a few unrelated things

- walking around the block for lunch at the fried rice place today, we saw a horrible foreigner make a scene. he was driving a giant suv with ngo plates, and after blaring his horn for a while in a busy intersection, he actually pulled over and got out of his car to yell at the motorcyclist who had offended him. i could tell how much this place is affecting me when my first instinct was to hover near the motorcyclist as the giant foreigner approached (what was i going to do? protect him?), and think that the foreigner was being an idiot for showing his anger. normally i’m all about justified anger, so i think this is a good change. i was with two lao colleagues from the office, and among the three of us we understand english, lao, russian, czech, french, spanish, and german, but none of us understood what the foreigner was actually saying. (gestures suggested that it would be inappropriate to repeat, anyway.) it was pretty embarrassing and made me sad, and I tried to hide a little behind my umbrella and my traditional lao skirt, trying to emit brainwaves along the line of “i don’t know him, i promise!” regardless of how ugly it was to witness, i was grateful for the chance to notice that i’m getting better about not giving into anger.

- update on samantha orobator from the VOAnews: “investigators said she had been a medical student in britain, so she undoubtedly know how to successfully impregnate herself in order to avoid the death sentence.” again, excellent reporting. so, in response to your comment emily, you might need to go to med school to fully understand how all this works. it’s pretty awful to think about the baby though – talk about being used.

- i’m getting panicky about leaving laos in july, stressing myself out by trying so hard to absorb and enjoy everything before i’m gone forever. the issue of trying to give people here something is too daunting to even consider right now. i made a new friend at the gym the other day, this eager and very kind lao man who cooks for the poolside restaurant and teaches yoga on the side (i know him from the latter). and that three minute conversation made me preemptively sad to leave these generally lovely people, who want to be friends just because. it’s refreshing, the lack of ulterior motives (eg why lots of honduran men want to talk to me). and the eye smile, that genuinely kind expression that i don’t see as much in the usa. there are lots of things i won’t miss about my situation here, but i really do tend to love lao people.

my latest favorite thai pop song

this guy was the adulterating husband in my family's favorite thai soap opera, mia luang. still, he's pretty dreamy. :) also, his name is Tui, which means "fat." you have to like that.

pregnant prisoner

though i know that laos rarely gets any foreign press, i'm still surprised at how little US news sources are saying about this samantha orobator case. it's a pretty fascinating story. i guess she was arrested in the vientiane airport in august of 2008 (around when i arrived), with 680 grams of heroin. in laos someone caught with more than 500 grams is supposed to receive the death penalty, but it seems that she's found an interesting loophole by getting pregnant - it's against the law in laos to execute a pregnant woman. the trick is that the authorities say that she's in an all-female jail, with only female guards, hence ruling out the, ah, traditional way of getting pregnant. this, of course, has led to lots of crazy headlines in the vientiane times, my favorite with a photo of a doctor and a hastily-drawn uterus on a whiteboard, captioned "Dr. SoandSo explains the various ways a woman can get pregnant." awesome. it's a pretty awful situation, but oddly fascinating to watch from the outside.

in other news, i just got an email from sawmort, this lovely man who works with burma issues (BI), with a link to some amazing drawings by refugee kids. when we visited that refugee camp in thailand a couple months ago we left some art supplies for a project BI had started, wherein kids use art to express their life stories etc. apparently the drawings are on display in chiang mai now. give it a look - some of them are pretty amazing.

countryside

sang tong is different this time, no flowering trees or branches heavy with mangoes. but the climate is great, "yensabai" in lao (nice and cool). fog covering the mountains makes them seem farther away than they really are. rain threatening but usually not arriving.

spent the morning working from micah and heidi's old house, where phoungeun lives now, in awe of the giant lizards slithering around. they have the same benign presence as geckos in vientiane, but stretch from my wrist to elbow, with black
striped skin like snakes and clumsier legs.

it seems that this place triggers memories more strongly, because even though there are chickens scuttling around our house everyday in vientiane, seeing a hen with her chicks here suddenly made me think of when we found an abandoned chick at mario's house - it had somehow fallen out of a high nest, and his niece and i tried to nurse it back to health, cradling it in our warm hands and giving it drops of water. it peeped and i thought it might be okay. mario and i left for some reason, and when we came back it had died. strange memories.

two nights ago i slept at the mcc guesthouse, delirious with fever and headache. and waking up here today i was surprised by how much louder it seems than it was at the guesthouse. maybe it's just the lack of insulation here (this really is a thatched house, made mostly of bamboo), but all the normal bug/chicken/dog/gecko noises seem bigger here.

most of me is ready to move back to the states for a while, but i really will miss these noises.

geography

a friend who works at the gym recently told me that he’s never been outside of laos, not even across the bridge to thailand. later that night i realized that means he’s never even seen the ocean. not long before this, two other lao friends had, on separate occasions, pointed out laos on a world map, mistakenly gesturing towards madagascar and the falkland islands, respectively. how can this be? laos is unquestionably landlocked. i guess if you’ve never crossed the border, oceans seem kind of imaginary anyway. why not imagine yourself an island nation too?

drip drop

rainy season is coming, at least in a couple months now. i felt it on the drive home last night. a tickle on my ankle, a sting on my throat, cold drops coming intermittently. they call them "fontok mak muang" (the mango rains) - one douse of water and suddenly flowers have become ripe fruits, weighing down the branches.

recent goings-on

yes, i went nearly two months without writing here. sorry. i’m not sure how that happened. i have actually been writing for work these days, so that's a good excuse. i'll post that stuff another time.

- november was mostly a blur of weddings. there was a week when we never ate dinner at home, because for most weddings dinner is included. at lao weddings we always eat french bread and ragu, this beef stew thing that seems entirely out of place in lao. when i ask where in the world this came from, they say.... thailand? of course. so that was lots of wearing fancy clothes, preventing my little brothers from causing a scene, and declining lots of beer lao. (well, conceding occasionally...) good times.

- there are some things about lao weddings that i will never get used to, like when the bride and groom have their picture taken with everyone in the marriage bed. yes. grandmas and weird uncles and tiny children, anyone – foreigners are especially prized in this photo album, but luckily i escaped before that. can you imagine? being in bed (fully clothed in marriage garb, mind you) with each set of parents snuggled against you? so strange to me. there was even in photo in which the happy couple “pretends to embrace.” i’ll just leave you with that thought.

- i was in a christmas play last week. i was mary, and my joseph was the most buddhist man in the office. all my lines were in lao, and included biblical stuff (think king james english but then in lao). it was kind of disastrous and hilarious, and i got to wear a silly costume and look pregnant, which was all surprisingly fun. we had a crazy gift exchange, wherein a twenty-something lao man received a giant stuffed “hello kitty,” a canadian woman got whitening cream (a popular cosmetic for lao women), and i got seaweed flavored crackers. it was pretty great.

- my host family isn’t around much these days, which i’m actually a bit sad about. i think everyone knows that i covet alone time, but i’ve just about exhausted that tendency. on that note, i have managed to find some really great people to be friends with. a british-american couple with a beautiful baby boy, a girl from washington with whom i play tennis every week, a korean-american boy who sometimes joins us, a conservative mennonite with 15 siblings and with whom i studied language, a sassy woman from minnesota who plays guitar in church, a sweet and sympathetic homeschool teacher, etc... the great people are here, it was just hard to find them at first.

- there’s lots of drama with my bosses these days, which is something unexpected and awful. i wouldn’t even know how to explain it if i were allowed to. so just pray that it gets better.

- it doesn’t seem like christmas at all. at least in honduras it was cold, and there were lots of christmas lights. but there are lots of buddhists here, so, it’s not like i’m surprised. i’m slightly sad about this, but not too much. yet. mom sent me christmas ornaments and a string of paper stars to decorate my room, so that’s comforting.

- we found a fun cafe/bar that shows films in english (makes me think of cafe paraiso in teguc). last week was “lars and the real girl,” and tonight is “the visitor.”

sigh. that's all for now. happy christmas to you.

heavy topics

one thing i’m not loving about laos (or at least vientiane) is that people seem to sleep in more. i would like to cultivate the habit of getting up around 5:30 everyday, and was doing well with that in honduras. but people don’t hit the streets here until closer to 7, so that's a disincentive.
- i’m remembering that i don’t like desk jobs (see: 2006 FOSDEH experience).
- i’ve been extremely impressed by a canadian service worker here, whose job i don’t envy at all. she’s in the awkward position of having to hold local staff accountable, in a country where confrontation doesn’t win you any points. granted, she’s had a year here to practice being graceful under such stress, but that doesn’t make it less amazing to me. i’ve met a handful of people who seem unaffected by social stressors or difficult working conditions, and frankly they’re quite irritating. so it’s nice to know someone here who recognizes how awful things can be but just works through it somehow. inspiring.
- in lots of ways i feel like my salt assignment is about as plush as it gets – relatively fancy house, entirely palatable food, very low-key job, no walking miles to fetch water, relative ease getting around with english, very little fearing for my safety, easy access to modern conveniences and luxuries (like a great cup of coffee) if i seek them out, air-conditioned office, etc... i’m tempted to list my bicycle as a major asset here as well, which is particularly ironic since a month ago i was lusting after a motorbike. but my “turbo” bike and i are becoming quite close actually. but yes, in general life is pretty easy here, which is not what i was expecting. i'm not sure how i feel about this yet.
- on the topic of biking, i have unintentionally bulked up my thighs so much with the everyday commute that my shorts are getting a bit constraining. and usually i get thinner when i move to another country. go figure.
- everyone and their brother wants me to teach them english. i think i actually heard mina say to a friend the other day that i don’t like teaching, and then she backtracked when i asked her to repeat in english, saying that i haven’t had time yet. i’m still terribly confused by some social practices here – supposedly, if i want to refuse a request i should say “maybe” on a million different occasions instead of saying “no.” i’ve been told no one will hold this against me, refusing to fill some request. yet it almost sounds like that’s not true. plus there’s the fact that my host family is from the south of laos, supposedly a region famous for loud-talkers and harsher social habits.
- interesting conversation the other day with an mcc worker in vietnam, about the varying degrees of goodwill across nations. what i noticed in costa rica / honduras seems to be true here as well – thailand’s economy is booming compared to laos’ and it’s easier to find volunteers in the latter than the former. some people i know here have so little, and seem to know that they will never have much, and maybe that’s liberating for them, being excused from the rat race even before they enter it. i guess that’s why it’s a bit quaint for them when rich westerners talk about struggling to live simply, since simple is really just default around here. in up-and-coming economies like thailand or costa rica though, there’s an ugly tendency to step on people if it means climbing higher, and not stick your neck out without some personal benefit. it should make us think twice about development work that stresses economic growth – what are we encouraging in these people?
- i guess partially because of buddhism, most lao people seem to believe that they don't have as much control over their lives as westerners tend to believe. i think this is part of the reason for not worrying so much about a lack of material goods. all this is not to say that the lao don’t have good work ethic, but simply that one’s ability (or inability) to accumulate material goods is not very reflective of one’s personal character. that’s a nice change from the “poor people are lazy” mindset that we encounter more in the states.

all right. enough heavy topics for now. how are you?

longboat races

this week vientiane is celebrating the boat races, a buddhist(?) tradition that has something to do with luring a dragon back into the mekong so people can harvest their rice safely in the fields. or so i am told, roughly. things like this are rarely clear to me.

one way they attract the dragon is by coming to the river at night to launch tons of tiny boats made of banana leaves, each carrying a candle or two, and the occasional coin for good luck. it’s really a beautiful thing, hundreds of tiny lights floating along the shore. (what's even better is that the same boys who sell the little boats have friends downstream who pluck the boats out of the water to sell them again.) mina tells me that dating couples often send out one boat together and make wishes for their future. i heard another version in which each partner sends his/her own boat, and the trajectory of the boats (drifting together or apart) speaks to their future together. i would definitely prefer the first theory, since tiny boats in the mekong are bound to drift apart – the odds are discouraging. :) yesterday most of the city was on holiday, crowded into restaurants along the shore, vying for a glimpse of the longboat races. apparently people come from faraway provinces to race here, fifty people rowing like mad in a narrow boat that sits low in the water. ariel (mcc service worker) and i wandered the streets which were blocked off for vehicles, enjoying one day of acting like tourists in this place we are starting to consider our home.

another perk of festival week is the smell. usually vientiane is all dust and exhaust and char, but this week i have noticed distinct hints of orchids and ginger in the streets. roadside restaurants smell like coconut milk rice, or lime and chilis. one favorite here that i will never like is the fetal chicken egg thing, something i first encountered in vietnam a few years back. it’s essentially a hard-boiled fertilized egg, which means that chicken little is in there, complete with his developing feathers and beak and bones. this is not inherently any more cruel than eating a full-grown chicken, but the baby factor makes it a little unbearable for me.

on an unrelated note, mina can be concurrently embarrassing and hilarious. because she knows that my boyfriend has darker skin and is from somewhere near mexico (most lao people have never heard of honduras), the sight of a black man usually makes her say something like, “look amy, he’s like your mexican friend!” even men who are most certainly from the heart of africa are now classified not only as mexicans, but as my mexican friends. it’s pretty great.

meh.

“attachment is the root of all suffering”


considering that my official job title here is “staff writer,” one would think that i could do a better job of keeping up with a measly blog. alas. part of the reason i haven’t been writing much here is that it seems that much of the struggle and growth i’m going through right now is profoundly personal, and i’m not quite ready to broadcast that yet. i try to remind myself that people probably want to know about the everyday things that seem mundane to me, but i struggle with informing others without feeling cliched. so many of the differences i’m experiencing here are similar to things i have already confronted in other places, particularly honduras; the poverty and communications style and slower pace don’t strike me as much as they used to.


with that said, i certainly don’t consider myself to have figured out laos or its people - often i find myself thinking “yes, i think i’ve discovered an unspoken cultural value,” and then immediately “discovering” the opposite value the next day. it is nearly impossible to make generalizations about culture at this point – i am barely initiated into this place. (on that note, this is week 8, which falls into what MCC orientation called culture shock period, when things start to fall apart and the honeymoon ends. for some reason i thought myself slightly exempt from this phenomenon, having traveled a bit already. sometimes i hate it when other people are right.)


i’ve been reading about buddhism a lot recently, and i’m really enjoying that। even among the christian communities here many people still consider themselves buddhist, as more of a philosophy than a religion. i’m not sure how compatible the two really are, but i definitely appreciate certain tenants of buddhism. while i’m not willing to completely detach from people at home and my beliefs about how to live the good life, it is helpful to try to constantly remind myself that a year spent missing those things would not be worth the journey.


if you’re into that sort of thing, please pray for friendships and community here. i am missing you all more than you know.