Celebrations

December 9-18th the South East Asian Games came to Vientiane, Laos. This was a big deal. In the previous 24 SEA Games, Laos had never hosted. A year in advance, there was a screen downtown counting down the days until the games started. Fortunately, I was able to attend both the opening and closing ceremonies with my family and neighbors. The opening started with Lao songs, special effects, and a grand entrance by the athletes from all eleven participating countries. Later dances performed by thousands of dancers depicted scenes from Laos. The grand finale included all the dancers and many fireworks. It was great to see the Lao people excited about their country.

The sports in the games are a variety of world-wide and Western sports along with more traditional SE Asian sports. Quite a few types of martial arts. On a Saturday, I went to see sepak takraw which is similar to volleyball except the players can only use their heads, legs and feet to hit a plastic ball a little larger than a softball. A very exciting sport featuring very flexible and creative athletes.
Men's football (soccer) was by far the most popular sport for Lao fans to watch and I think for fans of other countries as well. Someone told me it's the most popular because it's a team sport. I think the worldwide popularity of football also has something to do with it. The Lao men did better than ever before, making it to the semifinals. Unfortunately they lost in this round, but I was able to see the third-place match in person. It was a very hot day and I hid underneath my jacket and many others did the same. (Lao, especially Lao women don't want to get tan, and often walk around under umbrellas even on sunny days. I just didn't want to get burned.) Unfortunately it was not Lao's day and they surrendered three goals before scoring one of their own in the closing seconds. Due to the heat, the game wasn't quite what I had hoped it might be, but watching the Lao cheer on their team was great. It sometimes seems like Lao don't get excited very often.

Seeing Laos host the SEA Games also made me realize what a small world Laos is. For instance, roughly 1 in every 10,000 citizens of Laos was an athlete directly participating in the games. My neighbor who is still studying at a university did an "internship" as a TV commentator and ended up working quite a few of the games. It was great to see my host Grandma's face light up the first time she saw him on TV. Also, a friend of mine knows the family of a choreographer for the dances at the opening and closing ceremonies. At least three or four of my neighbors worked at the SEA Games in some way. I've also seen many other instances where two people I thought were strangers to each other somehow had a connection. I think the Lao are more welcoming and friendly to each other because they think of each other as distant relatives. People usually refer to each other with a family name along with the given name. For example, I call the neighbor lady who is about the age of my mother, "May-Sun" ("May" meaning mother.)

Along the lines of thinking of neighbors as family, this past weekend the neighborhood hosted a wedding, and it certainly was a neighborhood event. I've been to a couple weddings already in Laos, but this was the first time I could get a behind the scenes look. My house was the "kitchen". On the day of the wedding, I slept until after 7:30 and felt like I had slept in too late. Already the women were washing and cutting vegetables and a group of men were chopping huge slabs of beef into smaller chunks. Around 10:30, there were cries that the groom had come already. Sure enough, the groom came trotting down the road with a large group of his family and friends. As is the tradition, the groom "fought" his way through the bride's family and friends, with everyone smiling and laughing. Below, the groom is in the middle, dressed in white and red. Inside the bride's house, a baci was held for the new couple. The morning baci is supposed to be a smaller ceremony, but I think there were 100+ people there. I think I've mentioned bacis a little before, but they are traditional Lao ceremonies symbolized by tying strings of blessing around each others' wrists. I wasn't able to actually see this baci because of the large number of people, but I already knew the gist of it. Afterward, a large meal was served.


The afternoon gave people a chance to rest up and get ready for the evening. A month or so ago, the free space behind my house was cleared and the grass was cut short. Now it was set up with lots of chairs and tables. A banner announcing the happy couple was set up and 10 huge speakers were hauled in. Around 7:00, people started arriving, but the tables weren't full until after 8:00. I think about 600 people were there at the peak moments. Since my host parents were two of the hosts for the reception, my host sister helped serve drinks and my host brother was in the band, I sat at a table with my uncle, aunt, cousin, another aunt or friend of my aunt, the "mayor of our village" and his daughter, a next door neighbor who can speak a little French, English and Russian but can't quite say my name right however many times he asks me, and two other men who I think are neighbors. (As you might have figured out, Lao are friendly but don't always go to great lengths to explain who they are and what connections they have to others, even if they have those odd connections I mentioned earlier.) From here on out, it was more or less like a wedding reception you would probably be familiar with: food buffet style, singing and dancing- but all with a Lao flavor to it.

Having all these celebrations also makes me think about the celebrations I'll miss. Since there are not many Christians in Laos, there are few reminders of Christmas although Lao are more than willing to celebrate a holiday they don't know much about. I have enjoyed attending church services and a "Carols by Candlelight" celebration in the Australian tradition of celebrating Christmas with a picnic lit by candles. I'm also pretty sure my host mother is planning a Christmas party, but it will be interesting to see how it turns out considering she thought Christmas was the day I celebrated the New Year. I'll certainly miss seeing all (or at least some:) of you during this holiday season and also the lack of religious moments, but I really have felt welcomed by the people of this country, especially in the time spent together the past couple weeks. May you have a terrific and meaningful holiday season!

My November

My schedule has changed a lot since school let out in late October. After a week or so of hanging around MCC and doing whatever little tasks needed to be done, I embarked on a trip to the countryside with Bounchan, a national MCC staff person who is kind of in charge there and who speaks very good English. We headed to the southern part of Xieng Khouang Province to the district of Tha Thom. Since it is mountainous and there aren't good roads, it can be difficult to get to. MCC had been trying to get a pick-up truck out there for the past number of months but due to the mud, when staff needed to travel there and back, they took a boat down the river and then traveled by bus. Apparently you could also hitch a ride on a big truck. But now it was early November and the rainy season had died down, so we could risk driving a pick-up. The first part of the journey went fine, but in the early afternoon we came to a river. The river itself wasn't the problem because it only came up to my knees at the deepest points, but a truck hauling motorbikes was stuck on the mud bank of the other side of the river. I gathered that the driver could call a bigger truck to pull him out, but the cost of that would pretty much negate any profit he would make upon delivering his load. It was a much better plan for him to wait for a big truck to come by, either on its own or summoned by another waiting vehicle in more of a hurry than he was. So we waited too. About three hours later a truck did come by and the road was clear again. Look closely at the middle of the picture below and you can find a stuck truck.


Tha Thom is quite beautiful with a lot of mountains and greenery. I learned on the trip out that this district used to be a ''special zone" directly governed by the Lao government because there was supposedly still a risk of people actively protesting the government which some have done for over 30 years. Historically, most of these people have come from the Hmong ethnic group. (That why when you hear about Lao(tians) in America many times they are Hmong.) The district was no longer declared a special zone roughly a year ago and much change has happened since. Tha Thom received electricity last April and telephone service. Before that time, the people depended on a few generators and the only phone was at the mayor's house. I hear the Internet is coming soon.


I stayed at the MCC office which doubles as the national staff's living quarters. I helped out with the technology we brought like computers, a copy machine and satellite dish. We also visited a number of villages MCC works in and saw school gardens and latrine projects there. These villages were quite simple and all the houses were built of bamboo or wood and raised on stilts in the traditional Lao way as shown above. Below is a picture from inside one of the houses. I took the picture while crouched in the opposite corner of the house. I think most families send the parents to work in the rice fields while the grandmothers care for the children and house. The animals seemingly care for themselves and only gather to eat. (Another one of my duties became chasing the cows and water buffalo out of the yard while the others were in meetings.)


We had quite a time getting back because we couldn't go back over Small Elephant Mountain we had crossed on the way in because it had rained recently and there was a pretty good chance we would get stuck often. Instead we headed north to the capital of the province. This road wasn't a whole lot better and was like driving through a construction site- actually it was as crews are working all over the main roads in the district. We left in the late afternoon but at 7:30 we pulled up to a bridge that had the gate down. We heard they were working on the road until 11 PM. We decided it would be a good time to eat the supper we had brought. We had stopped in a Hmong village so Von, the recently hired driver who apparently can speak Hmong, found us a house to eat in because it was dark and quite cold (in the 50s I think and windy). The family had a simple house but were quite welcoming. It turned out that night was the first day of the Hmong New Year and the father announced that he was honored to have us as guests. There was a family of maybe six or seven people, but we only ate with the father. The father spoke Hmong and some Lao, Von speaks Lao and a little Hmong, Bounchan speaks Lao and good English and I of course speak English and a little Lao. All that makes for an interesting (and slow) dinner. After saying goodbye, we dozed a little in the truck until 9:00 when they opened the gate. After getting through, it wasn't clear if the construction was done or not. The road was certainly not any better and we had to wait several times for backhoes to clear us a way. Finally at midnight, we arrived at the guesthouse next to the bus station. By 7:00 the next day, Bounchan and I were off on the bus. It was an all-day affair and we finally pulled into Vientiane at 5. With time added for the tuktuk driver mistaking the word MCC for embassy, I got home in time for dinner.

A few days after getting back, I went on a two day retreat to the beautiful Nam Ngum lake area with all the MCC Laos staff. We also toured a zoo and played many fun games with each other. I had a traditional Thanksgiving with Americans and Canadians a week before the actual day. A day before Thanksgiving in the US, my host mother had convinced me to make a dish for the family. (Making a whole meal was just too risky.) After figuring out what I could make with mostly only using food from the local market and what could be made over a charcoal fire, I came up with chili. So we had chili for Thanksgiving. I thought it turned out fairly authentic and the family said they liked even though they were somewhat hesitant to eat it.

The past few weeks I've worked at MCC doing various projects. I was going to start teaching English to a volunteer group MCC works with, but alas, only one showed up after a small group said they would come. No one came on the rescheduled date. I guess they were all afraid that they would be the only one to show up- so no one did. Maybe they also felt they had to say they would come because it would be rude to refuse, but in reality they were too busy or didn't want to come. But it seems like most everyone in Laos wants to learn English, so I've been teaching English to volunteers and staff at PVG, an after-school program for children which doesn't have much activity now that the schools are not in session. It is a pretty informal affair, but fun and it gives me a chance to learn and use Lao at the same time.

The very long awaited SEA Games have finally come to Laos, and Laos is ready. Unfortunately, I'm not ready yet to tell you about them- hopefully that will be soon!