Project Sekong 2012: Meet our team. Dao Vieng: driver, master mechanic, waits for the explosion that we all dread.

Dao Vieng, driver and mechanic. Since his main job during the day is to wait for an accident to occur, he is the best-rested member of our team. We all do our best to make certain that there are no victims to transport.

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Dao Vieng, our driver, is on the job every hour that our team is in the field.  He’s indispensable to our project, but actually breaks a sweat far less often than any other staff.  Once he delivers us to the work site, his only duty is to stand by, prepared at a moment’s notice to use his truck as our emergency vehicle.  Throughout the day, his truck remains parked, aimed in the direction of the nearest hospital.  He must stay with the vehicle to guarantee that, should an accident occur, he and the truck will both survive.

Having no other responsibility than to wait for the accident that the rest of us are trying our best to avoid, Dao is undoubtedly the best-rested member of the team.  I tease him about his ability to sleep eight hours every night, and then snooze in the truck eight hours every day.  He has the metabolic vigor of a seventeen-year locust, has complete dominion over curiosity, and is completely, thoroughly, inured to boredom.  He doesn’t listen to music; he doesn’t read a book; he doesn’t talk on the phone.  He simply sits and waits while the rest of us strive to prevent anything interesting from happening.

Which is not to imply that Dao is lazy.  I defend all Lao against that charge.  The Lao are not lazy; they simply have a much higher appreciation for relaxation than many other cultures.  If we didn’t forbid it, Dao would tinker with some esoteric part of his truck throughout the day.  (It would not do for us to call for an emergency evacuation only to find that Dao was giving his truck’s engine a ring job).

Dao is a confident master mechanic.  He’s 46 years old with nearly 30 years experience in the Lao military, serving all of that time as a driver and mechanic.  There probably isn’t a part of his Russian built Hok Hok that he hasn’t yet torn apart and reassembled.  When he isn’t on the road, driving for companies that lease his truck, he works at his father’s garage in Vientiane, repairing a wide assortment of vehicles and machinery.

During his army years, Dao served in several battle zones, against the Thai in 1989, and over several years against Hmong insurgents in the Sayobury Special Area, but he claims to have never fired a shot in anger.  His role was always to deliver supplies and to keep vehicles in working order.

Dao married late in life, a consequence of his many years of moving around the country while serving in the army.  His life is more settled now, although technically he is still in the military reserves.  His wife and three children live in Vientiane.

I like Dao and respect his skills.  He’s kind toward all, and interacts courteously with tribal villagers.  I know that I get generous help from him, perhaps because I’m his father’s age and he has been raised to provide his (gulp!) elders with proper respect and care.