Day 50 We’ve got a little cultural conflict going here. The fault line runs between a conservative (mostly elderly) faction within the village and a less traditional, more progressive (mostly younger) segment. The issue is related to our earlier discussion with village elders over clearing the land next to the school that is also...
Read more »
Day 49 Two American friends are due to arrive today. Karen Coates and Jerry Redfern, wife and husband, now live in New Mexico, but Karen is originally from Brookfield, Wisconsin, and Jerry grew up in Montana. They spend as much or more time in Asia than they do in New Mexico, making that state...
Read more »
Day 48 I continue to make purchases for our museum collection back home. I’ve picked up several child-made toys, a wooden rice steamer, a skein of raw silk, and some wedges for splitting firewood. The wedges are wood themselves but feel as hard as steel. (What species of tree?) Then today I came upon...
Read more »
Day 47 The head schoolteacher finally wore down the last opposition to expanding the schoolyard. She is a force to contend with, and probably a great teacher. Every time I pass her classroom, she has her students on task doing math problems in their notebooks or copying her reading lesson from the chalkboard. To...
Read more »
Day 46 Every day we do two or three demolitions. Soon the team will catch up to Yai and me as the stream of villagers taking us to see ordnance has finally slowed. Once the team is right on our heels, we’ll put the guys to work surveying the schoolyard and clearing it of...
Read more »
Day 45 When we go to the site of reported ordnance and find the items have gone missing, the first thing we do is scan the immediate countryside asking ourselves, “If I found ordnance and decided to move it in order to keep my family safe, where would I put it?” Then, we check...
Read more »
Day 44 Last year when I first visited Sop Houn, I met a little girl who is visually impaired; each of her eyes is clouded over by white patches that I assume are either cataracts or corneal scars. There wasn’t much more that I could do last year than take photographs to pass around...
Read more »
Day 43 The head school teacher here is a bit frustrated by the process of getting agreement on clearing a land parcel adjacent to the school in order to enlarge the school grounds. There is no school board or village council per se that meets and votes on issues and proposals. Rather, the village...
Read more »
Vientiane - Laos Peoples’ Democratic Republic During World War II, on small islands in the South Pacific, indigenous villagers were jolted from a stone-age existence and propelled into the twentieth century by the arrival of modern machines: the most advanced technology produced by the mid-century, industrialized world. Villagers could only explain the functioning of ships,...
Read more »
Day 42 I saw it coming and couldn’t do a thing about it except hold my breath and wait. A stoop-shouldered, white-haired man surrounded by a gaggle of children limped on stiff joints out of the woods behind our camp and headed straight for me. I could read the situation like a book: a...
Read more »