Day 69 In Laos, if you have a problem complete strangers will jump in to help. If you lack a tool, people will readily loan you one of theirs. The other side of the coin is that if someone is in need you’d feel guilty walking by and not stopping to lend a hand...
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Day 68 It turned cool today, which is just fine with me since recent nights have been uncomfortably warm and humid. With no electricity to power a fan and a Noah’s ark of creeping, crawling and flying critters chasing me to the stifling safety of my mosy net, I’ve had trouble getting a good...
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Day 67 Last night the Tai Dam people in Sop Houn village began their annual festival, right on the heels of the enthusiastic Tai Deng celebration that consumed all of last weekend and spilled into the early part of this week. Interestingly, while the Tai Deng residents partied loud and hard, the Tai Dam...
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Day 66 Once again, our dinner was interrupted. Tonight, just as the cook set the sticky rice and fish soup on the table, two motorcycles rolled onto the hospital grounds. The fellow driving the lead bike called for help and we all bolted from the table to see what adventure had arrived. It was...
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Day 65 It was dinnertime and the guys were just about to belly up to a meal that I’d prepared with provisions from my box of emergency rations. It was nothing more than pasta swimming in canned, mushroom-flavored tomato sauce but I’d talked it up as “Italian” cuisine. Since it didn’t have much else...
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Day 64 Five years ago Edmond Scientific, a science supply company, donated an “Astroscan Wide Field Telescope” to our project. I appealed for that unusual donation because I guessed that Lao teachers, lacking science books, media or equipment, would be hard-pressed to teach even the most basic concepts of astronomy. And… I predicted that...
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Day 63 At the house behind our camp our neighbors started preparation for their daughter’s wedding early. They were up and at it before my breakfast at 7:00 AM. While I sipped my coffee-load, I watched a group of young men pull protesting chickens from woven bamboo cages. The birds squawked, either in protest...
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Day 62 The Tai Deng people in this village are celebrating an annual festival that doesn’t have an official name. When pressed, people simply refer to it as the “Support Your Village Festival”. All three dominant ethnic groups in Sop Houn, the Tai Deng, the Tai Dam, and the Khmu, are animists, not Buddhist....
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Day 61 Just before lunch a fellow led us up the steep hill behind his house to a bomb crater filled knee-deep with chopped corn stalks, his safe deposit box for ordnance that he finds in his garden or rice field. His intent was to show us six identical items of UXO that he’d...
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Day 60 Yai has returned from taking the three visually impaired villagers to the eye clinic in Oudomxai. The return trip presented the same challenges as the outbound journey. Ruts, dust and heat. Roller coaster thrills alternated with hours of boredom. The villagers again became violently carsick. On one narrow section of road a...
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