Project Sekong 2013: Yai, our interpreter for seven years, finds a way to rejoin our team. But…are we lucky to have him?

I was just about to begin interviews to hire a new interpreter when I got a call from my long-time sidekick Yai: he announced that he had worked out an arrangement with his new employer and would again join our team when we head south to Sekong.  He’ll take a leave to help me out, and then go back to his new job when we finish down south.

In recent years we’ve limited our work here to the dry season, meaning I can only offer our guys full-time work for three months.  For the remainder of the year, they must take other jobs with other organizations.  Somehow, it’s been my good fortune that Yai has been available year after year. In fact, for seven years!

Although, I do sometimes wonder …

Yai and I have shared a lot of interesting experiences here — so interesting that people might think we’re crazy to continue this work. I sometimes ask myself whether Yai is the luckiest Lao I’ve ever met and I should stick by his side, or is he the unluckiest Lao in the land and I’m a fool for not keeping my distance?

I was there the day a schoolboy delivered a cluster bomblet to our team by rolling it under Yai’s bed.  (As it happened, Yai was in the bed at the time.)

Yai was looking me in the eye instead of watching traffic the day he got run over by a speeding motorcycle.  Honestly, for a minute, I thought he was dead.

I remember when he was sick as a dog and wasn’t responding to Lao home cures. I rushed him to Thailand for proper care.  Turned out he had Typhoid Fever.

There’s a video on our web site, aptly titled “Don’t Bring That Here!,” that shows an elderly villager carrying a bomblet into our village and setting it at Yai’s feet.  No time to run away; those suckers have a killing range of thirty yards.

There’s more, but you catch my drift.

I missed Yai’s latest mishap.  Last month just before my arrival from the states, he was in a truck driven by my old friend Bountavee.  Bountavee got lost in the dark and wasn’t on the road he thought he was.  Therefore, he was not at the river crossing that he thought he was — the one where you must floor it and blast your way through before you sink and get stuck.

So…when Bountavee floored it, the truck went airborne off a steep bank into a deep spot in the river.  Yai, Bountavee, and three de-miners found themselves in a submerged vehicle with electric window motors and door locks that wouldn’t open.  Somehow all five of the guys got out through the one window that was open and made it to shore.

When I explained to Yai that, in spite of his luck, I was glad to have him back on the team, I used the metaphor of a cat having nine lives. After I ticked off all the close calls that I’ve witnessed, I told him that by my count he still had two or three lives left.  His face fell — then he said, “Have I ever told you about my motorcycle wreck and the time I nearly died of malaria?”