Lao Wildlife Safe from Hunters' Guns; Official.

So much to write about in this 50^th blog. Weather, potholes and vegetables are just the start of it. Yes, I can imagine how excited you are all getting.

But let us start with a murder case, since we have not had one of those for a while.  A 19 yr old Hmong girl goes with a Hmong student from another village to spend the night at a Guest House. In the morning she is dead, with bruising to neck, abdomen and thighs.  No detailed post mortem was carried out, and unusually, her body was buried within 48 hours. The boy was arrested, and attention then turned to the appropriate level of compensation to be paid by his family. Her family asked for $15,000 but that was over-ruled in her own village and the sum reduced to $10,000 The reasoning for that reduction was that the elders did not want to push the tariff too high in case one of their villagers were to commit a similar crime.

Once the fee was agreed, all that needed to be arranged was the payment for the boy’s accommodation in the city jail. That was assessed at $500 (must have been a better than average Lao jail)  and when that was paid he was free to leave with no further action being taken against him. If any of you read Colin Cotterill's occasionally mildly amusing books about 'The Lao Coroner', you might wonder why Dr. Siri Phaiboum was not called for.

I have had to decline a 3 day trip to the Hmong burial grounds in the mountains as it conflicted with other things on my timetable, but I hope I can do it another time. Doing such a journey right now, in the rainy season, could have been, in any event, less than comfortable.
One final Hmong story this week; I see that in neighbouring Vietnam many Hmong have been arrested following clashes with the authorities, when large numbers of Hmong gathered in Dien Bien province having been advised of the Second Coming of Christ. One assumes that the (American ?) missionaries who would have filled these (normally non Christian) peoples’ heads with this nonsense were not also arrested and beaten? Pity, really.

The weather report is the same as last week, and I suspect it will be a similar story for many weeks to come. Hot and rainy, and some country roads getting washed away.  For those of you who know Luang Prabang, I estimate that the rivers are now rising so fast that the bamboo footbridge over the Nam Khan will soon make its annual disappearance under the water, to be followed soon after by the café on the small island. I suspect that the bridge has maybe 2 weeks left;  the café, which is on higher ground, rather longer.( A small diversion here takes us to the fact that Microsoft encourages me me to  spell c-a-f-e with an accent over the E, but Google advises me against such pretension. Seldom have I been able to resist pretension.)

However, for a couple of days now the sun has struggled to break though the low clouds, which may have resulted in it being just a few degrees less hot. Oddly, such conditions led to  some of us getting  a touch of sun burn or  tan the other day. I was surprised to get any more tanned, as I assumed that I was already as Lao-coloured as I am likely to get; I am now darker than some mixed race Lao. But my eyes remain steadfastly blue, and much desired for their colour, if not utility.

My mornings start now about 5.30 or 5.45, so I could, if I were so minded meet the monks to give alms, as they walk at that time past the bottom of my lane but I never seem to have appropriate food or sufficient small notes to offer them.

You have not heard much from me in recent weeks about the incompetent guitarist next door, since I have not heard much from him either. There have been a few short strummings, but usually by the time I have assembled my forces to combat his noise, he has stopped; maybe he knows how bad he is and can't stand it either?  A friend who was staying for a few days and seems to have a better musical ear than I, diagnosed the problem as the guitar being out of tune. This sounds like a general cultural issue since, as I have complained before , Lao singers are  horribly out of tune as soon as they have to reach for a note. Now I don't want to dig a pit for myself here, but I am sure that I have a recollection that UK Symphony Orchestras pitch their strings a quarter of a tone higher or lower than their colleagues on mainland Europe, so I guess that just as 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder', the appreciation  of sound is also a matter of taste and not science.

For all you vegetable fans, the good news is that I now  have some decent soil. Pricking out, re-planting and further seeding is now under way.  In the end, the soil came from one of the local nursery gardens. When a friend arrived with it I was initially taken aback as he announced that he had bought me some land!  My heart sank; I have enough land issues right now (see below) without acquiring any more. But  happily, ‘land’ was merely a mis-translation of ‘soil’ so all was well.

Some tomatoes which seeded themselves have produced a small crop and a few ‘yard long’ beans have somehow made an appearance. But now I have the soil, the remaining contents of the seed packets from the 99pence shop will be sown.  I think I shall risk the lemon one more time by giving it a decent bed of soil. Right now it sits in a mud filled broken wine glass…oh yes, nothing is wasted here!

As this is a bumper edition I hope you will allow me to re-introduce the sob story this week; after all, it has been a while since we have had one of those. 
 I was at a rural Lower Secondary School where we were doing a spot of filming, if that is not too grandiose a term, and this little lad was a wistful-looking observer.

 The absence of a context for the photo means you cannot really see how small and under-developed he is for a 14 year old. But you can see how wonderfully well he is turned out; as if he was attending the school.  But he has completed that stage of education, and the next level  is only available at the nearest town, for which he would need small amounts of money for fees, transport, uniform and for a room to spend weekday nights. However, his parents have split up and abandoned both him and his baby sibling, and they now live with granny who has no money.  He wants to trace his mum who has moved to Vientiane but does not know how to, and in any event, lacks the means to do so.
But I cannot go around gathering waifs and strays, nor can I ask others to. We had a picnic with us and we made sure that he had one of the things that he most needed, and that was a decent meal. Even so,he ran off with his food so I guess it was to be shared with the sibling and granny.  It would be nice to think that someone could do something for kids like him; but his is just one example among so many and I suppose you could argue that he has clothes on his back and maybe a roof over his head; but even so.....

The school itself badly needs some basic sport equipment.  When any of you are out this way I would be happy to take you along to meet the teachers and the kids in return for a football or two!

Some of you may have read the recent LEOT newsletter and seen Claire’s account of an attempt to reach a village on the river. This week, the weather was kinder, and as part of the same trip referred to above, we managed to visit the village.  It is built on a hillside with housed packed in and no open spaces, except for the river and its bank. There is no electricity, no mobile phone coverage (hooray, some may say!) and of course no toilets, or sewage and no school. All contact with the ‘outside world’ is by river. But hope and ambition still exist and at least one young man had enough English to tell me about his career ambitions outside the village. He mentioned 4 or 5 quite different ambitions in the space of 60 seconds, so maybe he still has some thinking to do. The younger boys, below, somehow resemble a group of 4 boys anywhere; their attempts to look mean, bored, tough, cool are just a little unconvincing !




  

For insect lovers, I can confirm that the fly/moth creatures about which I complained last week, are apparently known, if incorrectly, as flying ants. They are termites and it is the rain disturbing their colonies which brings them out in swarms. They are clearly attracted to the light, as last time they swarmed, many villagers stood outside with lamps and nets to catch them for food.
 On the subject of food, would anyone like to hazard a guess at what the above dish is? The only clue I shall give is that the menu also contained ‘bake  gout’, and ‘ to grill cow milk’, while I contended myself with ‘ to grill goat’.

On a vaguely different topic,(the vagueness of the  connection being that he ate the above dish) I was talking to a student at the Law School about fees. The fees collection regime is in basic respects much more liberal and generous than in UK universities.  He has just paid the fee which was due in September; in UK he would have long since been excluded from study). But the system involves a large ‘debtors’ board in the main reception area in which the names of those students who have not paid in full are prominently displayed. He also confirmed that the makeup of the student body was overwhelmingly male; about 75%.  He is looking forward to the end of the academic year so that he can return to the temple as a novice for one week. He talked of purifying his mind and body; ‘no beer, no girls’. He is very much a party animal so far as I can judge, but he spoke very warmly and generously about his 5 years as a novice, with no complaints about any hardships.

The following images are of Khamou rice planters, planting sticky rice high up in the hills. The process is a long and laborious one, with a couple of people with steel  tipped poles making  holes about 2 inches deep and then the rest of the team following behind tossing 5 or 6 grains of rice into each.

 I don’t know what proportion of the rice crop they have to hold back each year for planting. I guess that in the years that the crop is a poor one they may have to sacrifice the next year’s seed crop and use it for food. I do not pretend to know a great deal about the subject, nor do I expect everyone to share my prejudices, but  it seems to me  that these people could be ruined by the introduction of Genetically Modified Crops, incapable of producing fertile seeds from the crop. They would soon become dependent, not on their own labours and a favourable climate, but on the whims of the companies producing the seeds.

I mentioned land purchase above.  The issues I referred to apply to the land we are acquiring for the school.  Two surprises this week. Firstly the area in the front of the land has become Lake Leot following very heavy rains. It is drying up OK, but we had certainly not  factored in a lake as part of the landscaping. The other issue arose when the Land Department officially measured and drew the plot that we are buying. The drawing was considerably different from that shown on the title deeds. Thus, on Saturday, a civil engineering student and I spent  a hour or with large balls of string and a 5 metre tape measure re-doing the Department’s work. In the end, we agreed that the Department's  measurements were correct, but evidently the drawing had been done by someone’s 4 year old nephew since it bore little resemblance to the measurements.

Finally, for pothole fans, here are some photos. These are on the main road, between Luang Prabang and Vientiane; the two most important cities, so you may be able to imagine the state of lesser roads.

Alan