The Rest of December
Buddhist Giving Party
The rest of December carried on pretty much as any December (but without the snow), with the usual round of entertainment, although some of it was of a different kind.
Inakhone, one of our Lao colleagues, hosted a Buddhist giving party at her home, to which she invited us all. I would love to tell you the name of this particular event, but as I couldn’t even read the beautifully crafted invitation I was given, there is little chance of that. Many families will host a party like this every year or two, the premise being that what you give you will receive back in good luck and fortune – so the more you give, the better your life will be. These parties last for two days and during that time guests come to the house to eat and to give donations (which will go to a pre-designated cause and not to cover the food bill, unfortunately). As they will want to have as much luck as possible in the coming year, the host will provide for as many people as possible and invite anyone they know, no matter how tenuous the connection (hence my invitation). We turned up at lunchtime on day one and the grounds were already full with people seated for lunch. Within the house was an area dedicated to a shrine and on arrival we went to great the family and to leave our donations at the shrine. Then you go eat. In total, they will receive and feed 2-300 guests over the two days. Many guests will also take food back for their family members who are unable to make it, so you could probably add another 50 or more to that number. The scale of these parties is immense, especially when you consider that you have to have a constant supply of food throughout the two days. Although compared to weddings, this is quite small scale as you could expect to cater for 7 or 8 hundred people. (I’m still trying to wrangle an invite to a wedding as I hear they’re a unique experience and have come close but have had other things on. Hopefully I’ll find one over the next couple of months and if my liver survives the occasion I’ll let you know how it went.)
Sharing Skills
As our aim as volunteers is to capacity build, we’ve decided to take this a little beyond our placement outlines and take it to the world of food. As our Lao colleagues are showing us how to cook Lao style and every so often they will (with our help where we can) prepare lunch for everyone. Ramona and I thought that it was only fair to return the favour and develop their knowledge of pasta dishes, which they all seem to be fascinated about. So we decided that we would cook spaghetti bolognaise for lunch for everyone at work. I may have already explained this, but in case not: the organisation I work for sublets office space from VSO, as does the organisation Ramona works for, so we have a good mix of people at work and it is generally a social little group, especially when it comes to eating – at 12 p.m. everyone will stop work and take lunch (long gone are the days where I am reduced to eating a sandwich at my desk).
There are a few complications to trying to make the perfect bolognaise. Firstly, many vegetables are different here, so improvisation is called for. Some herbs are also different, but I have found the easy way round this is to go to the market and taste what they have and if I think it will go, then I buy. Pretty easy and it amuses the market vendors. Secondly, meat is in large joints that you just buy a slice of and doesn’t come neatly minced and cellophaned. This does present two minor problems – you don’t know what cut of meat it is, so it could be stewing steak or sirloin (my butchering knowledge is pretty limited); also it isn’t minced but after some asking around we discovered a lady at the back of the market with the mincer, who will do the honours for you for a very small price. The buying was actually the easy bit. Cooking it was more of a challenge. Our office has a fully equipped kitchen. For Lao cooking. So, with one rice cooker and one electric pan to cook spag bols (and some other Lao dishes) for 12 we opted for the barbecue (bucket of coal) as our cooker of choice and prayed that it wouldn’t burn. So why they fried the fish outside with us, teaching us a new sauce, we covered off the finer intricacies of spag bol with them. It’s all one happy cultural exchange, with our own fusion menu. On my list of firsts, cooking spaghetti on a barbecue is now there.
Christmas Time
As Christmas approached, Ramona and I continued on our cultural exchange programme, baking Christmas biscuits and gift wrapping them as presents for all the office staff and our other Lao friends, to mark the occasion. With Ramona going on holiday for Christmas and our ‘just in time’ approach to time management, we had one evening to do this in… but not until we had been out for dinner for a friend’s 21st birthday. Eating quickly we made our excuses and slipped away early to start our baking marathon. Similar to the spag bol experience, improvisation was key to the task and so we put our VSO training to good use. We managed to bake biscuits without scales/measuring cup, rolling pin or shape cutters and all in an oven with no temperature gauge. Alongside this production line we also had one for making the gift bags, being as inventive as possible in a country that doesn’t have the ‘everything you never knew you’d need for Christmas’ approach to merchandising. So, at 1 a.m. after four hours of cooking, cutting and sticking we packed up our Santa’s sack of goodies ready to take to work in the morning. I have previously mentioned that through work I am managing to whittle down my list of future career choices. After this, I now have two options - Blue Peter presenter and stand-in for Delia.
Our new recruits
Just before Christmas the 15 volunteers we’d spent the preceding two months recruiting for, arrived from across the country for orientation and a week of training. As I suspected, just getting everyone from the bus stations to the hotel was no mean feat and the fact that we only left one volunteer behind at the station was a miracle (although possibly a bit unsettling for the person concerned). Oh, and we forgot to tell one partner organisation the revised date of the training (in traditional Lao style, this arrangement changed about 5 times in the space of 2 days) and so one of their volunteers missed the first couple of days as this was how long it took for her to travel to Vientiane. In the grand scheme of things though, I they did a good job of getting everyone here.
It was great to see them all together and I think they began to get more of a sense of what the programme was really all about. Many of the volunteers had never been to Vientiane before and to put it into perspective for you, most towns in Lao consist of little more than 2 or 3 main roads, which is all they may have experienced. So to come to the ‘bright lights’ of the city (as a comparison, probably about the size of Bath.). So those that didn’t look like a rabbit in headlights were just a little giddy. Given the remoteness of their homes and therefore reduced experiences of things, there are certain, quite basic, points you need to consider. The usual ‘these are the fire exits’ briefing, was replaced by do’s and don’ts for using the toilet, including: ‘yes it is a toilet, although it looks different’ and ‘no, you can’t stand on it’. The list of firsts just keeps growing.
Before we sent them off to the training centre, which was basically a campsite in the middle of a 18 hectare site an hour outside Vientiane, we took them out for the afternoon to see some of the main city attractions. Thankfully, we decided on bright blue T-shirts this year so we were successful in herding them round various places and not losing a single one! Although very limited in my Lao language, I did get to know many of them a lot better. What was strange (but lovely) was that although they were visitors to a town and environment that was odd to them but very familiar to me, some of the volunteers in their own way, really seemed to want to look after me – making sure I was okay with the food, that I felt included, etc.. Just another of many examples that show how kind Lao people are. What was even stranger (and not so lovely, given cameras aren’t very kind to me) was almost every volunteer wanting a photo with me (and spending their allowance money on photos from the tourist photographers). Really odd. From comments I received, and from previous encounters across the country, it seems that I have finally found a country where pale freckly skin and a larger than normal nose is seen as a sign of beauty (especially when wearing Sinh). Perhaps I should stay after all! (Only kidding, mum!)
Following the orientation, the volunteers were then safely packed off to the training centre, where, on Christmas day we joined them to observe the training. So for me, Christmas lunch consisted of sticky rice, fried fish, sour fish soup, papaya salad. Yum.
New Year
Having spent Christmas weekend and week working, I was treated to four days off and so took the opportunity to hop on a bus to Namxuang, in the north of the province, to visit one of the volunteers – Evangeline - who is working at a livestock station at a farming research institute. Only a couple of hours by bus we were away from the city, in the middle of nowhere admiring the peaceful countryside that where we would see the New Year in.
The bosses at the research institute take international New Year as an opportunity to hold a party for the workers and their families and they very kindly invited us to join their celebrations. Events kicked off early, at about 5pm, once the buffalo they had killed earlier that day was cooked. Just to explain, the bull was apparently a hybrid that wasn’t coming up with goods and the vets thought it was time he actually had a use – our dinner. With tables laid out in the compound outside of the offices for 40 or so people, we were the first to arrive and were immediately sat down, beer glasses continually filled to the brim and food laid out. Lao hospitality is consistent wherever we go and this was no different. Also, we were really about to experience Lao partying local style. Lao people, as I may have alluded to before like to drink and if your glass isn’t permanently at your lips, they must think that you’re not having a good time. And I don’t even think it is done to bridge the language gap. To ensure you don’t stop drinking, no sooner do you try to take a mouthful of food as someone raises their glass and it is then obligatory to raise yours and drink. With 20 or more people round one table this act is repeated, I would say on average, 2-3 times in every five minute interval. So, as you can imagine it felt like it was going to be long and heavy night with midnight being 7 hours away. On our table we were joined by a mixture of farm workers and vets, who all work for the institute and were all male except for us volunteers. It wasn’t until dinner was well underway that I turned round to see that the table behind was mainly women, with only a couple of men. This did make me feel slightly uncomfortable, not because of the company we had on our table, but more by the fact that we were invited to sit with the men (and really we just sat where we were put) and wives, girlfriends, children, etc., ate separately. I did wonder what they must think of us and the attention we were receiving and perhaps this is nothing out of the ordinary for them, but it did make me stop and think. Whilst there is obviously a gender divide in this instance, it can’t strictly be based on gender (in the common sense of the word) otherwise our group would have been split to follow suit. Gender issues in Lao is one of many issues development workers are tackling, but not something I’ll go into here (at least not now).
There was the obligatory karaoke, in the form of one man continually playing keyboard and songs being sung from a book. He was quite versatile – could play both Lao and Thai songs. This brought with it a respite from the beer Lao: Lao dancing. Which, through watching and learning I was able to pick up reasonably quickly. Which was lucky considering how much I had to participate. The custom is that you have to be invited to dance before you can join and you have to stay for a respectable amount of time before bowing out politely. Being guests, the invitations were continual and at times it was relief to return to the table and the inevitable rounds of drinking. At least once dancing started, we could then start to get to know some of the girls there and break down any perceived barriers (probably my perception, not their’s), not least because we had to get them to show us what to do!
So, midnight came, went, then we realised we’d missed it so had a countdown of our own and not a chorus of Old Lang Syne was to be heard. Perfect.
New year’s day brought with it another the party. The previous evening, Evangeline’s boss invited me to a party which started at 8 a.m. which I said would be lovely but there would be little chance of me being up that early and I thought that was an odd time so maybe I had lost something in translation and thought nothing more of it. He wasn’t kidding and I had understood correctly.
He wanted to come and pick us up at 10 am to take us to the party, but unfortunately my hangover didn’t permit such early movement. By midday, however, we were on our way to the livestock station for lunch. By this time, the beer was flowing and buffalo tail stew was being served to help soak it up. So, the party continued in a tractor shed-come-mess hall and events proceeded pretty much in the same vein as the previous night. With one addition. Just in case we weren’t drinking enough, one or two people would do a circuit of the table, filling a glass of beer and offering offering it to each of us in turn to drink down. You may think that my using the word ‘offer’ suggests some kind of refusal would be acceptable. Think again.
Hoping that 2 Jan would give us chance to detox as we prepared to go back to Vientiane, we couldn’t have been more wrong. We had lovely lunch at the nam ngum dam with a couple of Evangeline’s colleagues and some university students who were working at institute and I did manage to keep beer consumption to a polite minimum. We finally made it back to the Namxuang and waited for the bus back to Vientiane. As we pulled up to where the bus would stop the doors were opened for us and a couple of women who owned the shop we pulled up at, hauled us out of the truck, put beer glasses in our hands and, yes well, you can read above again to get an idea of what ensued whilst we waited for our bus. Thankfully it was only an hours wait.
3 – 16 January
After our excitement over New Year, the following couple of weeks have been quiet, punctuated with a few dinners, bit of Karaoke and often both at the same time (and yes, I am still remaining mute when it comes to Karaoke).
In general, day to day living is pretty easy and so far, whilst my options may be limited to what I know how to say, I can generally get and do everything I need to with the Lao that I have. There are however some things that are easy and routine back in England and you don’t realise that you actually need quite a complex understanding of the language to complete the task, with the desired result. So, almost three months in and I finally picked up the courage to do the one such task that requires this level of knowledge of a language. A task that a girl can only ever be put off for so long before it becomes critical. Getting a haircut. Ideally, I should go to a run-of-the-mill hairdresser that can be found on every street or market corner. But no, I sold out and headed for the tourist district in downtown Vientiane to go to the one hairdresser where English is spoken and they have experience of cutting European hair. That seemed like a good start, but when it came to my appointment, the hairdresser was not there and so one of the other staff said, in English, she’d do it if I liked. I liked, so I did. With her, what turned out to be, very limited English, my very limited Lao, a few hand gestures, several ‘noy nyung’s’ (little bit) and a couple of ‘same-same’s’ (the one phrase in English that is universal in Lao) I came out with something that wasn’t very noy nyung or same-same. That said, I haven’t had to invest in a hijab, so let’s call that a success.
Ramona and I finally, after a couple of months of saying we will, spent a couple of hours wandering round the village, meeting people and taking photos (I’ve put a separate photo album up for this). Over the last few months we have come and gone from the village via the same route every day, passing the same restaurant, village shop etc.., and we just thought that was it, other than houses off of surrounding roads. Oh how very wrong. Of course there are many other houses, but we also discovered a couple more restaurants (not sure what they sell, but usual procedure is for one to sell noodle soup and the other to sell fried rice. Our nearest restaurant has the papaya salad business cornered, so that is all that is left really, when it comes to village eateries), the village temple, a fruit juice stall, an iced coffee stall and a few stalls with some fruit and veg, most likely grown by those that are selling.  |
| Coffee Shop |
I can’t imagine any of them make much from any of these enterprises as there is no passing trade (you would only come to the village if you lived here) and so these will just supplement the income they make from their farm produce and any other work family members can get. The village is very poor and their living is mainly through subsistence farming. Most of the houses are the old style wooden structures with only a couple of concrete houses, my neighbour’s house being one of them. With all these houses, rice is cooked outside over a fire pot and ovens are unheard of. By contrast, our house, which is a modern wooden structure, looks palatial by comparison and it is. But to us, with our kitchen consisting of a sink and an oven set up on the verandah, it is about as basic as you’d really want. Most Lao’s use rice cookers and an electric hotplate which covers cooking pretty much most Lao foods. Ovens, which we wouldn’t do without back at home, are rare here and I suspect are the preserve of ex-pats. My colleague often asks me about how our oven works and what type of food we would cook in it and seems very intrigued but a bit wary of them –they’re as much of an alien concept to Lao people as, well, an alien would be.
