What I reckon about this place

The following "opinion piece" (essay? ramble?) is just what I reckon and may not have any relationship with “the truth” (whatever that is)

Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Laos. One of the "last bastions of communist ideology".  It's tranquil. It’s hot. And often bit wet. Definitely confusing at times. Sometimes surprisingly organized. Usually it looks like chaos but everyone seems to be calm. I rarely hear a raised Lao voice or see anger or frustration. Except in crying babies. And even then not so much. Road rage doesn’t seem to exist – it’s certainly not common. It would be seriously frowned upon. The Lao way to deal with an idiot on a motorbike who cuts you off is to just make way for them. And smile. Plus the food is fabulous.

 

People generally seem sweet and caring. Twice I have lost my umbrella and twice people have made an effort to find me to give it back. One tuk tuk driver was doing laps looking for me to hand it back. People have asked me if I need help quite often (must be the confused look on my face). Haggling over prices is expected and done with a smile and a laugh.

Workplace health and safety stats how this place is a disaster zone. The APHEDA website  explains how this slow, beautiful, little country is one of the poorest in Asia and has one of the highest occupational death rates with 28.8 fatalities per 100,000 people, around nine times higher than Australia.

The importing and use of asbestos is scary. Canada, Russia and China are making a mint - not many other countries will buy their asbestos anymore. Laos will. The dangerous behaviours I see as I walk past any of the hundreds of construction sites is scary, too. I was sure the other day that I was about to witness a worker fall 20 metres to a nasty end. (He didn’t). The legal minimum wage is now $78 USD per month. Mid-level public servants earn around $300 per month (I think – hard to determine). (And my rent on a 2 bedroom flat is $400 per month)

 

Road accidents are common and fatalities and head trauma, especially in motorcycle accidents, are common and expensive. Helmet laws exist but are not well enforced.

After cremation, some people’s bones and ashes are placed in a jar (sometimes a recycled food jar with a plastic lid) and cemented into small spirit-house memorial things on pedestals with a picture and dates. No avoiding the reminder of your own mortality.

Religious things – temples, statues, spirit houses, monks, parades of people throwing rice, strings of flowers for hanging off religious things, offerings to the ancestors – are everywhere. Strangely, though, no one has asked me about my religious beliefs yet. (I copped this question often in Thailand where I think religion is generally a bigger deal than here).

As for many countries experiencing poverty, issues like saving the environment, raising the status of women, helping disadvantaged people achieve their potential, protecting owls and tigers and reducing the national intake of palm oil and MSG are pipe dreams. Or not even dreams – not even thoughts. Yet.

I’m told Vientiane is not like the rest of Laos. It’s not even like the Vientiane I remember from 15 years ago. It’s richer, there are fancy cars on paved roads, money has been poured into large, dramatic and impressive public buildings.  Many, many rice fields and traditional wooden homes have been bulldozed to make way for large concrete apartment blocks, hotels, office blocks and suburbs. There are fat locals around. Some people are doing well.

 

The rate that this place is growing is astounding. I can’t imagine how confusing it must be for older locals. Then again, most older locals are probably living in much improved conditions with running water and electricity (most of the time) and access to good quality tobacco. ‘I no complain’.

But there are still beggars, poverty, disease, infection, cross-infection, poor grubby hospitals, doctor shortages, long waiting lists for blood from the Red Cross, poorly constructed drains, broken footpaths and food handling standards and OHS regulations either don’t exist, are not enforced or not known. And it’s mostly really hot.

I haven’t seen the rest of Laos for ages but I’m reliably informed that’s where the abject poverty, lack of education and infrastructure, desperation and the farming of fields rife with unexploded bombs still are. I have heard several times about areas of the country that can’t access enough food for a couple of months each year so they all go hungry. No wonder people eat moles and bats and grasshoppers.

Rivers that I once was lucky enough to slowly traverse in a small local boat, are being dammed and villages and mountainsides are being flooded. Chinese money (mostly) and lots of foreign workers are changing the landscape. Powers-that-be want to change the economy of the nation by becoming the “Battery of Asia” – creating electricity to sell to Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, China and Cambodia. The Mekong is being depleted, the dolphins are nearly all gone (I heard there are 6 left) and elephants, tigers, rhinos and the Asian Unicorn (seriously! its called that) are endangered.

Unexploded bombs litter great tracts of land making it useless or dangerous. Limbs and lives are lost because of these little balls of horror.

Laos girls are sold into the sex industry and trafficked across the border. Access to young girls is promoted online by westerners seeking a Thai-beach-style experience for a few days. Women are generally seen as equal – equal pay, not-yet-equal-but-not-too-bad representation in government positions, power within the household – but held on tight leashes that control their behaviour, dress, looks and living arrangements. Mistresses are common, but a cheating wife is totally ostracized. Female sexuality is micro-managed so that they do not entice, infect or reduce protective charms or seduce boys, men and monks – unless they are supposed to (and then the skirts are very short and the bare shoulders shimmy).

I’ve heard people say they think the work ethic here is one of laziness. Sure, things work at a different pace, but I keep meeting really hard working people.  Many people have second jobs. Even third ones. My colleague Noy works all week and studies all weekend. She is doing a masters degree as well as raising two young kids, running the household and taking care of her husband and her widowed mother. She never has time off. She rushes home some lunch times to cook. Other lunch times, like right now as I write this, she is studying and finishing assignments at her desk. Her mother does a fair bit of the child minding. Noy says she is lucky because that means she can study.

Education is revered and getting a university degree is on the agenda for many, many kids – especially here in Vientiane, anyway. And overseas degree is even more desired. In the past , USSR and East Germany had scholarship arrangements and there are many Laos who speak German and some speak Russian. It’s that commie connection.

 

It’s SO BEAUTIFUL too.  After the heavy rains last night this morning was fresh and bright and clean. Flowering trees have enormous blossoms. Gold-painted eaves and gold leaf rubbings glint off temples, statues and pretty hanging things. Everyone smiles a lot. Barbecued banana for breakfast is the best. Pawpaw salad is tasty and fresh and delicious for lunch. Family is more important than work or career, work ethic is relaxed and if things can’t be done or take too much effort then maybe they aren’t that important after all. Individualism as we know it is unfamiliar  - why would anyone want to be alone when you can have love and support and friendship around you? People work to ensure strong emotions are not generated (not just quelled but not actually generated). Meditation and just sitting around are common pastimes. So is lying around in front of the TV. Internet access is everywhere in the city and cheap (albeit not always reliable). Many people have cable TV and watch a mix of Laos, Thai, Chinese and American TV shows. Usually bad ones in my opinion (Thai soaps have not improved in the years since I tried to follow one).

I’m rich here. Even just having a passport makes me rich (I can leave). I can afford to live alone. I work in an air conditioned office. I eat out as much as I want to. I can even afford to buy a 3 litre cask of gin (if I wanted to).

Life for me is good. I really hope in a year’s time I consider myself a small part of a solution rather than just a part of a problem. (And that I have lost a few kilos and have achieved an even tan on my feet.)

Cluster bombs and lost limbs

Laos is the most bombed place on Earth per capita. 40 years after the last drop, those bombs are still killing people and taking away limbs and livelihoods.

UXO= unexploded ordinance

Great swathes of land are still unusable and dangerous. 8 million bombs. Most still just sitting there, just under the surface; in rice fields, on paths, in jungles, in school yards, under houses, under kitchen fireplaces.

In about 1996 I went to the Plain of Jars over in the north east of Laos. This area had been bombed heavily. I read about it in the Lonely Planet. That was the first I had heard about it. I saw people with metal detectors looking for unexploded bombs in fields. I was told that most of the areas with paths around the jars were safe so I walked around confident and relaxed. I'm not so sure anymore.

Bombs

Thousands of people have died or been injured; lost limbs and eyes. Sometimes it's farmers ploughing, sometimes it's people collecting scrap metal to sell, sometimes it's kids playing in footy fields. It's years and people are still being blown to bits.

On Thursday I listened to a guy from the Mines Action Group (UK) www.maginternational.org and then visited COPE Visitor Centre.  www.copelaos.org. These organisations are wonderful. And they tell the scatter bomb story in a way you can't easily forget.

 

 

One child's bombing memories

Only 1% of the bombs have been cleared so far. I asked the MAG guy if he thought it would be cleared in his lifetime. He didn't hesitate. No.

Map of where the bombs were dropped

The Americans did it. Over 9 years during the Vietnam war, 580,000 bombing missions unloaded 8 million little killers onto Laos land. Some were planned drops; bombing the crap out of areas where communists might be. Many were just unloading so their planes didn't risk of landing with bombs on board. America hadn't declared war with Laos so there were no rules of war to limit what they did.

More bombs

Apart from the bombs that look like bombs always do in cartoons (see above), at COPE I saw the big bomb casings that spring apart mid-air to drop lots of little tennis-ball sized bombs that scatter across the countryside. I remember seeing these casings used as pig's troughs and veranda posts up north. Lao people are nothing if not versatile and inventive!

 

Installation in COPE Visitor Centre of cluster bombs scattering out of the bomb casing

 

So while European-based NGOs (with some funding from Australia, Japan, other Asian countries and yes, America) are training and employing locals to slowly, slowly clear some space so they can reclaim their land and feed their families, places like COPE are building new legs and arms and torso supports and re-enabling the injured and limbless.

She's got legs!

 

Spare parts

 

Making casts for prosthetics

We dropped into the prosthetics and orthotics clinic. I watched a young woman - a new patient - put on her brand new leg and practice walking. She walked up and down the waiting room, following the line of the tiles so the staff could check that she had control over her gait. It was fabulous. Her one rubber thong sat abandoned on the floor as she walked up and down, up and down. I felt like a touristy perve, standing in the doorway watching. Until she looked up and gave us a quick, wide, gorgeous smile before putting her head back down and concentrating on the job.  It brought a tear to the eye.

Cluster bombs are still being manufactured and sold - mainly in the US. In Australia we dragged our feet to join others in banning them. There was a GET UP campaign. It worked. We banned them from our shores and activities last year. Now we should be lobbying to have them eradicated completely.

 

sculpture made from recovered bomb metal

"100 million little bombs" by Buddy and Julie Miller

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP0ZYmNZ2cM

Three dollar bomb a hundred thousand roads
Steps of a child and the ground explodes
You can't clear one before another re-loads
To ratchet up the ante again
They're cheap and they're simple
And they're green and black
They take you right down a one way track
We've gone so far now that we can't get back
And we still won't stop this train
Footfall of a soldier
Footfall of a child
They don't know the difference
They're blind and mean and wild
One hundred million and the wheels go round
Lunch in geneva and the deals go down
We'll still have to fight a century from now the battle of a long gone war
What do you do with what's left behind
What can you grow when the fields are mined
What do you do when that's all you find you've got when you get back home
They're only made for terror
They don't care who they harm
Three dollars each to make
And a thousand to disarm
One hundred million still in the ground
Lunch in Geneva and the deals go down
We'll still have to fight a century from now
The battle of a long gone war
What do you do with what's left behind
What can you grow when the fields are mined
What do you do when that's all you find you got when you get back home
From china to Angola and Cambodia where they lay
Chips from Motorola
Made in the USA