November 19, 2009
"Must be the Sea Games...(sigh)" - Everyone
So the SEA Games clock outside of the morning market is now reading at 19 remaining days until the opening ceremony of Lao's first-ever hosting of the Southeast Asian Games. Athletes and fans from 11 countries will flood the small streets of Vientiane to be greeted by conscripted volunteers, trees with trunks painted white, and of course the staunchest crack-squad of savy motivated security personnel EVER. It's been over 30 years since "The Secret War" but when Lao wants to get its military jam on, it goes from docile, laid-back farmer to commie bastard in about .01 seconds. As of last night when I was pulled over 3 times on my motorbike, the ratio of street corners with collections of useless,corrupt police has increased 5 per 200 meters, to 10 per 100 meters. There are also signs of gender diversification within the ranks. In this past week I have seen equal numbers of female police in trousers - since I've been here I've yet to see one.
There are, like anything else, positives and negatives for Lao's hosting of the SEA Games. Like every other city that attracts attention from an international event, Lao's reputation as a "country on the rise" is at stake. They are using it as a rallying point for national pride and encouraging local businesses to get involved and sponsor the games. BeerLao is the official sponsor, but telecom companies and smaller businesses are flexing their advertising muscles by feeding training athletes and housing them for lower rents. The cooperative Asian spirit is alive and well as my students attend practices round the clock to prepare for the traditional dance at opening ceremonies.
Unfortunately there are disadvantages to hosting an event you cannot afford and I'm afraid the euphoria preceding its commencement will be followed by a painful aftermath of backed debt and disappointed entrepreneurs digging for gold and only finding tin. Currently Lao has built the new stadium with Chinese loans and in return has forfeited control over some controversial real estate near That Luang Stupa (symbol of SEA Games and Lao) in exchange for the loans. Take a look at this article/shout out in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/world/asia/06laos.html?scp=1&sq=Laos%20SEA%20Games&st=cse
Acting legislation bars any foreigner from purchasing Lao land and therefore to concede to this agreement Lao is walking a dangerous line when dealing with land-hungry Chinese immigrants. For the first time though, I've seen Lao people grow generally outraged at the idea of having their land handed over to the Chinese without so much as a, "Would that be ok with you?" gesture thrown their way by the government. Typical move on behalf of the government but slightly unusual response from local residents.
Second, Lao is experiencing the debtor ache of having to sell back most of its hydropower to Thailand after calling on the Thai government to help finance the completion of its dam project on the Mekong River. At the moment Lao is in dire need of a boosted energy supply as it prepares for the Games and then yet another when the games actually begin. To further exacerbate matters, the Mekong is getting destroyed by dam projects at its source in China. When China decides to close the dam, within 24 hours the river can be completely drained. Lao chooses to ignore this idea and blame the 24 hour drying up of the river on global warming. Yesterday the front page news story was headed, "Climate change shrinks the Mekong," While nobody denies that global warming is affecting the health of the world's major water sources, to scapegoat an unaccountable entity like climate change for the river's troubles is not only convenient by entirely ridiculous. Therefore while the farmers' suffer during the dry season because they can't irrigate their rice fields, the government can raise its hands up and say, "It ain't me, kids - take it up with ice caps."
Alright, enough hating on the SEA Games. On a more comical note, everyone and their mother uses the SEA Games as a scapegoat for the world's problems, both personal and impersonal. If the water pressure in the bathroom is crappy (and it always has been) you merely say, "Must be the SEA Games...hmm." Should the traffic and driving feel particularly awful (and they've always been awful) you again blame the SEA Games and all of a sudden a burden feels as though its been lifted. Internet/electricity outages, an expensive grocery bill, police pulling you over for actually doing something wrong = yes, these all stem from direct negative impacts of the SEA Games. We can all rest assured knowing that once the SEA Games are over the problems of Lao will cease to exist. And that's exactly what the Vientiane Times is going to tell you - so therefore it MUST be true.
One of the highlights of this term though has been the SEA Games Discovery Program which I am teaching and coordinating on with 5 other teachers. Since the government wants to keep the roads clear for the SEA Games, the kids' summer holiday was pushed from July and August to November and December. Thus, the children of Lao have off for these two months while the government has allowed Vientiane College to remain open until December 4th. To keep them occupied and stimulate excitement, learning, general fun during this break, V.C. decided to have a daytime program with a SEA Games theme and a lame title like SEA Games Discovery Course for Young Learner's. There are about 40 kids that come in 5 days per week/ 3.5 hrs. per day. The curriculum is built around ideas that stem from the SEA Games like sports values, nutrition, geography, and healthy lifestyles. Every week is adifferent theme integrated with House Competitions between classes and teams of younger and older students. Today we followed up our nutrition unit in my class by opening a restaurant for the
administration, teachers, and students in the program. They cooked a feast complete with a menu, food pyramid, descriptions of dishes, and compiled recipe book of healthy Lao/Southeast Asian foods from around the region. It's been a ton of fun to watch them commit to their
teams and classes and work together to achieve goals. It's also a great pride build-up for the SEA Games which they're all excited about. With one week to go we are in the process of writing a newspaper to hand out at their final performance on Friday in front of their parents. Although its been great, I'm ready to conclude next week out of fear that I'm reaching the end of my middle-school PE class games barrel. We've managed to scrape through broom hockey, dodgeball, 4 Square, and Human Knot with no significant injuries - praying we keep that trend going.
My night classes are also going splendidly, albeit long with extended hours. My international relations class is working on its final assignment and struggling to process all of the criteria we've outlined in humanitarian intervention unit in order to decide whether or not intervention is warranted in their fellow ASEAN flagrant human rights offender, Myanmar.
Marathon training is also going, going, going. I've managed to get it down to a routine science which is helpful. My only really bad days are Fridays when I do a long run and have to finish before class with the Lao president's sons starts at 8:30am. Tomorrow is 14 miles so I have a start time of about 4:45am if I want to get back in time to eat and take a shower. By the time I get up into the late teens and early 20s I'll be home and doing nothing but eating cheese and Cinnamon Life cereal - something to look forward to.
Grad school apps are also finished - albeit I'm keeping an eye on necessary components that need to make it to schools. Relying on the mailing system is a recipe for anxiety so I'm trying not to think about it and trust that my personal statements, recommendations, transcripts, GRE scores, and financial aid forms are floating safely across the Pacific and into the folders of my admissions board reviewers.
Lao lessons are also getting easier by the week and teaching me little fun facts about Lao. In this past week I learned that if you yawn that means someone is talking badly about you but if you sneeze that signifies someone is thinking about and missing you. I think I've done an equal amount of both with the sudden burst of cold air and extended working hours. We'll see which one is more accurate when I touch down in NYC in a little more than 2 weeks.
Can't wait to be snapping photos of the tree at Rockefeller Center like some overly Nikon-zealous Japanese tourist come December 8th....
Until then, another Thanksgiving in Lao, Anastasia Vrachnos (Executive director of PiA) visit next week, choreography for the kids' final dance next week, and blaming the SEA Games for anything that goes wrong in between!
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October 19, 2009
"Double your pleasure, double your fun" - Inebriated Complaints Committee, Boatracing Festival 2009
To reiterate my sentiments toward inefficiency and bureaucratic irrationality, in Asia, particularly Lao, things often make absolutely no sense. Actually, even to the average Lao person, there is often a degree of "WTF" running through their minds - though, they would never verbalize it. The Boatracing Festival 2009 proved that when you try to correct a blatant error, protest is usually greeted with some kind of punishment.
On the morning of October 5th, circa 6am, a collection of moderately hungover ex-pats in hot pink uniforms, gathered at the Spirit House, a restaurant and bar sponsoring our team and also offering a discounted pre-race breakfast spread of eggs, fruit shakes, and "mystery meats". With the new boat safely secured on the banks of the Mekong next to our tent, we breathed easy knowing that a full year of sweat and toil fundraising for that log was going to culminate in the village's first victory in nearly 12 years. We chewed our eggs, slurped our smoothies, and waged bets over which animal parts were used to make each suspicious sausage on our plate. After an hour of loading up on the goods, we headed out as the sun came up, dragon-fruit pink shirts and all, toward our tent on the river.
In the same vein as last year the raucous started early. Crowds of Beerlao saturated country bumpkins were pounding on their homemade drums by 6:30am, chanting the same songs over and over and over again, the water deflecting an out-of-sync, inharmonious roar onto the masses. We hopped in the boat, paddled up-river toward the start, and met our competition near the gun-post. The irony of the festival is that everything usually starts and ends in complete chaos, but as a sport is founded on complete and utter efficiency and teamwork. Nobody knows who's racing who, there's no even start, just an approximation near the judges panel, and the "composure" practiced for the beginning of every race devolves into a melee of clashing paddles, river-water in every orifice in your body, and swearing in 50 languages (or at least in our boat). Usually though the Lao women's teams can their shit together and manage 30 seconds out of the start, gliding down the river in unison, the boat propelled forward by impeccable technique and timing. It's a physical symphony, their boat flying through downstream like shark taking no prisoners. They finish the race with the ease, leaving the Ban Saifong Neua International Women in the spray of their experience and perfection. Additionally, the women look nothing like the emaciated Lao women I know that grab at my love handles and tell me I need to eat more vegetables. The Lao girls on these teams are JACKED and ready for battle anytime, any place. I don't know how they manage to find these women from villages that subsist primarily off of sticky rice, but they're doing something right to breed such fierce rowers.
Anyway, we lost our first race but after the debacle that was our first race last year, I was proud of our performance. We rowed hard and the loss differential shrank considerably from last year. Following our first race we made our way back to the start for our second. This is where "WTF" began. In fact, everyone present at the festival felt the same way. We were met by a team sponsored by the Mekong River Commission, an international organization employing representatives from all of the Mekong countries (Thai, Lao, Vietnam, Cambodia, China) that works to protect the "integrity" of the river itself in the face of overwhelming damn construction projects and industrial pollution that spans across the region. Team MRC is usually half Lao oeople and half foreigners, so they usually match us in both inexperience and crap rowing. Therefore, we loath them and make destroying them the goal of the festival. We've beat them informally the past 5 years so this year, with their excess funding, decided to hire half of a boat of experienced Lao men to control the latter half of the membership. Another 15 members were foreign men, and a mere 5 out of 40 were foreign women. Instead of registering in the men's category like they should have, they decided that having 5 women in the boat qualified as registration in the women's division. Though not beating us by very much, given the 85 percent testosterone charged composition of their team, they did pull off a tight win. Both the foreign and Lao women our boat were naturally outraged.
I'll have to admit it was quite a site watching my Lao teammates, who never get upset about ANYTHING, and I mean A.N.Y.T.H.I.N.G, hostilely march toward the judges table to vent furiously over the injustice of the race. "POON SAIIIIIII Laiiiiiiii! Mi POON SAIII Laiiiii Laiiiii. Baw Diii, baw tamada khu kahn. Assholes." (Translation: You have many men. Many many men. So not fair. Not fair at all. Assholes (they learned that from me sadly)." The judges, already drunk, waved at us nonchalantly to go back to the start. They agreed that it was unfair and thus the races would be repeated. Reloading into the boat we proceeded to achingly paddle back to the start, only to meet the EXACT SAME WOMEN's TEAM WE ROWED AGAINST thirty minutes before. We lost, again, naturally. Then we were told to return to the start for our fourth race. Guess who's there...yeah, TEAM MRC. I know. Our coach, with the officials of the race screaming profanity at him, cowered and told us to go when the gun went off. Hence, we raced the same team that we complained about illegally registering in women's division.
But wait, it gets worse. Due to the delay caused by repeating our two races, the judges and all of the officials scapegoated our request for a correction as responsible for the 2 hour delay. Hence, instead of bringing justice, the injustice was exacerbated by making us row the same two teams again, and then blaming us for the delay and using our village's good name in jest over the loudspeaker. Our coach was beside himself, sulking and repeating, "I let you all down, I should have insisted on not racing. I am a terrible coach." Our village elders lost face and our men's team further punished by having to wait until the very end of the festival to race. Having been there since 6am, they baked in the sun the entire day and raced at 5pm.
Though disappointed, embarrassed, and wounded by the unfairness of it all, we and our village did what Lao people do when arbitrary prejudice strikes - dance, sing, and drink. What I love about this country is that though the government and its corresponding ministries screw up and rarely give a shit, the people accept the uncertainty and lack of control in their lives with a grace that doesn't exist in the West. As a foreigner living in the developed world you're groomed to think that you're entitled to control everything in your sphere, and that when things go pear-shaped, there's someone to blame, sue, or punish. Though I don't admire the lack of accountability in this country always, I do believe there's some truth to their resilience in times of tragedy and disappointment. We don't have as much control as we think and whether we like it or not, things are not perfect. That lack of perfection also doesn't entitle you retribution or the right to blame someone else. The motto here is, deal with it. Just deal with it - this too shall pass. Yes, I agree that mantra is problematic in more ways than you can imagine, but in many cases its the only way to move forward - by letting it go. I believe there is value to be taken from this perspective and it wouldn't hurt my fellow Americans to lower their expectations of the world and adopt this mindset from time to time.
So the boatracing festival went well despite the incurred inequity. We belted out Britney Spears and Spice Girl songs with our Lao teammates acapella as we waited for the men's teams, drank lime cocktails donated by one of our sponsors, and generally drowned out the disappointment from the morning with alcohol. After years of losing and a generally unconducive nature toward winning with so many foreign women never having rowed before the season, throwing a rager on the Mekong is what we have learned to do best.
I say goodbye to my team after two seasons of navigating one of the mightiest rivers in the world, walking through the forests with monks to choose the "perfect tree", slaving over traditional Lao dishes before Buddhist ceremonies, and cycling the 35 km out to our village through Vientiane Province, ringing my bicycle bell and "Saibaideee" - ing rice farmers, beaming their smiles from green rice fields under blue skies. Boatracing for me hasn't been about the winning, or even the physical activity itself. That village represents my connection with the culture itself, outside of the limited interaction you have with rural Lao while living a city-life. The beauty and simplicity of the lives of my friends in Ban Saifong Neua, their gentle, generous, relaxed nature renew my faith in the ingenuity of people, and the working ability of both Lao and foreign women to sustain an opportunity for women to participate in a heavily-male dominated sport.
Sunsets, smiles, and sweethearts. That just about sums up Lao and boatracing in Ban Saifong Neua.
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September 29, 2009
Conquered on Koh Samui
Vientiane College
Vientiane, Lao PDR
30.9.09
Well, we tried. We tried really hard and fell a bit short of glory. After 8 hours navigating the eroded peaks and bedrock of Koh Samui, I had to call it quits and take a little detour to Samui Capital Hospital for a cocktail of IV fluid and anti-nausea medication. That's the abridged version of an epic but slightly disappointing weekend in the Gulf of Thailand.
Now for the unabridged soapbox - come on, like I can help myself?
Preceded by a mad rush of grading for end of term reports followed by an ad hoc pack job, I set out for Udon Thani, a Thai border with an airport that flies discount airlines to Bangkok. I had 2 hours to kill before my flight so I decided a trip to the mall was in order. Udon has a "Centerworld Plaza", a major shopping center with a Boots Pharmacy, England's equivalent of America's CVS. I think when you've been living in a country with no franchises and the two Western mini-marts sell crappy shampoo that costs half of your life savings, you start getting obsessed with places that offer reasonably priced hygienic products. Boots with its Neutrogena, Crest "Whitening" toothpaste, and wide selection of fruity lotions is like a small dreamworld/black hole for me at this point. I spent 2 hours browsing this 4 aisle store, examining every brand of cleanser, making educated decisions about face cream, vitamins, and cocoa butter moisturizer. I didn't need any of this stuff but ended of splurging on a mega-part for my electric toothbrush that cost 700 baht - almost 20 dollars. Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous, but this thing is like the be-all-end-all of toothbrush parts. It's the King Kong, Michael Jackson, and Incredible Hulk of toothbrushes. I actually look forward to waking up and giving the teeth a power-scrub in the morning - sometimes ten minutes early for the gum massage, yes.
Anyways, the toothbrush purchase was big, probably the most positive highlight of the weekend if you can believe that. The flight was delayed an hour, so I had about 4 ice cream cones from the Dairy Queen in the airport, felt sick, and boarded the plane for Bangkok. Having just been there for the GREs in mid-August, the high speed chase that is life in BKK was no shock. I stayed in the comfortable lodgings of Meg Bender that night and then met up with Katy Lankester, my partner in the race and '08 classmate from Princeton the following morning for breakfast at a vegetarian restaurant. Caroline Loevner, another PiAer and '08 grad working in BKK shared a few spring rolls with us as well, said goodbye, and off we went in a cab back to the airport to catch our plane to Surat Thani.
Like all things in Asia, nothing ever works out to be more convenient or easier than you planned. You eventually adjust to the navigation of a society that prides itself on bureaucratic obstacles and inefficiency, but you never completely turn off your "WTF" reaction when something goes inevitably wrong. Thinking we would be saving some major cash by flying Air Asia to Surat Thani, a sea town that allegedly had a ferry close by to transport us to Koh Samui, I booked tickets on the airline. What they don't tell you is that the airport and the ferry are 100km apart and the airport exploits the distance by charging an inordinate amount of money to shuttle you between. The ferry ride is also 2 hours from the shore and then another 30 minutes to the hotel. Our bus broke down en route to the ferry, leaving us stranded on the side of the road scavenging for snacks as we hadn't eaten since our meager breakfast of spring rolls and bananas at the BKK vego restaurant. Eventually another bus arrived with no air conditioning, we barely scrambled onto the ferry as it was departing, and once getting to Koh Samui had to walk with our packs and argue with tuk-tuk drivers to get us to the hotel for a reasonable price. All in all, not the type of commute you want on the eve of a 71 kilometer triathlon.
Once parking our bags at the hotel we attended a meeting for the racers in which the administrative staff told us the race had never been done before at this location and was going to be "tough". Apparently there were also some kinks to work out in the course before the morning and those would be addressed that night. Unfortunately they forgot to order me a bike for which I sent 4 email requests prior to the race. They promised me a "decent bike" shipped to the first biking leg by the morning. I trusted they would keep their word, Katey and I drank some cheap electrolyte packets, retired to our room, and fell asleep anticipating a day of "fun".
The morning of the race we woke up, walked a kilometer along the beach to the start, and nonchalantly waited around for the race to commence. The first leg was a one kilometer run along the beach, followed by a 12 km sea kayak and 2 km swim. Why they chose to include the two coolest legs at the very beginning of the morning when the weather was still relatively temperate is beyond me. The ocean was absolutely beautiful, the kayak blade cutting the glassy cerulean water with coral reefs below was everything I'd imagined the race would be like...until the mountains started rolling.
While the race on the River Kwai with Elena was marked by long bike loops and runs over mountains, the heat was broken up by short swimming legs in the river which cooled down our muscles and prevented heat stroke. This race only had two more long legs of running and biking up and down steep mountains with little or no respite. The woman who promised me a bike at the start did not deliver. They gave me a small child's mountain bike on which my knees were grazing the handlebars. The mountains were so vertical that you had to walk your bike up as well as down to circumvent a spill over the eroded edge of the trail. Furthermore, the adventure and extreme courses overlapped and therefore when we were going up a mountain, hundreds of adventure racers were coming down completely out of control with breaks failing in the opposite direction. The trail was so narrow there were several collisions. The heat was also quite oppressive and with only two long legs and few water stops along the way, we began to dehydrate rather quickly. Fortunately for most of the race I felt great. I was coping with the heat much better than at River Kwai and felt strong for the first 7 hours as a result of my commitment to training for this one. Due to this surge of confidence I retrospect I probably wasn't drinking as much as I should have and not eating enough throughout the long running and biking legs.
By hour 7 I started feeling the strain of cramping muscles. Katey on the other hand was feeling fatigued for most of the race but sustained the exhaustion by continuing to eat and drink copious amounts at key moments. Nutritionally ignorant, I did not. After an hour of convincing my muscles to cooperate and becoming gradually more unsuccessful in my persuasion as the hour progressed, I was coming down a rather steep incline and everything went black. When I came to, my bike was strewn across the trail a few meters behind me, I was in a pile of leaves and my entire body was seizing with cramps. Basically I was a living, barely breathing, Charlie horse of sorts. Luckily Katey was a Outdoor Action Leader-Trainer at Princeton and has been schooled in the art of emergency. When a crisis surfaces Katey goes into safety/survival skill lock-down. A racing couple behind us caught up and had a cell phone on which they called Serge Henkens, the director and designer of the race. Due to the difficult terrain an ambulance could not reach our location. Hence, we waited for a dirt bike to brave the trail and come pick me up. Clinging onto a small Thai man for dear life with every muscle in my body collecting into one tight knot was no easy endeavor. By the time we reached the area where the ambulance had parked I was even more dehydrated than before and going in and out of consciousness.
To my loosely lucid dismay, the ambulance taking me was also waiting for several other racers to be retrieved from the throes of the last leg for an extra hour. I don't remember much of the ride except for a tiny Thai woman holding a bag next to me so I could spew. Sorry, can't avoid that little detail. I remember the hills continuing to undulate in my mind - like a perpetual night of the spins after heavy drinking. Awful. I remember getting the hospital, having more Thai people throwing blankets over my half-naked body and feeling several pricks in my ass. Then the hills of the mind rolled as I laid there for what felt like days.
The medical diagnosis was heat stroke and extreme fatigue exacerbated by electrolyte deficiency. I had about 3 bags of IV fluid, some shots (explains the pricks to the ass), and some pad Thai offered to me which I couldn't eat. Katey and I completed the journey back to BKK, I felt terrible, and then left for the airport at 7am on Monday morning to get back to school so I could teach on Monday afternoon.
Though my pride still aches each time someone asks me, "How did your race go?" I've been becoming more successful everyday at blocking the experience from my memory. I also learned you need to listen to your body, you should cherish your friends who are there for you when shit hits the fan, and nutrition for masochistic athletic endeavors should not be taken lightly. I do not plan on quitting adventure racing as the consensus of all participants was this was the most painful, difficult course they have ever taken on. Even the Amazon women who won were not happy campers at the finish line. It wasn't any fun coming all that way to fall short 5 km from the end but then again, that's life. Sometimes you're the bug and other times you're the windshield, and that day I was the squashed fly.
In other news my 5th term at Vientiane College ended yesterday and that means 8 more weeks still I return for the States for a reorientation with my past American life. I'm looking forward to it but trying to focus on next term and getting through an elongated schedule as a result of cutting the term short for the Southeast Asian Games (Olympics of the region) that Vientiane will be hosting for the first time. All of the public schools are closing a month early for the event but the government has granted V.C. special consent to remain open until December 4th. Classes will be 15 minutes longer to compensate for the two weeks we'll be missing.
I've also moved into a new place since my old roommate got deported for being a black African. Apparently institutionalizing racism is a healthy way for governments to deal with stress when they're hosting international events. Lady, the PiAer and housemate of mine working at the Lao Rugby Federation, called me two Mondays ago to inform me that she was being deported and leaving that night for the States. She and her boss had gone to convert her tourist visa into a business visa only to be informed that the three days prior the Lao government had issued a decree banning visa grants to any person holding a passport from an African country. Lady left the country but 3 days later one of my white, South African colleagues' brothers came for a visit with a South African passport (one of the countries on the list) and had no problem getting a tourist visa. Yeah, I know.
Considering Lao is obscure and no one's interested in its unapologetically racist policies, this indiscretion will fall by the wayside because people are too fearful/apathetic to confront the government. Lady might come back, she may not. I wouldn't blame her for not wanting to return to a country that expelled her for being black. Would you? Though my inconvenience was small compared to hers, I left my old house to move in with two other new PiAers in order to save money on rent and not live alone. It was quite traumatic to say goodbye to my landlord and his lovely family - having lived there 15 months we developed a great rapport and to tell him I was moving in less than 2 weeks time felt incredibly wrong.
On a more positive note, our new place is nice and in a quiet ex-pat neighborhood with plenty of security from American embassy officials homes. I love my two housemates and its been fun getting to know them both the past few days. Our last two boatracing practices are today and Saturday in the new boat! Its beautiful and made it down the Mekong with limited damage to the interior so we're thrilled to have it home at last! I really didn't think that would happen with all of the obstacles and setbacks but its here in the wood! The basci (religious ceremony) with the monks is on Sunday and then early Monday morning we'll be on the Mekong in the first race of the day! I'll be sending up a few prayers to Buddha for protection from the Naga (snake monster of the river) and a big victory in our beautiful hollowed log.
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August 31, 2009
Day by Day...by day................................by day
8.31.09
Vientiane College
Vientiane, Lao PDR
I would love to report something new - something completely out of the ordinary. Unfortunately after 14 months in this glorious country I can only say I still love it and the weird has morphed into something else - a strange, sleepy calm that wins you over despite your every effort to resist letting go. I guess that's what I've done - I've let go.
Everyday I've been waking up early to either the rains and cup of Vietnamese coffee, or an early morning cycling ride/run through the paddies. I'll be competing on Koh Samui, an island off of Thailand, in a triathlon on September 19th so I've been training for that with Chisato, a fellow PiAer, and Ginny, a graphic designer at a local coffee franchise in town. I'm registered to compete with Katy Lankester, a Princeton 2008 grad and friend of mine from my days in New Jersey. I can't wait to take in the views from the peaks of the island to the crystal waters of the sea surrounding. It will be by far my most scenic competition yet and hopefully the most fun. We shall see come the 19th.
I also took the GREs in Bangkok two weekends ago, catching a sleeper train to BKK after work on Saturday, crashing at my friend Meg Bender's place for a night, and then taking the exam on Monday morning. The experience was a whirlwind - a blink of 36 hours but also went unbelievably smoothly compared the LSAT. Meg's apartment is like a 5 star hotel in the middle of the business district. I literally took the Skytrain from the train station directly to the foot of her apartment which was located only one stop down from the test center. We spent the day Sunday going from supermarket to supermarket and making meals out of cheese samples and capped off the night by seeing "The Hangover" at the Cineplex. I think my insides are still aching from the hysterics. The GREs felt like a snap the following morning - I was in and out of the test center in three hours and on the couch drinking a fresh coconut with rum and watching Pride and Prejudice on Meg's 45'' flatscreen by noon. My train left for Vientiane at 8pm so I basically relished in the modernity of her abode, took two more showers to remind myself what water pressure and hot water feel like, and hopped on the train back to VTE. The GREs went shockingly well considering my LSATs were such a disappointment. I'm in the process of completing applications to several joint programs in law and educational policy (Ph.D) and then some general Ph.D programs in educational anthropology. We'll see how those go.
In other news, two fresh PiAers are here, Nanny and Lady. Nanny (aka: Nancy) is, coincidentally and small worldly, a Philly and Villanova native who attended a private school about ten minutes from my house. She attended Williams College for university and is now working at the World Wildlife Foundation. Lady is a Princeton grad and Ghanian-turned-Texan native working as a volunteer at the Rugby Federation. Nanny is great and up for anything - we cycle every Saturday out to the village for boatracing practice together and have indulged a "I just wanna dance" impulse from Saturday to Saturday at the local night club "Romeo". Lady is a considerate, thoughtful roommate and teaching me a lot about languages (speaks French, Russian, Tridi (Ghanian language)) all fluently. She's also a fantastic cook and studying for the LSATs so it's been nice commiserating/reflecting) over the joys of that experience (ok, more shuddering at the thought). Overall both of them are fantastic and I'm so thrilled to have them in town.
Boatracing is also in full swing and the new boat almost complete! We should be taking a trip up to the village in the next few weeks and riding the finance and riding the finished product down the Mekong into Vientiane for the festival on October 5th! The amount of time and energy it took to bring that project together is hard to conceive, so I'm both excited and relieved for our funders that the dream is actually coming to fruition. As fundraising, sponsorship, and finance manager I'm getting a taste of the frustration that accompanies delegating responsibility to 40 women to find money in a city where there isn't much. A lot of private enterprises are digging in their heels over sponsorship because the economy is shit and budgets are tight. I think we're going to make our quota but the number of emails and wandering motorbike rides to obscure factories outside of Vientiane has been enough to keep my busier than busy. On the flipside, the women this year are strong rowers and our coach Kee-bou has complimented us more in the last 5 practices than the whole of last season. With the new boat we might have a shot at a victory this year - or at least a legitimate one against on the of the Lao teams and not a drunken collection of trash-talking Mekong River Commission ex-pats at 3 in the afternoon following the wrap-up of the festival.
OH. RIGHT. I FORGOT. Currently I'm the private teacher of the President of Lao's two sons. Yes, the teacher of the male Sasha and Malia Obama. After a few rocky weeks of getting them to come in time (rolling up 45 minute late in their Hummers), they are starting to make some progress, albeit painfully slowly. It's amazing that in a communist country where the leaders spout socialist rhetoric like a broken fountain, their 16 year old sons drive $100,000 cars and are going to study privately in Australia and New Zealand and not at the "National University". Both of them are lovely and very respectful of me - particularly after I instilled the fear of God by making them write the line "I will not be late ever again" for three hours after a string of lateness the first week. Yes, I made the President's kids write lines. For three hours. You heard me. I don't care if I get deported, nobody makes me wait.
Besides thrusting back the barriers of ignorance of Lao Peoples' Revolutionary Party offspring, I'm really enjoying my night classes this term and feel more than ever that I'm improving as a teacher. I'm actually seeing my students - noticing their weaknesses and their brilliant moments instead of focusing intently on my lesson plan and the extensive itinerary of verb conjugations we have to get through by the end of term. The rapport I've built with three of my classes that I've had several consecutive terms is starting to pay off and I find myself throwing out a lesson plan and building one on the spot to address their immediate struggles. Never before would I take such risks but it seems like the teaching is more fluid, less of a To-Do-List and more of a conversation and progressive dialogue. Ah, the rewards of a second year!
So yes, I'm starting to let go. My loose plans for next year don't bother me in the slightest and I have this strange faith that if I keep plugging away at my applications, playing guitar, reading my books, learning Lao, and volunteering my time that things will work out. Life in Lao has finally gotten to me - and all for the better.
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July 23, 2009
"Your mom's a big, fat leech" - Phongsali Trek July '09
Vientiane College
Vientiane, Lao PDR
22.07.09
On the morning of July 8th I took off on a 6 person puddle jumper plane from VTE on Lao Air with the only passengers being me, two Chinese men, and a Lao woman and her toddler...oh, and the pilot. If you've ever seen the opening scene from Jurassic Park, you'll have a pretty accurate mental picture of the experience. Flying incredibly close the group we wove through mountains and limestone karsts stretching their summits into the clouds. Below we were also high enough to see lakes and rivers cutting the landscape and a beautiful mist ebbing in and around the valleys - it almost seemed tag along to the tail of our plane, covering the landscape behind us as we made our way north.
Arriving in Boun Neua, town about 40 km from Phongsali with one landing strip and shack as an "international airport", I gave my name to a guy recording the full names of the passengers in a ledger that looked like it was about 400 years old. I then hopped in the back of the pilot's 4-Wheel Vigo and made rounds around the village of straw-thatched roofs to drop off the Chinese woman and her baby and the two other Chinese men. We embarked on a 40 km drive that no amount of Dramamine or milk of magnesia could help with. Driving at about 80 mph tortuous mountains, hugging the narrow, tortuous road of gravel, the pilot almost lost control of the car about 10 times in a 1.5 hour span. If he had lost complete control we would have plummeted to our death over the side of the mountain into a 1000 ft. gorge. I vomited for the entirety of the ride out the side window while the plump wife of the pilot was chucking nibbled apple cores from the window in front of me. I must have taken about 3 or 4 cores to the face as I spewed into the ravine below. Sorry. There's no other way to get through that depiction without being graphic.
Once getting to Phongsali I checked into the Viphaphone hotel, a collection of bare rooms with great views of the mountains. The next day I wandered around the Pu Noi and Chinese quarters, searching aimlessly for the provincial tourism office. The quarter was absolutely charming with small, cobblestone streets and homes of driftwood, tin, and dried mud. The quarter is perched on the side of the mountain for the last 500 years. After an hour of wandering I found the office and waited there for two hours for the lady who books treks to return. In that time span I managed to pack up 30 boxes of Chinese green tea being sent to a regional organic market fair at a hotel ironically located about 200 m from my house in Vientiane. While waiting for the unpunctual tourism official, I also met two girls, Hannah and Joanna, two backpackers also looking to do a trek the following day. In an effort to make the pick up easier I decided to move guesthouses and park my stuff near the Phongsali market where they were staying.
The following morning we took a public bus 40 km back to Boun Neau (leave it to me make a superfluous, car-sick trip) where we met on Celine-Dion afionado trekking guide, Som Sak. Som Sak is a Vientiane native who lived about 10 minutes from me as a kid but after studying English at the national university was sent to Phongsali, the most remote province of Lao, to teach English at a technical school. Hence, he has left is 16 brothers and sisters and parents in Vientiane for 10 years to live in a mud hut with no electricity and can't quit or the government will blackball him from getting another job anywhere else in the country. Typical Lao governance style - benevolent dictatorship my ass. Som Sack was kind enough to cook us a breakfast of rice and fish and we set off into the boggy landscape of rice paddies. In three hours we took in some stunning scenery of monks and country laymen tending to their farms, streams of irrigation flowing into the lush paddies and the rice high and busting with green health. After 6 hours Som Sak stopped for lunch and made covered the path with palm fronds he cut from the brush. Laying them down he served us yet another delicious meal of steamed vegetables, fried fish ,and sticky rice.
Following lunch we continued on the trek through the mountains. Joanna compared them to lava that's been in a storm and then frozen as they're hitting their highest wave. They're like a choppy sea with layers and layers of steep peaks one after another. You can't see the end of them. Around 3pm on the first day the forest opened up into a rather large Akha village. The Akha are a minority up north that live in villages and subsist primarily off of slash and burn agriculture and their livestock. They also are strong proponents of shamanism and don't speak Lao but instead a dialect of Hmong. Their gender roles are also intriguing. Men don't work and women are seen as the breadwinners of the family. They go to the fields and till the soil while the men stay home, smoke tobacco in huge bamboo pipes, and tend to the children. They also have a tradition that when a man fancies a woman he can go to her hut at midnight, seize her, and bring her to his hut to have his way with her. A man also can leave his wife at any time and assume another wife. It's a pretty shit deal for the average Akha female - rice, rape, rejection - or at least that's how my ethnocentric brain processes their gender relations.
Aside from the seemingly unjust treatment of females, the villagers were lovely. We were the first group of foreigners to trek there in years considering the roads wash out during monsoon season and are rarely repaired; therefore we drew an onslaught of attention. The village chief welcomed us into his home and prepared us a feast of steamed bamboo and again, rice. His wives taught me how to cook other rice dishes - there were at least 40 variations. If I never eat rice again after my time in Asia I will die content. He also began distributing shots of Lao-Lao, a rice liquor similar to baiju that I got wretchedly sick on during my Chinese summer two years ago. Due to the fact that I am offered this stuff about 5 times a month by my Lao colleagues and friends, I know to refrain and politely pour my shot onto the dirt floor. The stuff is essentially Lao moonshine and a small amount of it will send you into an inebriated stupor in a shockingly short time frame. Unfortunately Hannah, my petite, Australian backpacker forest friend didn't get the memo and was taking shot after shot of the foul substance as the dance party in the middle of the dirt-floored hut commenced.
The scene was outrageous. Picture this: a bunch of topless women breastfeeding children between the ages of infant to 5 years old, people dancing to Lao gondola music, villagers hammered off of shots of Lao-Lao, and 5 white people sitting there with chopsticks, wide-eyed, and trying to discern between outlandish dreams and reality. At that juncture Joanna was telling the chief that he was "sep lai lai" which means "you're very delicious". I gave her a short tutorial on the Lao language during the trek and in her drunken state she started mixing up "you're very hospitable" for "delicious. Woops. During that time I also was approached by three men and asked to marry them. Another man demanded that I come to his hut and had to be dissuaded from the pursuit by my tour guide who explained to him that the "come sleep with me NOW" clause only applied in his village with other Akha women - not the blonde, blue-eyed foreigner who is getting indignant over the incursion.
About an hour and half into the Akha circus, Som Sak decided it was time to go because we still had 15 km to cover in 3 hours before dark fell. Hannah by that point was stumbling blindly around (I'm telling you, blindness = moonshine) and collapsing on the ground. Belligerent and stubborn, Hannah would fall and refuse to get up despite our protests. We would threaten her, "Hannah, there are leeches on the ground, they're going to suck your blood and give you herpes," half-lying but for a good cause. Hannah would respond, "Your mom's a big, fat leech." Her retort was hilarious the first ten times but night fell and the path started getting steeper, narrower, and significantly more precarious, it started to get old. I couldn't tell you how long or far we walked. The patterns was long, stream, mountain, jungle. With one person holding Hannah from the front and another stabilizing her from the back we managed to carry an incredibly smashed individual 10 km over some of the harshest terrain I've ever hiked. Thank you Buddha, oh wise one.
By 9pm we finally arrived at the village, ate more rice, watched some more women breastfeed some 5 year old children, and then I slept next to a potbellied pig which was grunting and squealing all night - granted there was a very thin board separating the hog trough from my head but you wouldn't have known it. For the next two days we continued the trek through the mountains, enjoying miraculous weather for the rainy season, and sleeping in villages of a comparable nature, sans dance parties and devastating imbibing of rice liquor. Yes, we did learn our lesson. Saying goodbye to Som Sak was kind of emotional after three days of zero personal space. We celebrated by cooking some more rice and fish in his hut and singing along to Celine Dion and Whitney Houston music karaoke videos on his lap top. The lap top in a hut with no electricity and a dirt-floor was an interesting juxtaposition but an absolute blast.
When I returned to Phongsali I finished a few books and hung out in the old Chinese quarter practicing Lao and even dredging up some Chinese from my days in Jishou. The people in the Chinese quarter were a beautiful ethnic mix of Pu Noi, Lao, and Chinese with features more similar to Chinese than Lao. I played muang boun (bocce of Lao) and chilled with some villagers drinking watery Chinese beer on their Sunday Funday.
Though Phongsali was charming, simple, and utterly idyllic, after 6 days in the province I decided it was time to start the boating trip down the Nam Ou to Luang Prabang.
Early on the morning of the 14th I took a bus in the middle of a downpour on a washed out road that seemed to be falling off the side of the cliff - to this day I'm shocked I'm not laying splattered in the middle of that gorge. There was a deluge of rain in the north so the roads in Vietnam were washed out and the river overflowing. Hence, on the river in a boat versus on the road in a bus was probably the best place to be in terms of travel. I caught the boat from Hat Sa and took a 5 hour journey to Muang Khua, a trade town on the side of the river - stayed in a seedy guesthouse, ate some noodles, and generally bided my time before I could escape the next morning on the next boat to Muang Ngoi Neua, an hearsay beautiful town off of the Mekong. We docked the following day after struggling to get a boat with some cheap, Belgian tourists who were splitting hairs over a meager dollar. All of my stereotypes of dirty, parsimonious backpackers got reinforced this trip believe it or not. Muang Ngoi Neua turned out to be the surprise of the trip, a quaint little one street town with no electricity and only a few clusters of bungalows lining the banks. The scenery was absolutely astonishing - a town surrounded by limestone peaks called karsts rising out of the river a dense forest cover filling in the gaps in between. I stayed there for two nights, reading in my hammock on my bungalow off the water and managed to conquer a D.H. Lawrence novel, something I haven't had the patience for in Vientiane. I also perused the streets eating Vietnamese dumplings and watching shriveled old women weave beautiful fabrics on their looms.
The next leg was a major milestone in the trip and also the final leg. I took another boat from Muang Ngo Neau to Nong Kiew, a town 5 hours north of Luang Prabang that has been assaulted by backpackers and the tourist curse that accompanies the glut of insensitive cheapskates - same restaurants, jaded, unfriendly Lao people, and hostile negotiations for transport prices. I narrowly escaped that place with losing my temper which was a tremendous feat in itself. I took yet another boat with another group of Belgians and got into Luang Prabang around 4pm in the afternoon, completing a week of travel down the Nam Ou River with stops along the way. I spoiled myself with a massage and a manicure and stayed in the exact same guesthouse and room as the first time I came to Luang Prabang before I took my LSATs in December - reminiscent of my early days in Lao. Sauntering the French colonial the French colonial streets, lined with chateaus and old-world cafes, I found myself surprisingly culture-shocked by the droves of tourists and reminiscing,"once upon a time I trekked through the pristine wilderness of Phongsali with some sticky rice and a bottle of Chinese tea - there were no white people there...tear."
I also met up with a friend, Denielle, an Australian colleague of mine who was there with friends from home and relaxing for the week after a brief tour of Cambodia the previous week - we enjoyed a lovely dinner at the Tamarind of pickled dishes, steamed fish with chili, and Beerlao. I also got to meet a bunch of Australian travelling musicians who were great fun. There was even an American, Scott, a kid who graduated high school in Portland, Oregon, decided that his myopic view of the world wouldn't suffice, and took off for China with his guitar. He now earns his living by playing his folk guitar in cafes from town to town across China. He's currently on a VISA run in Laos and therefore making a trip out of it while he's here. We called the group our "royal minstrels" as Luang Prabang is the old royal capital of Lao and these guys would bring their guitars along and serenade us as we walked the streets.
Two nights in Luang Prabang turned out to be enough and by that time I was ready to take the bus back bus back on Saturday night but not without buying 6 rolls of sin (traditional Lao skirt) fabric and some divine silver and Christmas gifts (yes, they could be for you if you mind you behavior before Santa arrives). Getting into Vientiane is always a good feeling - nothing better than putting your bags down and breathing in the smells of home after a long trip away. I was also able to run our beginning of term workshop today for the first time, standing up in front of 40 teachers and discussing the concept of reading for an hour and half - a daunting but empowering experience. Won't hurt the C.V. either. During my absence I was also deignedtreasurer and manager of the fundraising committee for the boatracing team - and by deigned I mean I didn't show up for the meeting and nobody else wanted the job. Lao lessons are starting and new term of French at the Cultural Center will begin next week. I'm also training for an another adventure triathlon on Koh Samui for the end of September and taking my GREs in Bangkok in mid-August in order to prepare for applying to some P.h.d programs in education - I know I said law school but I'm having a change of heart as I grow increasingly interested and intrigued by the education field.
Incredibly long stream-of-consciousness and a pat on the back if you're actually still reading at this point. Overall the trip was fantastic and one that I'll remember of low expectations smashed by an incredible experience in a remote tip of Lao where I gained yet another perspective on this diverse country I live in and the beauty it has to offer. So much cheese but so necessary.
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July 22, 2009
1 Year Anniversary
7.20.09
Vientiane College
Vientiane, Lao PDR
So Term 2 (my 4th term at VC) ended on July 3rd but I stayed on a few extra days to finish up an International Law course I was teaching on until July 7th. The course was a lecture series offered by the UN Development Program in which lawyers and judges from different ministries attend and discuss various topics for five weeks. My job was to prep them for their lecture in the morning and basically re-teach the lecture from the previous afternoon since the lecture was in English and very few of them understood it. The people were lovely and I enjoyed them as students but, like I mentioned in my last entry, am frustrated with development bureaucracy and the waste of precious resources on fledgling programs like this one.
Again, the inevitable nausea one feels after ingesting inordinate amounts of terrible bakery cake and "seaweed flavored" potato chips followed the four term parties I had to attend. I also hosted two parties on my rooftop in a four day span the last week of school. One was a gathering of 40 ex-pats and Lao friends for sunset beers on a Sunday afternoon. Luckily the weather held out in these often dreary times of monsoon season and delivered a terrific fiery red sunset. Otherwise sunset beers just become beers on the eve of a new work week. Not the most uplifting theme for a part-ay. I also entertained some students from my writing class on my roof for their term party, one of which is Lao's one and only rapper. Breaking it down for us in the hood of Ban Pa Sai, Amone beat-boxed the lyrics of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air in Lao for us and also gave a short concert of Sean Kingston covers. Priceless - literally, I paid 0 kip in exchange for providing my roof as a venue for the Lao underground hip hop scene.
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June 18, 2009
June(bugs)
Vientiane College
Vientiane, Lao PDR
23.6.09
So the juxtaposition between this June and my last is pretty stark. This time last year I had just graduated and was preparing for my Lao landing by attending a slew of doctors appointments with every physician in the Greater Philadelphia Area, playing a wannabe soccer mom and taking in as many of my brothers' basketball games as possible, and running to a from CVS to ensure that I obtained every treatment for malaria available on the market.
This June on the other hand I am now celebrating my 1 year anniversary in Lao by teaching about 12 hours a day, studying for my GRE, taking Lao lessons, and visiting the village to make sure the carpenters have started hollowing out the 500 year old tree that will soon be our new boat! The rains have returned to Lao after a 6 month hiatus and the Mekong is slowly filling (to the brim by August). Hence, the ants have also invaded the house in full force to escape from the floods outside. It's times like these that I wish I had some sort of ability to talk to animals, if only to reason with them and explain that if they wish I could provide them a whole area of my house to occupy. I would even feed and take care of them - throw some crumbs their way three times a day. Unfortunately I have no such power and must instead stage ant genocides in every corner of my house by employing a combination of insecticide, traps, and large shoes.
In recent news the tree is out of the forest with foremen ready to begin the construction by next week for our new dragon boat. Last weekend we took a twisted ride (pun intended) through the mountains east of Vang Vieng to meet up with the elders of the village that will be undertaking the building. Although the village was idyllic, perched in the middle of a lush valley dotted by straw huts and a temple, the journey there proved less so. On the way we received a text from one of the girls who had driven up the day before calling for a case of Beerlao for the builders and some Kao Nom (sweets) to give as offerings to the temple Buddha statue. Stopping along the way at a Beerlao distributor, I noticed while getting out of the car that the distributor had some kind of dog chained to one of the house's columns. Drawing nearer I realized that it was no dog at all but bear cub, hyperventilating. We immediately bought water and food and offered both to the dehydrated clearly malnourished cub which is accepted by suckling the water bottle frantically. The boatracing girls and I were in a bit of a pickle because the owner of the shop was willing to sell us the bear for $1000 but we didn't want to encourage the trading of illegally trapped/kept animals by reinforcing the idea that you can get 4 white girls on their way to VV to drop a grand (which we didn't have) on a suffering animal.
Though we really wanted to buy the bear right then and there, put it in the back of our 4WD and nurse the poor thing back to health, we didn't have enough cash and were two mired in the moral dilemma to reach any definite conclusions about a plan of action. Hence, we pressed on and made our way along the winding mountain roads lined with pineapple vendors until we reached the village. Upon arrival the monks led us into the forest to "talk to the trees". Basically we had to get consent from the other trees to slay their 500 year old friend who was to become our new boat. The monks uttered a series of chants (unintelligible to me) and gave the tree a name. To our discomfort, given that the temperature soared to about 100 F that day, the monks informed us that the tree had rejected our suggested name and this would not bode well for seasons to come. The villagers are also paranoid about bad luck due to a terrible tragedy that befell the boat-racing festival four years ago when several boats overturned in the Mekong and 16 women drowned. The villagers attributed the accident to the killing of a snake which vexed the "Naga" or "Snake god" that resides in the Mekong. Therefore any form of bad karma, including cruel and unusual names for trees, is discouraged in this nick of the woods (bad pun intended...again).
The ratio of travel time to actual hang out time with the village aunties and the monks was about 5:1. It took us five hours to get there, 5 hours to return, and we only chilled in the temple, talked to trees, and ate some sketchy lizard laap (gross) for two hours. The bear however was still on our minds and plaguing us with guilt throughout the visit. Fortunately one of the boat-racing members works for IUCN, conservation NGO that maintains rather tight connections with the Lao government and corresponding ministries. Charlotte was able to contact her boss who made some phone calls and managed to get in touch with the forestry authority responsible for the village where we found the bear. The plan was to do some reconnaissance work in tandem with the forestry officials to ascertain whether the bear was a pet or actually on the black market. Lao law is somewhat convoluted when it comes to animal seizure and general endangered species regulation and thus the officials wanted to confirm just how illegal the bear was - apparently there's a difference between a "little" illegal and "very" illegal.
We gave them the license plate number of our truck and parked it just before the intersection of the beer distributor. The officials casually stopped next to the vendor, asked whether they could buy the bear and told the bear-keeper that they'd be back tomorrow with the money. To our knowledge we don't know whether the forestry officials ever returned to buy the bear. We've tried to pursue updates on the status of the bear but we presume the head honcho at the forestry authority has lost interest in the issue or been consumed by more pressing matters and abandoned the investigation. There is also the potential for shear laziness or corruption. Those explanations are always on the table - this is Lao, let's not forget.
In the same vein as corruption are the politics of foreign aid and the little questioning that goes on in this business. I'm currently teaching on a short-term contract program with the UNDP which is sponsoring a workshop and lecture series on international law for various Lao ministry officials from different fields. Although I'm excited to finally be teaching something substantive in an area I'm familiar with, the blatant scheming that goes on in the development sector to create such an ineffective yet expensive program is an absolute outrage. Of the 30 students selected to the program I've been given the "less advanced" 15 - most of them don't speak any English. They also aren't lawyers and many of them aren't interested at all in international law. It's difficult enough attempting to explain complex topics like international jurisdiction, extradition treaties, and UN functions in English, let alone to a bunch of non-English speakers, several of which cannot say their own names.
This program is relying heavily on funding from the government of Finland and incredibly pricey to finance. There is absolutely no communication between us and the lecturer who changes the topic of the lecture everyday without notifying us. Therefore our preparation and reflection classes in the morning are downgraded from virtually ineffective to basically irrelevant. Yes, the latter is worse and more frustrating (for me at least). In a nutshell the hard earned tax dollars on the Finnish people are being squandered on a course that will do nothing to teach Lao people about international law but essentially pay them per diems, frustrate the teachers, and pad the pockets of the scheming designers of the course who are keenly aware of all of the above.
This is only one isolated case and not the worst of them. The problem with foreign aid is that it often costs more to oversee the spending of the money than to just give the money out in the first place. Governments feel less guilty and the documents that circumscribe the ways in which the money must be spent assuage any anxiety over allocation. The actual implementation matters very little - as long as the paper says that 30 Lao people received an "enriching educational experience" in the field of law everybody's happy except those who are involved in the day-to-day struggle. Welcome to foreign aid and development studies 101.
On a more positive note, after I finish this blog entry I'll be headed to the travel agent to book my flight for Pongsaly, the northernmost province of Lao that borders China. Originally Katey and I had planned to do a cycling tour of the north but abandoned our plans when we received word that the roads in the north sometimes wash out in the rainy season, leaving you stranded in the mud in some of the most remote areas of the country. Instead I'm going to go on a 7 day trek through the ethnic villages of the Pongsaly mountains and try to get a more realistic idea of what life in like for the Northern Lao person.
Additionally, Lady Adepong, a new PiAer working at a recently established post at the rugby union will be joining me in Ban Pa Sai (my neighbourhood) come July 16th. Lady is from Ghana and a Pton '09 graduate. I've only talked to her briefly on Skype but from mutual friends and PiA I think we're going to have a great 2009-2010 year together in Vientiane as housemates. There are two other PiAers also arriving at some point this summer but I have yet to meet or hear from either of them. Hopefully we'll make contact soon so I can start organizing Vientiane Restaurant Orientation Week.
In even better news, the government has decided to exercise it's communist iron fist and close down Vientiane early for the Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games), the Olympics of Southeast Asia essentially, and close our school two weeks early. Thus, Term 4 will be shortened and I will get to see my family just shortly after Thanksgiving! The government is also encouraging all businesses in Lao to close for the SEA Games and those that are open to charge higher prices in order to reap the benefits of our hosting. They advertise these PSAs in the Vientiane Times newspaper. Shameless. You'd think that instead of panicking and trying to monopolize all control, they'd take advantage of holding such a prestigious event and present Lao as a progressive country with confidence in its people to show the rest of Southeast Asia a good time. Whatever. They're helping kick-start my Christmas holiday two weeks early. Niice.
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