I gave them a few case studies and they broke into groups again to discuss them. Each study had a trauma issue - what happens to the person if the trauma happens at this age level. And how can we help?

Much discussion and many questions.

ABC Wendesday: The D's

Posting my D's late this week - earlier in the week, I was in a remote southern province of Laos for a meeting. The Definition of remote in this case being - outside internet contact! It's actually a three hour drive along a good road from Pakse.

So here a few D's:

The word for flower in Lao is Dok and this is the national flower of Laos, called Dok Champa

I travel a lot in remote areas. This is an example of a Difficult Road:

The transport truck was trying to Descend into a Detour, and somehow fell over. We carefully went over the bridge and headed on our way. The following day, bulldozers had removed the truck and smoothed the detour and it looked like nothing had happened.

This was a strange picture - last March, I was riding my bike along a dirt road and saw this dust devil. It swirled and moved back and forth along the road for about a half hour. And I stood there and watched it for that long!

These are Dragons on the roof of a Chinese temple in Pakse:

This is the Doorway into the Chinese Temple:

And a Drum in a village temple:

The drum wakes the monks for morning meditation, and calls the people for the alms giving at lunchtime.

This is my contribution to ABC Wednesday. For more variations on the letter 'D', go to ABC Wednesday, Round 3

Tuesday - meeting finished

I've been to Sekong a few times. It's a very spread out place - usually province town centers will have all the government buildings in one place but everything is spread out over a wide area. I guess there will be a lot of room to expand in between the houses.

I walked around last night and early this morning, trying to get a feel for it. Last night, I saw a funny thing, which I managed to capture on my video camera - a dog was barking in the face of a goat. The goat would jump a few steps towards the dog and it would back off. The dog would start barking again, edging up on the goat and the whole scene would be repeated. Finally, an older goat sneaked up behind the dog and chased it off - the goat jumped high in place - I think the dog was seriously impressed by the height and vigor cause it ran back to its house and didn't return.

These entries have been back-dated. While Salavan, as small as it is, has an internet shop - Sekong still does not! Surprising!

Monday in Sekong

We started a two day meeting with our education counterparts from the three southern provinces. All this area has been impacted by the bombs which were dropped during the war in Indochina - and which had not exploded at the time. Cluster munitions are the worst - children can find them and thinking that they are balls (or Petanque balls) and play with them. So our education program reaches primary school children in many schools and districts in the target provinces.

With these regional meetings, we work with the depts of education to make up annual plans and identify the new schools that need the program.

Down to the south, again

We drove down to Pakse yesterday, on our way to Sekong Province for a meeting.

A few pictures from yesterday:







In spite of its fuzziness, I like the last photo. The main with the umbrella seems overworldly!

Graduation Day

When I was walking around on Friday, I saw a strange sight - people were setting up flower stands by Don Chan Palace. I wondered if this was a second Valentine's day.



I learned that many of the private business colleges chose this day for their graduations ceremonies. A very auspicious day to start off a new life!

Skywatch Friday - 8 August 2008

It's always difficult to figure out what I want to post. The skies are very dramatic here at the moment - really they should be gray and more gray but the rainy season has been strange. There's been more thundering and noise than the drizzle that does the work of growing the rice.

Haha - just realized that I posted the date on Title as 15 August - but it's for 8 August. Guess I'm getting ahead of myself!

We played cat and mouse with these storms around Tha Khaek as we were driving down south last Saturday.

Whenever there is a lot of unexpected heavy rain, everyone gets out with the fishing nets, hoping to catch escapees from backyard fish ponds. They don't usually catch much but everyone always seems to have a great time. Except for the fish, and the people who raised them.

It continued raining on and off all day. This storm at sunset was really strange, and the rain splattering on the surface of the rice ponds gave it a gunmetal appearance.

The following day, the rain stopped for a while in the morning and the mists rose on the hill behind these teak trees.

Here's a view looking across the Mekong River to Sri Chiang Mai, Thailand. I was sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant in Vientiane yesterday and amazed at how much the river rose while I was gone.

When we visited Salavan, it rained a lot. The Department of Health thanked us - it hadn't rained in the Salavan area for a month until that day. I knew it had been bad, with thunderstorms dropping rain around the city but not on the surrounding rice fields, but I hadn't realized how bad it had been. I hope the rain stays steady until the few weeks before harvest, when the rice has to dry out.

This post is my contribution to Sky Watch Friday. Click on the link and see the skies around the world.

Photo theme for Thursday - blue

A couple of photos in blue. Recently, the theme of the day in Vientiane has been gray - the skies are gray, though it's not raining daily as it should during this time of the year.


I took the above picture last year, just after the rainy season, when the weather turns cold and the air is clear.


I discovered the setting for one color on my camera and went crazy with it for a while. This was on a midnight stop at the bus station in Tha Khaek, the capital city of Khammouane province - at the eerie hour of 1 am.

This is my contribution to Thursday Challenge on the theme of blue.

Thursday blahs

I feel worn out, after the wild travels, taking our guests around. It rained hard, especially when we took them out to a village - and I explained that we were giving them a taste of the roads to the remote districts where we work. They looked out the window, laughing nervously while they gauged the depth of the mud.

I think I should do a Thursday Thirteen today. But not sure if I'll have the energy. I'll gauge how I feel once I get home. Maybe the kittens will revive me - while I was gone, they opened their eyes and now they have another sense to deal with. It's funny to see them fall over backwards when they come face to face with a litter mate.

Which reminds me is that it's probably time to take a picture of the family and post it again.

Back at work

I have to spend a lot of time in the field - but there's always so much work waiting for me back at the office. Worked on a report today. Sigh.

Tuesday - strange foods

We drove our guests to Savannakhet and they continued on with their site visit to another organization.

Here are a few sites from the trip:



This is a whole sack of crickets. Crickets can be deep-fried and eaten while drinking beer. Well, they can be. I rather avoid them. This market sells a lot of local foods, many of which are more...well, we'll say.... exotic than crickets.

While we stopped for grilled chicken in Seno, this motorcycle parked in front of us.



These are quite good - they are the heads of lotus flowers after the petals fall over. The head itself is spongy but when you break it open, the seeds are good, with the texture of uncooked peanuts and sweet and oily in taste.

Last leg of our trip

Today was a long day. We started off at the Dept of Health, reviewing our project work with our guests. The Director was very articulate and I could have kissed him. The meeting was very kan eng, meaning that we could 'be ourselves.'

After that, we brought our guests to the hospital, and again the project management committee gave an excellent report. Then again, I worked with them to summarize and evaluate their work - so they all had their reports ready, with statistics and methodology ready.

We visited the training center, where we are funding a training on fracture management, using a trainer from Friendship Hospital. He demonstrated how to apply a cast and asked the students why he was doing certain things, to apply the knowledge that he had just presented in the lecture.

After a quick lunch, we did a village visit with a child who had been injured in a UXO accident in May. A friend of his had found a bombie (cluster bomb) and our patient yelled, "You shouldn't carry it in your pocket - it's dangerous" and had grabbed it out of his hand and threw it under a house. It exploded, seriously injurying our patient. After a month in the hospital, he can walk with crutches and he's been studying a school book so he can rejoin school in the fall; unfortunately, he was out of school for the whole last month of the term so he'll be repeating this year.

I learned on this visit that the boy who picked up the bombie did not know that it was dangerous. He thought that it was a petanque ball (Everyone in Laos is crazy about this game - it's played with stainless steel balls on a sandy court. It's like bocchi).

The low point of our visit was to one district hospital, where the folks really couldn't present a coherent report. I told our guests that next time they visit, this folks will be better.

We ended up the day back in Pakse and a dinner at the floating restaurant on the Mekong.

ABC Weds. - C's

Crazy clouds 2 June 08. We were returning to Vientiane under a very active sky - it looked like a science fiction movie.

Craters on the Plane of Jars - a sad legacy from the Secret War in Laos.

Ceramic wood-fired mortars that I saw on the back of a tok-tok. This size is good for making Tam mak-heung, papaya salad made with pa daek (fermented fish sauce), tomatoes, lemon juice, and lots of chile peppers.

Cat under a farmhouse, protecting the freshly harvested garlic. Not quite sure who he's protecting it from - mice or humans. I love garlic.

Carousel ride at a fair by the Mekong waterfront.

Corn being spread out to dry before being sold for animal feed.

Other participants in ABC Wednesdays can be found here and also here.

What I did on a Saturday

One of my resolutions for the new year was to honor my weekends. Unfortunately, it doesn't often work out - there's so much work during the week that we travel on the weekends.

Last night we had a going away party for our country director. And to welcome me as the Acting Country Director. While the party was fun, I left very early; just too tired by all the events of learning all the ropes that go along with the position. I also had to wake up early to drive down to Pakse.

At least one of the advantages of this position was that I could justify staying in a better hotel - very comfortable, with wireless! This doesn't happen too often.

Skywatch Friday for 1 August 2008

This week has seen some strange weather. Thunderstorms followed by clear skies and hot muggy weather. I also dropped my camera while bicycling and by the time I retrieved it, a car had run over it - the camera works as well as before but the LCD screen is cracked.

The picture above is of That Dam, which must be several hundred years old. Legend has it that it was entirely covered with gold until the invasion of the Siamese (the Thai) in 1828, when they removed all the gold.

Last week, I stopped by the river after work. A thunderstorm blew up, which blew leaves around but produced only a few drops where I was standing. In this view, the rain is over the far eastern part of Vientiane but moved east over Thailand. The Mekong River is very high now, just about a meter below the edge of the levee. It has been raining a lot in the northern parts of the country and Thailand - in fact, too much. There have been floods and landslides - while in the southern Laos, there has not been enough rain.

View of another threatening cloud while I was driving home this week.

Yesterday I went to pay my internet bill in one of the taller buildings in downtown Vientiane and took this picture of the Morning Market. The old buildings, making a U around the lot in the middle, were built in 1995 and for as long as I've been around, has been the center for buying silk, appliances, handicrafts and jewelry. Two years ago, they opened a four story mall on top of an old parking lot. And last year, they tore down the central section of the market, which was newer and had air conditioned rooms. A Lao-Vietnamese joint venture will build a new mall in the central lot.

This post is my contribution to Sky Watch Friday. Click on the link and see the skies around the world.

ABC Wendesday: the B's

My landlady in Vientiane gave me these fresh bananas which she had cut from the tree in my front yard. The sap is still on the stalk.

Banana leaves from that tree. Banana leaves have many uses - they can be used as coverings for tables, disposable dishes and most often, wrapping for Khao Tom, a snack made of sticky rice mixed with beans or coconut or meat and steamed.

Balancing act - woman balancing Khao Tom on her motorcycle on the way to the market.

Boundary stones on top of wall surrounding Wat Prabath in Vientiane.

Buffalo walking along road.

Bus from remote district to the main town, Salavan province.

Other participants in ABC Wednesdays can be found here and also on Mrs. Nesbitt's Place

New Family

Just thought I'd share what my calico cat just shared with me:



They were born early Saturday morning, so when I took this picture, they were less than one day old.

Thoughts on food

Plenty of folks worry about global warming, the food crisis, wars in general, etc and end with the thought, "What can I, as an individual do about this?" Here's something to ponder: Article from the Asian times. Of course, how does lack of wasting food translate to making food more available in developing countries? If people in the US are not buying so much junk food, would less demand for flour, meat and oil make this food more available for international aid relief to developing countries? I wonder if market forces would jump in - if people are not wasting so much food, meaning that there's less demand, would that drive food prices lower so farmers are selling at a loss and eventually stop producing?

I've also read that if people stopped producing meat, there would be less carbon from production of cow pies, and less deforestation to open up corn fields for animal feed. That change alone, would help reduce global warming.

Well, I've been trying to buy only local foods - cheese is difficult to cut out of my diet. I rarely eat meat. I do buy a lot of vegetables from the local market - and never get around to cooking them so there's food wasted right there. Unfortunately, even dried beans come from elsewhere so there's the energy involved in transporting them (though probably not as much as transporting slabs of meat from New Zealand, which crops up in Vientiane). Some local foods - well, as people might notice from some of my previous food entries, they're not always things that I can bear to eat.

On the other hand, with the cost of food rising and the declining value of the dollar... I may have to see what recipes I can come up with.