Give Blood Today

The Vietnamese house building team has taken down its shelter and moved on.  ( Hold on a moment while I see if there is any sign of the dog;  hmmmm..right now I cannot see it.) They have finished the basic structure of the house and have now been replaced by smaller Lao team which seems mostly to comprise women and very, very young children.  I hate to be sniffy about these things as I do understand why the children have to be there, but building sites are just about the most dangerous places to be, and for 4 yr old children to running around as if it were a playground does cause me a little anxiety

Although this week the rains have again, not been as heavy as one might expect, the cumulative effect of them is noticeable in 2 ways. Small ponds have formed on the school playing field and on relatively level areas of the tracks around my home. These are providing a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes, which are in consequence more numerous than I can recall. I was cheerfully assured the other day that there is lots of dengue fever around; I am not quite sure what I can do about that!

The other effect of the rains is to create mud baths where there were once tracks or grass. Idiots, too lazy to walk are driving their pickup trucks and 4x4s across the soggy basin that is the school field and have created a swathe of churned up mud across it. Instead of wasting money on a fence to inconvenience the kids, a gate to inconvenience these drivers might have been more appropriate. Also the path that connects the back of my house to the parallel track is s total mud bath. Drivers can see it is impassable, but assume that their skills are sufficiently advanced as to be able to pass through deep oozing mud. Of course, they get stuck and churn up the mud even more. Yesterday a pickup truck of full of logs, presumably taken illegally from the forest above my house and destined for China or Cambodia raced at great speed along the path until it hit a great wall of mud. Yes, sometimes I think there may be a God. It had to be pulled out by a bulldozer/rotovator. But sadly the latter took the opportunity to turn a 3 metre wide path into a motorway width of mud, resembling a First World War battlefield.

 A number of modest houses in the village have invested in grandiose wrought iron fences and gates of the most extravagant kind. You, know, the type that footballers surround their houses with? Very odd use of spare funds I would have thought.

I have mentioned the young man from the law school who is going to re-enter the temple for some part of the summer. What I did not realise is that the convention is that he will buy his own robes and alms bowl and give gifts to the monks and to the other novices.  Gifts of about $1 US to each novice and rather more to the monks seem to be the norm. I had no idea just how important cash was for those who have opted for a life of poverty and obedience.  Dare I say it but the charms of the monastic life seem to decrease the more I learn about it.

As I was writing this, Kheak arrived with a) 3 pineapples and b) his granny.   They all arrived on the motorbike, 85 yr old granny sporting a wonderful hat of the kind that you might see at an English Garden party. She has remarkable eyesight, and was asking questions about photos on the wall right across the other side the room.  Kheak’s cousin/friend/girlfriend having graduated from Teacher Training College has moved out of their room, and Kheak is installing Granny there for a week. Somehow I think I she will be keen to get home sooner than that. But she is a remarkable old lady, of whom happily, I have a photo from earlier in the year.

As for the pineapples, well I am starting to grow green spiky shoots out of my head, I am eating so many. Currently at the Pineapple Village they are selling for 500 kip each, about 4 pence, in English or 6 cents in US money. I cannot tell you much about other fruit as I only have eyes for pineapples right now. Though no sooner did I type that than someone stopped by with a mango for me. It’s ok, but not as nice as pineapple. Kheak is talking about brewing some liquor up from pineapples. I am not sure I like the sound of that; it seems like a waste of good pineapples, given the existence of other forms of liquor.

Yes,I believe that today is International Blood Donation Day, or so a banner outside the Red Cross here says. Until a few years ago I was a regular donor, but had to stop because of some medication I was on for high blood pressure.  Would I be participating today but for that?  It is quite possible that I might feel that medical standards here were not sufficiently high to tempt me. That may be quite unfair; indeed I hope that it is.

We have had rather more than the normal amount of power cuts. Right now the biggest inconvenience that they cause is the loss of fans to keep cool. After only a short period without fans on, things get unbearably hot. Happily one of the power cuts interrupted a birthday party on Saturday and gave the whole district a break from the disco or karaoke or whatever it was. The other problem I suppose is that in a power cut I have no answer to the pink guitarist, who shows few signs of improvement despite the hours he puts into practice.

For the next few weeks it will be safe to open your inbox on a Tuesday morning without my weekly email getting the way of those offering you a tax rebate, penis enlargement, a new career as a medical secretary or a PhD without study. If spared, the Blog will return in Mid July.

Oh, the dog made it !

Best wishes from Luang Prabang