My last night in Thailand. Leaving for China tomorrow morning.
Alas, I've not caught up with the stories I wanted to share with you from Laos. I hope to do so at some point but can't see when now, as I keep accumulating more stories and can't keep up with myself.
The experiences in the village in Laos were /amazing/ and inspiring, and confirm for me all the 'romantic idealizations' of traditional villages that turn out to be realities, that I saw when I was in Ladakh in 1998 and 2000, too. Idyllic indeed. Mindblowing, actually, what human nature /could be/, in fact, usually has been throughout human history. Sorry you missed it; my fault; even the camera-robbery story lies unfinished. Perhaps I'll publish even the draft/notes version so you can get a gist.
And then there was the story of getting struck at by a cobra the day before yesterday... and all sorts of little gems like it that, I am fearful, will just fold quietly into the sediment of forgotten memories.
Who knows what China will bring for me. Please wish me luck and other nice things. Love to you all.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Friday, April 18, 2008
Luang Prabang, Laos: Some vignettes
French architecture in Luang Prabang: (yawn) Yeah, and you can see more of it and better in France.
Big group of beerswiller tourist men all with identical broad-brimmed conical traditional woven-bamboo rice-paddy hats...and beers.
Badly behaved tourists in singlets (USA: wife-beaters), read showing too much flesh for what's appropriate, with water pistols like huge bazookers, so big they need shoulder straps to carry them, thinking they are taking part in Laos culture during the splashing fun of the New YEar celebrations. The idea is to splash each other with water to wash away the yuck of the past year and cleanse for the new one, and you're supposed to get permission from the splashee. These tourists didn't really get it, bashing little boys with high-pressure shots while they were utterly defenseless, turning the whole thing into a violent/fight/dominance activity and setting utterly wrong examples to the local children; and reflecting terribly on the rest of us foreigners.
The Japanese girls wandering around through the bustling floodlit night-market with shorts so short you can see their buttocks. Now, I couldn't complain personally, but it's totally out of order to be doing that in Laos where women don't even consider it appropriate to show their shoulders, let alone their thighs, and god forbid anything more.
A friend's sister who sells French baguette sandwiches on the main street in Luang Prabang, absent one day because she'd eaten barbecued fish from the alley market and got very sick. Damn, that's where we had dinner last night. Suspicious of everything after that.
Wanting sticky rice for every meal and even in between, even on its own, so totally delicious and satisfying, I didn't want any other sort of rice or carbohydrate. I am already missing it so much. It's unprocessed and apparently much more nutritious than most other rice varieties.
Trying strange candies in the market.
Trying fried (or steamed) cicadas, liking them...but not being able to finish the whole bag.
Trying bee larvae....well, I thought it was honeycomb....and I didn't know you're supposed to fry them....not daring to try the ''dried'' squirrel.
Every day, noodle soup. Noodle soup. Noodle soup. But only when the sticky rice has sold out.
Noodle soup with something different in it, a different animal...I eventually discover it's buffalo. And something that looks like seaweed but is too chewy, and turns out to be a buffalo organ...something big, white, with lots of little spikes, and called nyoo or nyoh in Lao. Any ideas anyone? I don't know my cooked bovine organs.
The German drug-dealer who is safe because he sells to the police too, and lives peacefully in Luang Prabang importing from all over the world. And pushing quite insisently on my friends. Yes, try these pills. They are ya-ba. My friend had no idea that that is the local name for crystal meth. In fact, despite having been a regular cocaine taker herself, she hadn't heard of crystal meth. She thought they must be ecstacy. Luckily she didn't take him up on his free promotional offers. But she had a good look in his large briefcase he carries with him, full of opium and skunk. Next time she saw him, he reminded her that 'the shop is open any time'. He is currently importing equipment to begin the cultivation of cannabis in Luang Prabang itself. Contributing to progress and bringing modernisation to the people of Laos, one of the poorest and most traditional countries.
The Chinese want to do that too, but mostly not through narcotics. They are apparently pumping dollars...or RMB...into Laos, of course I'm sure they want it as a satellite state but in the meantime there's a rumour that they are facilitating the clearing of rainforest for palm oil 'biofuel' plantations (which will make global warming much worse...ask my Dad about it) and flooding the food markets with cheap goods...which in Luang Prabang may be helping reach demand or may be ousting local producers, I just don't have the info to say. But it did make me wonder about my joyful feeling that the food was local and organic.
The old British expat who designs and develops hotels in Luang Prabang but cares deeply about what's happening to the place. Says it's all going to shit, greed has arrived now, the authorities will expand the airport (which currently holds 2 propeller planes, and that's it, and you just walk out on the runway) so that it will carry 737s and 747s, yipee, goodbye to Laos feeling different, goodbye to anything traditional or nonWestern that they-and we- might value, hello McDonalds!
Great, let those postcards be all images of the past and mere picturesque, not still how Laos is today. Welcome to the new Thailand, the new America. God. It's so unconsidered. So hurried. So desperately sad. Anyway, without more context I won't go on about that, it starts a whole huge discussion. Just read ''Ancient Futures" by Helena Norberg-Hodge and you'll get the picture.
The expat turned as some boys filed past us along the riverbank towards the bridge, smoking. He nodded in their direction, pointing out that they were smoking at 11 or 12, and would be making their way into town to beg from tourists or learn how to rip them off. Yep. He's right. Well he would know, anyhow, he lives there.
''Is there any hope?'' I asked him directly; "Can you see any way that something different could happen here in Laos, something more positive?"
"No."
We then walked past a beachside restaurant on the Mekong whose owner or tout tried to usher us in; however, it's early enough in the development of the tourist trade here that the fact we were disinterested in his menu but friendly to him meant he was still willing to be friendly back, and I just felt the pain of knowing that in a few years he won't bother to be friendly back if we don't want to buy; I've seen it everywhere along the tourist trail in Thailand, India, South America, you name it. Just past him on the path was an old spirit house in the trees with fresh offerings, and next to it, a big pile of stinking litter and the smell of something dead.
We walked through the ''craft village" now full of mansions and SUVs and little girls who won't give you a fair price on a bottle of water. A group of 5 of them stormed the older girl who was shopkeeper, who had told me 2000 for a water--a fair price-- and prevented her from selling me the water. I knew enough Lao to hear them demanding her, ''say 5000", ''no, 7000!" ''No, 5000"....these are more than I pay in a town-centre store for a bottle 3 times the size. Until the middle-aged owner turned up to see what the fuss was about, I simply could not buy a bottle of water. These girls were 7 or 9 years old. How depressing is that. The next generation.
Big group of beerswiller tourist men all with identical broad-brimmed conical traditional woven-bamboo rice-paddy hats...and beers.
Badly behaved tourists in singlets (USA: wife-beaters), read showing too much flesh for what's appropriate, with water pistols like huge bazookers, so big they need shoulder straps to carry them, thinking they are taking part in Laos culture during the splashing fun of the New YEar celebrations. The idea is to splash each other with water to wash away the yuck of the past year and cleanse for the new one, and you're supposed to get permission from the splashee. These tourists didn't really get it, bashing little boys with high-pressure shots while they were utterly defenseless, turning the whole thing into a violent/fight/dominance activity and setting utterly wrong examples to the local children; and reflecting terribly on the rest of us foreigners.
The Japanese girls wandering around through the bustling floodlit night-market with shorts so short you can see their buttocks. Now, I couldn't complain personally, but it's totally out of order to be doing that in Laos where women don't even consider it appropriate to show their shoulders, let alone their thighs, and god forbid anything more.
A friend's sister who sells French baguette sandwiches on the main street in Luang Prabang, absent one day because she'd eaten barbecued fish from the alley market and got very sick. Damn, that's where we had dinner last night. Suspicious of everything after that.
Wanting sticky rice for every meal and even in between, even on its own, so totally delicious and satisfying, I didn't want any other sort of rice or carbohydrate. I am already missing it so much. It's unprocessed and apparently much more nutritious than most other rice varieties.
Trying strange candies in the market.
Trying fried (or steamed) cicadas, liking them...but not being able to finish the whole bag.
Trying bee larvae....well, I thought it was honeycomb....and I didn't know you're supposed to fry them....not daring to try the ''dried'' squirrel.
Every day, noodle soup. Noodle soup. Noodle soup. But only when the sticky rice has sold out.
Noodle soup with something different in it, a different animal...I eventually discover it's buffalo. And something that looks like seaweed but is too chewy, and turns out to be a buffalo organ...something big, white, with lots of little spikes, and called nyoo or nyoh in Lao. Any ideas anyone? I don't know my cooked bovine organs.
The German drug-dealer who is safe because he sells to the police too, and lives peacefully in Luang Prabang importing from all over the world. And pushing quite insisently on my friends. Yes, try these pills. They are ya-ba. My friend had no idea that that is the local name for crystal meth. In fact, despite having been a regular cocaine taker herself, she hadn't heard of crystal meth. She thought they must be ecstacy. Luckily she didn't take him up on his free promotional offers. But she had a good look in his large briefcase he carries with him, full of opium and skunk. Next time she saw him, he reminded her that 'the shop is open any time'. He is currently importing equipment to begin the cultivation of cannabis in Luang Prabang itself. Contributing to progress and bringing modernisation to the people of Laos, one of the poorest and most traditional countries.
The Chinese want to do that too, but mostly not through narcotics. They are apparently pumping dollars...or RMB...into Laos, of course I'm sure they want it as a satellite state but in the meantime there's a rumour that they are facilitating the clearing of rainforest for palm oil 'biofuel' plantations (which will make global warming much worse...ask my Dad about it) and flooding the food markets with cheap goods...which in Luang Prabang may be helping reach demand or may be ousting local producers, I just don't have the info to say. But it did make me wonder about my joyful feeling that the food was local and organic.
The old British expat who designs and develops hotels in Luang Prabang but cares deeply about what's happening to the place. Says it's all going to shit, greed has arrived now, the authorities will expand the airport (which currently holds 2 propeller planes, and that's it, and you just walk out on the runway) so that it will carry 737s and 747s, yipee, goodbye to Laos feeling different, goodbye to anything traditional or nonWestern that they-and we- might value, hello McDonalds!
Great, let those postcards be all images of the past and mere picturesque, not still how Laos is today. Welcome to the new Thailand, the new America. God. It's so unconsidered. So hurried. So desperately sad. Anyway, without more context I won't go on about that, it starts a whole huge discussion. Just read ''Ancient Futures" by Helena Norberg-Hodge and you'll get the picture.
The expat turned as some boys filed past us along the riverbank towards the bridge, smoking. He nodded in their direction, pointing out that they were smoking at 11 or 12, and would be making their way into town to beg from tourists or learn how to rip them off. Yep. He's right. Well he would know, anyhow, he lives there.
''Is there any hope?'' I asked him directly; "Can you see any way that something different could happen here in Laos, something more positive?"
"No."
We then walked past a beachside restaurant on the Mekong whose owner or tout tried to usher us in; however, it's early enough in the development of the tourist trade here that the fact we were disinterested in his menu but friendly to him meant he was still willing to be friendly back, and I just felt the pain of knowing that in a few years he won't bother to be friendly back if we don't want to buy; I've seen it everywhere along the tourist trail in Thailand, India, South America, you name it. Just past him on the path was an old spirit house in the trees with fresh offerings, and next to it, a big pile of stinking litter and the smell of something dead.
We walked through the ''craft village" now full of mansions and SUVs and little girls who won't give you a fair price on a bottle of water. A group of 5 of them stormed the older girl who was shopkeeper, who had told me 2000 for a water--a fair price-- and prevented her from selling me the water. I knew enough Lao to hear them demanding her, ''say 5000", ''no, 7000!" ''No, 5000"....these are more than I pay in a town-centre store for a bottle 3 times the size. Until the middle-aged owner turned up to see what the fuss was about, I simply could not buy a bottle of water. These girls were 7 or 9 years old. How depressing is that. The next generation.
Fucking Police
Luang Prabang, Laos: So far, I have made 5 in-person visits to the Police Station in Luang Prabang attempting to get a simple police report for the robbery of my camera and money so that I can make an insurance claim. Not much to ask, you'd have thought....but no, no police report has yet been granted us. WE wrote THEM two detailed reports of the events, but they have refused to give us *any* documents--despite repeated asking.
I went on Monday, and they told me to come back today; I went today at 11.30am, the man working in the office said they were 'not working' till 2pm, so I went back at 2pm, but no one was awake, so I went back at 2.30 and was told to come back at 3.15, when we had to wait 45 minutes while they watched an old American film and a football game, as we waited for the particular officer we'd previously talked with to arrive. When he arrived he did say that they were investigating the case, which was something, but told us although he might be able to help us with the camera, not with the stolen money, and his boss would have to sign the report or we couldn't use it, and his boss wouldn't be there until 10am tomorrow so we would have to come back AGAIN at that time. Of course, I doubt the boss will be there then either. It's my last day in Laos. I don't want to spend all of it, like I did today, waiting and being told to come back to talk fruitlessly with the tourist police.
I am being very patient and giving them as much benefit of doubt as possible....but this tries my patience, and Luisa, my friend who had her expensive camera and more money stolen than me, is naturally fed up. The police officers know when we're leaving town and I am concerned that they may just put off writing the report until we have gone. GGRRRRRR bureaucracy.
I went on Monday, and they told me to come back today; I went today at 11.30am, the man working in the office said they were 'not working' till 2pm, so I went back at 2pm, but no one was awake, so I went back at 2.30 and was told to come back at 3.15, when we had to wait 45 minutes while they watched an old American film and a football game, as we waited for the particular officer we'd previously talked with to arrive. When he arrived he did say that they were investigating the case, which was something, but told us although he might be able to help us with the camera, not with the stolen money, and his boss would have to sign the report or we couldn't use it, and his boss wouldn't be there until 10am tomorrow so we would have to come back AGAIN at that time. Of course, I doubt the boss will be there then either. It's my last day in Laos. I don't want to spend all of it, like I did today, waiting and being told to come back to talk fruitlessly with the tourist police.
I am being very patient and giving them as much benefit of doubt as possible....but this tries my patience, and Luisa, my friend who had her expensive camera and more money stolen than me, is naturally fed up. The police officers know when we're leaving town and I am concerned that they may just put off writing the report until we have gone. GGRRRRRR bureaucracy.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Up Laos creek w/o a camera, Ch.4. Robbed at midnight
pls note: about to leave for china so this post unfinished, bulk is in note form...sorry...climax is missing...
The hike to the Hmong tribal village of Ban Pha Yong was not particularly strenuous but the air was opaque with smoke from the slash-and-burn agriculture clearings being prepared for the upcoming rainy season, and so humid that by the time I arrived at the house of our host family, every piece of my clothing was drenched with sweat and could be wrung out to produce streams of salty fluid, and if I stood up after sitting, an embarrassingly deep puddle was left behind. All unwaterproofed documents were about to become papier-mache, so I gingerly hung them to dry in a tree.
On the way, we had passed entire scenes in which I could detect no sign of industrialization; houses and fields without so much as a plastic bag or modern T-shirt in sight. Idyllic is the word that fits, although its overuse reduces its sharpness.
We passed a woman spinning silk with an old bamboo loom, a woman distilling homemade whisky from a drum, the distillate dripping down a bamboo stem into a bottle; and an old man gardening in black tribal traditional dress, with cool and stylish 3/4-length traditional black fishermens' trousers and the classic broad conical woven-bamboo rice-field hat. Pink and grey buffalo grazing the fallow, local pig varieties barely bigger than a large cat, and lots of chickens whose plumage was identical to the wild forest Jungle Fowl, the ancestor of all domestic chickens.
(check notebook)
arrival and staring
food and household
the robbery..... and immed aftermath in next chapter with shaman in title...incl cryig, song angry, teams sent out to exits, etc.
the village organizes...with tangents about our excursions, scenes, experiences, the showers,
Walks, incl hunter--crossbow and gun and target practice
Mending the puncture and the baby w scissors, wiping bottom etc.
Watching toddlers w sticks, toddlers falling over, older sisters carryng
The sad story of the boy with the motorbike
CHECK DIARY and notepad
Observations anthropologically/cf conversation w dad/cf Ladakh
The parting dinner on Friday night w formal speeches and kids kept out
inviting us back; lots of apologies. Song and threats of murder and torture!
Teaching English to Ja-the, kids respect of the books, as if never seen before, hand s behind backs
Breastfeeding
Snotty kids
Handwashing
The last breakfast, shaman chant/cell phone of trader fr China
3-4 chickens killed, necks flopping in her hand
Chicken for breakfast, cleansing ritual then blessing ritual
Sacred egg
Women crying, Ja-the sullen
Women accomp to edge of village,
jealousy of female bonding, am I withdrawn/isolating?
Want more imaginative ways of interacting for nexttime...board games, photos, jokes/tricks, etc. Photos of things from my country, counter-development materils!
Bau leads us out under his protection ALL THE WAY to the road!!! Then turns around and goes back with nothing! A good 3 hour trek, jungle like Kaeng KRachan.
Bus stories. Sleeping, faces, deep blackness/capable women, leaning on each other, boy and sister, drunken chap lolling, getting wet together, beautiful women, baby w apparent spots...boy w father, w fever?
No-one smoking, but som LaoLao/beer sometimes, but wise
Food!!! Really good! Sticky rice etc, forest rat, sugar cane, green bananas...
The fishing expedition, fence-mendin, non-verbal communcation working like Ladakh
these people know how to be around each other, know how to livei n communityu
Washing our clothes for us, just becuase: no individualisation of labour
I washed my own dish after noodle soup...must have seemed very strangeindeed
The picknick
The wood-collecting trip, then waterfight w sexy Ong
The hike to the Hmong tribal village of Ban Pha Yong was not particularly strenuous but the air was opaque with smoke from the slash-and-burn agriculture clearings being prepared for the upcoming rainy season, and so humid that by the time I arrived at the house of our host family, every piece of my clothing was drenched with sweat and could be wrung out to produce streams of salty fluid, and if I stood up after sitting, an embarrassingly deep puddle was left behind. All unwaterproofed documents were about to become papier-mache, so I gingerly hung them to dry in a tree.
On the way, we had passed entire scenes in which I could detect no sign of industrialization; houses and fields without so much as a plastic bag or modern T-shirt in sight. Idyllic is the word that fits, although its overuse reduces its sharpness.
We passed a woman spinning silk with an old bamboo loom, a woman distilling homemade whisky from a drum, the distillate dripping down a bamboo stem into a bottle; and an old man gardening in black tribal traditional dress, with cool and stylish 3/4-length traditional black fishermens' trousers and the classic broad conical woven-bamboo rice-field hat. Pink and grey buffalo grazing the fallow, local pig varieties barely bigger than a large cat, and lots of chickens whose plumage was identical to the wild forest Jungle Fowl, the ancestor of all domestic chickens.
(check notebook)
arrival and staring
food and household
the robbery..... and immed aftermath in next chapter with shaman in title...incl cryig, song angry, teams sent out to exits, etc.
the village organizes...with tangents about our excursions, scenes, experiences, the showers,
Walks, incl hunter--crossbow and gun and target practice
Mending the puncture and the baby w scissors, wiping bottom etc.
Watching toddlers w sticks, toddlers falling over, older sisters carryng
The sad story of the boy with the motorbike
CHECK DIARY and notepad
Observations anthropologically/cf conversation w dad/cf Ladakh
The parting dinner on Friday night w formal speeches and kids kept out
inviting us back; lots of apologies. Song and threats of murder and torture!
Teaching English to Ja-the, kids respect of the books, as if never seen before, hand s behind backs
Breastfeeding
Snotty kids
Handwashing
The last breakfast, shaman chant/cell phone of trader fr China
3-4 chickens killed, necks flopping in her hand
Chicken for breakfast, cleansing ritual then blessing ritual
Sacred egg
Women crying, Ja-the sullen
Women accomp to edge of village,
jealousy of female bonding, am I withdrawn/isolating?
Want more imaginative ways of interacting for nexttime...board games, photos, jokes/tricks, etc. Photos of things from my country, counter-development materils!
Bau leads us out under his protection ALL THE WAY to the road!!! Then turns around and goes back with nothing! A good 3 hour trek, jungle like Kaeng KRachan.
Bus stories. Sleeping, faces, deep blackness/capable women, leaning on each other, boy and sister, drunken chap lolling, getting wet together, beautiful women, baby w apparent spots...boy w father, w fever?
No-one smoking, but som LaoLao/beer sometimes, but wise
Food!!! Really good! Sticky rice etc, forest rat, sugar cane, green bananas...
The fishing expedition, fence-mendin, non-verbal communcation working like Ladakh
these people know how to be around each other, know how to livei n communityu
Washing our clothes for us, just becuase: no individualisation of labour
I washed my own dish after noodle soup...must have seemed very strangeindeed
The picknick
The wood-collecting trip, then waterfight w sexy Ong
Monday, April 14, 2008
Up Laos Creek w/o a Camera: Chapter 3, across the river.
In an even smaller wooden boat, Song (our Hmong tribal guide), Luisa and I voyaged 25 minutes down the Nam Ou river on Tuesday morning and got out on the far side at a Lao Lum (ethnicity of the lowland Lao farmers) village. There we stopped for a quick pit-stop to eat some bananas, chat to the local women and staring children, ask questions about what we saw, and for Song to buy a couple of packets of sweets (candies) 'to give to the children in the village'.
Luisa and I didn't approve of giving out sweeties to village children on multiple counts (their dental health being high on the list, followed by litter, and the encouragement of begging tourists for treats, and the bad image of tourists being rich powerful providers of desirable treasures that come from outside...etc)---but Song insisted that it was OK, and bought them anyway. As it was, I never gave out any, and it was more often Song himself who did so. As he was a Hmong tribesman and we were going to a Hmong village, I had to give his judgement the benefit of my doubt and go along with the flow.
From that moment onward I became 'Louis' (pronounced as if French) as it was much easier to say than 'Roy', so we were now Louis and Luisa, which of course tickled us.
Children and adults stared at us, but instead of staring back I smiled and nodded, which humanized us and forced them out of the stare into realising that oh yes, we were people too, just people, a little different, that's all. The children usually got shy and smiled back but hid their faces as I personally acknowledged each one; the adults would nod and break into a smile and speak a greeting, if I'd not already done so in their language. Sabai-dee (more or less, 'I wish you ease and well-being') is the generic greeting in Lao language, the lingua franca of the country and mother tongue to most urban and some rural ethnicities; in Hmong you say 'Nyozhong'. But a nod and a smile do the trick just about everywhere, breaking ice with all except the most shy or stunned staring children. But they'll probably smile next time.
We asked about the knitting one woman was doing; she was making a fishing net by hand. Not many places still do that, as they are cheap to purchase in nylon, but time-consuming to make yourself. Even for us to show a respectful curiosity in her craft clearly had an impact that contributed to her self-respect and pride rather than detracted from it, as we were clearly impressed and admiring. Of course, we could have had the opposite effect if we'd interacted differently, as, of course, a lot of tourists unintentionally do. We told her it was beautiful. It was.
I asked Song in detail about the rooves, which have fascinated me whenever I've passed villages ever since entering Laos. From a distance the most obvious sign of outside influence in remote villages is the replacement of (at present usually only some, not all) traditional thatched rooves with corrugated iron ones. I asked Song what the motivation was to replace them, and weren't corrugated iron rooves much hotter and noisier in the rain? He explained that it was a status symbol to replace your roof with a metal one, and that was the only motivation: too keep up with the neighbours in what is apparently already becoming a materially competitive environment, modern things being inherently impressive, possibly mostly because they are costly. Conspicuous consumption (which divides people, of course.) He said that yes, iron rooves are much too hot, and also, they are expenisive: whereas grass or bamboo rooves are absolutely free and 'from the natural'. I told him how thatched rooves are considered very attractive in England, but that people don't know how to make them any more, and so they have become very expensive indeed, and only the richer people can afford to maintain thatched rooves on their homes. He related this to the group of local women and they laughed, seeing the irony. It was a beautiful counter-development moment, where we could show people that they could think differently if they wanted and value what 'progress' is telling them they should discard, despite the fact that it's more practical, cheaper, and ecologically sound.
Luisa and I didn't approve of giving out sweeties to village children on multiple counts (their dental health being high on the list, followed by litter, and the encouragement of begging tourists for treats, and the bad image of tourists being rich powerful providers of desirable treasures that come from outside...etc)---but Song insisted that it was OK, and bought them anyway. As it was, I never gave out any, and it was more often Song himself who did so. As he was a Hmong tribesman and we were going to a Hmong village, I had to give his judgement the benefit of my doubt and go along with the flow.
From that moment onward I became 'Louis' (pronounced as if French) as it was much easier to say than 'Roy', so we were now Louis and Luisa, which of course tickled us.
Children and adults stared at us, but instead of staring back I smiled and nodded, which humanized us and forced them out of the stare into realising that oh yes, we were people too, just people, a little different, that's all. The children usually got shy and smiled back but hid their faces as I personally acknowledged each one; the adults would nod and break into a smile and speak a greeting, if I'd not already done so in their language. Sabai-dee (more or less, 'I wish you ease and well-being') is the generic greeting in Lao language, the lingua franca of the country and mother tongue to most urban and some rural ethnicities; in Hmong you say 'Nyozhong'. But a nod and a smile do the trick just about everywhere, breaking ice with all except the most shy or stunned staring children. But they'll probably smile next time.
We asked about the knitting one woman was doing; she was making a fishing net by hand. Not many places still do that, as they are cheap to purchase in nylon, but time-consuming to make yourself. Even for us to show a respectful curiosity in her craft clearly had an impact that contributed to her self-respect and pride rather than detracted from it, as we were clearly impressed and admiring. Of course, we could have had the opposite effect if we'd interacted differently, as, of course, a lot of tourists unintentionally do. We told her it was beautiful. It was.
I asked Song in detail about the rooves, which have fascinated me whenever I've passed villages ever since entering Laos. From a distance the most obvious sign of outside influence in remote villages is the replacement of (at present usually only some, not all) traditional thatched rooves with corrugated iron ones. I asked Song what the motivation was to replace them, and weren't corrugated iron rooves much hotter and noisier in the rain? He explained that it was a status symbol to replace your roof with a metal one, and that was the only motivation: too keep up with the neighbours in what is apparently already becoming a materially competitive environment, modern things being inherently impressive, possibly mostly because they are costly. Conspicuous consumption (which divides people, of course.) He said that yes, iron rooves are much too hot, and also, they are expenisive: whereas grass or bamboo rooves are absolutely free and 'from the natural'. I told him how thatched rooves are considered very attractive in England, but that people don't know how to make them any more, and so they have become very expensive indeed, and only the richer people can afford to maintain thatched rooves on their homes. He related this to the group of local women and they laughed, seeing the irony. It was a beautiful counter-development moment, where we could show people that they could think differently if they wanted and value what 'progress' is telling them they should discard, despite the fact that it's more practical, cheaper, and ecologically sound.
Up Laos creek w/o a Camera. Ch.2 Muang Ngoi, & various tirades
For a town on an asphalt road that is the only gateway to the boats to Muang Ngoi (Tourist Central--'Laos style), Nong Kiaw is an amazingly 'nothing' town, most of its roads dusty dirt, and um...most of its roads being, like, one actually, that comes off the one narrow potholey asphalt road. You know those postcard images of the vertical Limestone Karst mountains in southern China, that erupt like mushrooms out of the watery ricefields? Well, that's the scenery around Nong Kiaw, too. Nong Kiaw has perhaps 2 rustic guesthouses, and a few shops, all of them without shopfronts, just a room without a front wall, opening onto the street, displaying goods on wooden shelves or tables. All packaged things mostly imported from China or Thailand, and then a number of items important to rural people like agricultural hardware--tools, ropes, and the like.
Luisa and I wandered down the one street and saw that the few spirit-houses that were visible (all forms of spirituality having been banned or greatly constricted by the communist regime) were homemade, and given corrugated iron rooves like the humans' houses. They were very simple affais, often just a little platform with some food offerings--not like the mass-produced, gaudily painted paired spirit-houses or opulent spirit-mansions seen all over Thailand. Yes, Laos is a poor country. And yes, this means that much of the beauty of the way things are traditionally done has not been lost (yet). The fact that spirit-houses are hand-made enables each family to pour their craft-energy, if they have any left over, into their personal connection with the spirits they believe in, rather than just buying a pre-packaged and standardized spirit-house made in a spirit-house factory in Thailand (yes, these exist: you see parking-lots full of cookie-cutter spirit-houses for sale along major highways all over Thailand. I guess the concepts of mass production and mass consumption wiggle there ways into everything everywhere, if you let them in.) Spirit houses are just one (ironic and to me culturally quaint) example of how meaning, creativity, personality, and diversity are lost in the industrialization process.
Enough moralizing. More later ;)
We took the boat from Nong Kiaw to Muang Ngoi, a simple handmade wooden affair like all the others, with an outboard motor attached. There were local passengers as well as tourists. I met, as you do, some travellers I'd met previously in distant locations. There were pink water buffalo grazing and mostly submerged in the shallows (as well as grey-brown ones), the odd white egret, gorgeous forest, groups of jumping, splashing naked tribal children gleeful in the water, women wrapped in sarongs washing, the rhythmic whistle of the captains of row-boats training for the 17-village race upcoming in 4 days, a funeral procession bringing a coffin down to the water with gong-baring monks, and the normal--but utterly amazing--images of farmer-fishermen in traditional dress paddling with handmade paddles their handmade fishing-boats, clad in traditional dress with the classic Mekong conical bamboo sunhats. It's still here! It's still happening! All of this is gone, gone, vanished in Thailand, only found on postcards. It is so poignant to see these images in Laos, knowing that the tourist industry here is exploding and unless some careful and wise decisions are made, the sustainable traditional communities with all their independent and diverse lifeways will be gone, gone, vanished in Laos, too, and confined to the historical postcards, and all the remarkable features of their ways of living harmoniously in community, of raising sane and healthy balanced children, of living without polluting or destroying the landscape, will become the unbelieved stuff of legends, just romantic fantasy, nothing that people actually can do, and human nature will mean individualism, selfishness, as it already has come to mean for us in America and Europe.
So I am torn. I want to tell you about my experiences. I want to share the beauty and the inspiration that these people and this country, Laos, have poured into my lap: And yet I know that by publicizing Laos further, to you as potential tourists, and by travelling here myself, am I not contributing to its destruction? Should I tell you to come here now before the traditional things are gone, so that you can carry the lessons of these traditional cultures and what is really possible for humanity out into the world......or should I tell you to stay the hell away from here if you care about humanity? Answers welcome: write a comment or shoot me an email.
Muang Ngoi, Tourist Central, is still a pretty village. The buildings are still made entirely of bamboo, for the most part. The 'road' through the village is just dirt like the rest of the place. But indeed, every other building is a guesthouse with bamboo bungalows, or a tourist-oriented restaurant. There are heaps of touts for the guesthouses or for tours to trek to tribal villages to stick cameras in peoples' faces and help destroy their cultural independence, or see a waterfall, or see a cave. Cave/village/waterfall: just things to look at, just photo-opportunities really. People may be involved, but they're just picturesque and third-worldy and brown people and they are illiterate and don't speak English so kind of not real people anyway, and you wouldn't want to stay there in the village for long, there's no proper toilet etc etc. Sorry to be cynical. I've just watched a lot of tourists and seen how they behave. It's a bloody shame that most of them aren't your best cultural embassador, or even respectful.
Thinking like this I repeatedly ask myself why I am any different from all the other tourists. Why my desire to visit a traditional, remote village is any more legitimate or any less damaging than theirs. And in a way it's not, of course, and I am no different, and so my criticism of their behavior is also, somehow, an investigation of my own motivations and what I consider acceptable for *me* to do, too.
What I have found (not for the first time) is that all it takes for me to feel comfortable with my participation in this thing called tourism is something called RESPECT. Apply it in all situations, at all moments, using lots of caution and awareness as seasoning, and something is transformed and becomes a beautiful experience for all concerned. I enjoy myself, and feel comfortable with my conduct and interactions: and I can see from the faces of the locals that I interact with that they are enjoying themselves too--they often seem surprised (and delighted) at the way this foreigner is treating them, even with things so simple and basic (you would have thought) as a polite greeting and smile. Apparently it's not that common from tourists, or it wouldn't produce such enthusiastic and surprised responses. Of course, it's very sad that this sensitive respect isn't the baseline of all intercultural tourism. And I am very aware that tourists don't, mostly, intend any harm. They are just not really paying attention, not really seeing the local people around them, and not watching what other people do. Not behaving as if they were guests in someone else's home--but as if they own the place, and even then, as if they don't respect it.
Simple things as an example:
Tourists sit down on steps in front of a streetside table-stall, not noticing that by doing so they prevent locals from getting to the stall and so reduce the business received by that seller. Why not just sit down /next/ to it instead of blocking it? Locals are too polite and forgiving to say anything.
Tourists who walk into temples forgetting to take their shoes off, or not having discovered (or noticed) that it's disrespectful to go in with so little clothing on.
Tourists who wear very very short shorts and bare their shoulders: locals don't do this and it's uncouth, have they not noticed, or don't they care?
Tourists who think it's funny to buy water pistols bigger than anyone else's and attack people with them, turning what's supposed to be a gentle, playful water-splashing celebration symbolizing cleansing for the Laos New Year, into a quite unpleasant and disrespectful water-fight, squirting the water directly into people's faces, including children's, and splashing moped-riders (dangerous), and setting a very bad example.
Tourists who ON empty market-stall tables pointing the soles of their feet at passers-by. Not only do locals not climb on the tables but surely the tourists must have read the basic rule in this part of Asia that it's very rude to point your feet at anyone. No local EVER does that. Come on guys, it doesn't take much, and if you keep behaving in these ways, Laos is going to be as full of the ugly side of the tourist industry as Thailand in no time.
These are just a few examples, all from today.
So, carrying with me the tools of respect, caution, friendliness, and watching what other people are doing, I decided I wanted to go to a tribal village and stay there as long as possible, to actually live people's lives there a little, helping them out in the fields in exchange for food and somewhere to sleep. 'As long as possible' meant only 4-5 days, unfortunately. On the first night in Muang Ngoi I found a Hmong tribal guide who seemed nice enough and spoke quite good English, who worked for the government tourist company, which gives a good percentage back into local communities, and who was prepared to take us to some friends of his in a Hmong village only accessible by foot, to stay with the family for a few days. Moreover, his price was very reasonable. He was at first confused that I only wanted to see ONE village, and wasn't interested in visiting the waterfall that every other tourist he'd ever seen went to.
Luisa, the Spanish woman, decided to come with me and Song, the Hmong guide. We left the next day, at noon on Tuesday 8th April.
Luisa and I wandered down the one street and saw that the few spirit-houses that were visible (all forms of spirituality having been banned or greatly constricted by the communist regime) were homemade, and given corrugated iron rooves like the humans' houses. They were very simple affais, often just a little platform with some food offerings--not like the mass-produced, gaudily painted paired spirit-houses or opulent spirit-mansions seen all over Thailand. Yes, Laos is a poor country. And yes, this means that much of the beauty of the way things are traditionally done has not been lost (yet). The fact that spirit-houses are hand-made enables each family to pour their craft-energy, if they have any left over, into their personal connection with the spirits they believe in, rather than just buying a pre-packaged and standardized spirit-house made in a spirit-house factory in Thailand (yes, these exist: you see parking-lots full of cookie-cutter spirit-houses for sale along major highways all over Thailand. I guess the concepts of mass production and mass consumption wiggle there ways into everything everywhere, if you let them in.) Spirit houses are just one (ironic and to me culturally quaint) example of how meaning, creativity, personality, and diversity are lost in the industrialization process.
Enough moralizing. More later ;)
We took the boat from Nong Kiaw to Muang Ngoi, a simple handmade wooden affair like all the others, with an outboard motor attached. There were local passengers as well as tourists. I met, as you do, some travellers I'd met previously in distant locations. There were pink water buffalo grazing and mostly submerged in the shallows (as well as grey-brown ones), the odd white egret, gorgeous forest, groups of jumping, splashing naked tribal children gleeful in the water, women wrapped in sarongs washing, the rhythmic whistle of the captains of row-boats training for the 17-village race upcoming in 4 days, a funeral procession bringing a coffin down to the water with gong-baring monks, and the normal--but utterly amazing--images of farmer-fishermen in traditional dress paddling with handmade paddles their handmade fishing-boats, clad in traditional dress with the classic Mekong conical bamboo sunhats. It's still here! It's still happening! All of this is gone, gone, vanished in Thailand, only found on postcards. It is so poignant to see these images in Laos, knowing that the tourist industry here is exploding and unless some careful and wise decisions are made, the sustainable traditional communities with all their independent and diverse lifeways will be gone, gone, vanished in Laos, too, and confined to the historical postcards, and all the remarkable features of their ways of living harmoniously in community, of raising sane and healthy balanced children, of living without polluting or destroying the landscape, will become the unbelieved stuff of legends, just romantic fantasy, nothing that people actually can do, and human nature will mean individualism, selfishness, as it already has come to mean for us in America and Europe.
So I am torn. I want to tell you about my experiences. I want to share the beauty and the inspiration that these people and this country, Laos, have poured into my lap: And yet I know that by publicizing Laos further, to you as potential tourists, and by travelling here myself, am I not contributing to its destruction? Should I tell you to come here now before the traditional things are gone, so that you can carry the lessons of these traditional cultures and what is really possible for humanity out into the world......or should I tell you to stay the hell away from here if you care about humanity? Answers welcome: write a comment or shoot me an email.
Muang Ngoi, Tourist Central, is still a pretty village. The buildings are still made entirely of bamboo, for the most part. The 'road' through the village is just dirt like the rest of the place. But indeed, every other building is a guesthouse with bamboo bungalows, or a tourist-oriented restaurant. There are heaps of touts for the guesthouses or for tours to trek to tribal villages to stick cameras in peoples' faces and help destroy their cultural independence, or see a waterfall, or see a cave. Cave/village/waterfall: just things to look at, just photo-opportunities really. People may be involved, but they're just picturesque and third-worldy and brown people and they are illiterate and don't speak English so kind of not real people anyway, and you wouldn't want to stay there in the village for long, there's no proper toilet etc etc. Sorry to be cynical. I've just watched a lot of tourists and seen how they behave. It's a bloody shame that most of them aren't your best cultural embassador, or even respectful.
Thinking like this I repeatedly ask myself why I am any different from all the other tourists. Why my desire to visit a traditional, remote village is any more legitimate or any less damaging than theirs. And in a way it's not, of course, and I am no different, and so my criticism of their behavior is also, somehow, an investigation of my own motivations and what I consider acceptable for *me* to do, too.
What I have found (not for the first time) is that all it takes for me to feel comfortable with my participation in this thing called tourism is something called RESPECT. Apply it in all situations, at all moments, using lots of caution and awareness as seasoning, and something is transformed and becomes a beautiful experience for all concerned. I enjoy myself, and feel comfortable with my conduct and interactions: and I can see from the faces of the locals that I interact with that they are enjoying themselves too--they often seem surprised (and delighted) at the way this foreigner is treating them, even with things so simple and basic (you would have thought) as a polite greeting and smile. Apparently it's not that common from tourists, or it wouldn't produce such enthusiastic and surprised responses. Of course, it's very sad that this sensitive respect isn't the baseline of all intercultural tourism. And I am very aware that tourists don't, mostly, intend any harm. They are just not really paying attention, not really seeing the local people around them, and not watching what other people do. Not behaving as if they were guests in someone else's home--but as if they own the place, and even then, as if they don't respect it.
Simple things as an example:
Tourists sit down on steps in front of a streetside table-stall, not noticing that by doing so they prevent locals from getting to the stall and so reduce the business received by that seller. Why not just sit down /next/ to it instead of blocking it? Locals are too polite and forgiving to say anything.
Tourists who walk into temples forgetting to take their shoes off, or not having discovered (or noticed) that it's disrespectful to go in with so little clothing on.
Tourists who wear very very short shorts and bare their shoulders: locals don't do this and it's uncouth, have they not noticed, or don't they care?
Tourists who think it's funny to buy water pistols bigger than anyone else's and attack people with them, turning what's supposed to be a gentle, playful water-splashing celebration symbolizing cleansing for the Laos New Year, into a quite unpleasant and disrespectful water-fight, squirting the water directly into people's faces, including children's, and splashing moped-riders (dangerous), and setting a very bad example.
Tourists who ON empty market-stall tables pointing the soles of their feet at passers-by. Not only do locals not climb on the tables but surely the tourists must have read the basic rule in this part of Asia that it's very rude to point your feet at anyone. No local EVER does that. Come on guys, it doesn't take much, and if you keep behaving in these ways, Laos is going to be as full of the ugly side of the tourist industry as Thailand in no time.
These are just a few examples, all from today.
So, carrying with me the tools of respect, caution, friendliness, and watching what other people are doing, I decided I wanted to go to a tribal village and stay there as long as possible, to actually live people's lives there a little, helping them out in the fields in exchange for food and somewhere to sleep. 'As long as possible' meant only 4-5 days, unfortunately. On the first night in Muang Ngoi I found a Hmong tribal guide who seemed nice enough and spoke quite good English, who worked for the government tourist company, which gives a good percentage back into local communities, and who was prepared to take us to some friends of his in a Hmong village only accessible by foot, to stay with the family for a few days. Moreover, his price was very reasonable. He was at first confused that I only wanted to see ONE village, and wasn't interested in visiting the waterfall that every other tourist he'd ever seen went to.
Luisa, the Spanish woman, decided to come with me and Song, the Hmong guide. We left the next day, at noon on Tuesday 8th April.
Up Laos Creek without a Camera: Chapter 1. The bus station
After seeing the remote tribal villages from the touristy 'slow boat' on the well-beaten 2-day trip down the Mekong River from Chiang Khong in Northern Thailand to Luang Prabang in Laos, I felt an inner urge to get to a remote village as soon as I could after my arrival in Laos. Luang Prabang is a small, pretty town, but very touristy and rather dull, there being little to do except enjoy some nice temples and wander around watching other tourists. Of course, the food markets are always interesting and still, after 5 months in the region eating only local foods, I find plenty of vegetables that are unknown to me, although I have tried just about all the fruits I can find.
I spent 2 days in Luang Prabang disoriented and organizing logistics, and then took an early morning bus from the public bus station to a town called Nong Kiaw which is the last town with a road on the way to the fabled Muang Ngoi, a pretty village on the large Nam Ou river only accessible by boat: A pretty village that now, I discovered when already on the bus, has become well and truly trodden by the tourist trail, the Lonely Planet guide even saying that in so many words. If Lonely Planet puts it in that language.....well, I started to wish I'd chosen a different destination.
At the bus station my Spanish friend Luisa and I were the only foreigners. As I've written previously, foreigners simply don't take public buses, they take the triply expensive air-conditioned tourist minibuses and suchlike, thereby missing out on one of the most enriching (and physically uncomfortable) parts of travelling in foreign countries. Public bus journeys provide wonderful insight into a country and its people, and the lack of foreigner-to-foreigner babble on the bus and one's inability to verbally communicate very much in the local language means that you can properly take in the visual feast of the passing scenery and the colourful turnover of local people cycling through the bus...what are they carrying? How do strangers interact in Laos culture in the forced immediate close physical proximity of a full bus? What are their attitudes towards one another and to the world around them? How do children behave? What kinds of people get on and off where? Can you start to make patterns of prediction based on how people dress as to what kind of place they will alight?
By the time our bus departed two quiet, well-informed Dutch travellers had joined us making a total of four foreigners and the rest assorted rural Lao people.
But before we even left the bus station I had a moment which cracked open my mind and set me on fire.
There was one young woman at the bus station evidently waiting for her bus who was tall, elegant, and looked completely out of place: she was clad entirely in traditional tribal dress. She wore a long narrow black skirt and a kind of black jacket or blowse adorned with many silver discs, and some sort of headdress that I can't recall. She stood out from everyone else in the grace of her garments and gestures. I don't know what tribe she was from (Akha perhaps?) but she looked a little bewildered and uncomfortable in this city context. Yet she had a distant look in her eyes that stopped my mind and fascinated me: she moved with a power, a command, a wild and independent freedom that was palpable and captivating, and that I have only seen in women from remote villages, women who know how to bring life from the earth around them with their own hands, women (and men) who are thereby free from the 'umbilical cord' of urban civilization that so constricts most of us Westerners. Although she seemed uncomfortable in the bus station, this tribal woman had a kind of power that made my heart pound. She knew what most of us do not; she knew how to make life: how to support a family deep in the jungle using her wits and skills; how to craft clothes, grow food, husband animals, build houses, facilitate births, raise children intuitively, make baskets, live in community, and all the myriad other skills that peasant villagers' take for granted, but that are life-arts that Westerners have usually lost---and that so many of us in the alternative movements are trying--without role-models--to re-learn from scratch. Somehow, with her feet grounded on the earth she deftly tilled and her head held high in fierce pride, it seemed as if this tribal woman looked through and over everything around her at the bus station.
And what is even more remarkable is that she was a *young* woman, in 2008, in a major Laos town, still wearing full tribal dress! Traditional dress is usually one of the first things a culture loses as Westernization starts to spread its greedy fingers into a community. And usually it is the young people who lose it first. Somehow, she had chosen to keep hers. Who was this woman? Where was she returning to? What was she doing in Luang Prabang?
Luisa later spotted an apparent husband and child with her; neither of them were in tribal dress but already jeans and T-shirts. Yes, as Helena Norberg-Hodge writes with such insight in her fantastic book, 'Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh' , it is the young men who are the most vulnerable to cultural change--who feel backward and in their adolescent search for identity and acceptance, try to be 'cool' following new, media and tourist-influenced role-models, typically wearing jeans, black T-shirts or leather jackets, and sunglasses; smoking, drinking and riding motorbikes...hanging out on street corners self-consciously dragging on cigarettes...you know the package. It is sad. You don't see that in the traditional villages, where young men have a role, a place in the community, and a sense of meaning and identity that fills the space otherwise occupied by teenage angst and acting out. I have seen it, so I am convinced. Boys who aren't embarrassed to help their mothers, or to show affection to their younger sisters; who have no concept that it isn't 'cool' or good for their image to help with caring for the neighbours' toddlers.
If the mere bus station offered me this, what would I find if I reached a traditional village?
I spent 2 days in Luang Prabang disoriented and organizing logistics, and then took an early morning bus from the public bus station to a town called Nong Kiaw which is the last town with a road on the way to the fabled Muang Ngoi, a pretty village on the large Nam Ou river only accessible by boat: A pretty village that now, I discovered when already on the bus, has become well and truly trodden by the tourist trail, the Lonely Planet guide even saying that in so many words. If Lonely Planet puts it in that language.....well, I started to wish I'd chosen a different destination.
At the bus station my Spanish friend Luisa and I were the only foreigners. As I've written previously, foreigners simply don't take public buses, they take the triply expensive air-conditioned tourist minibuses and suchlike, thereby missing out on one of the most enriching (and physically uncomfortable) parts of travelling in foreign countries. Public bus journeys provide wonderful insight into a country and its people, and the lack of foreigner-to-foreigner babble on the bus and one's inability to verbally communicate very much in the local language means that you can properly take in the visual feast of the passing scenery and the colourful turnover of local people cycling through the bus...what are they carrying? How do strangers interact in Laos culture in the forced immediate close physical proximity of a full bus? What are their attitudes towards one another and to the world around them? How do children behave? What kinds of people get on and off where? Can you start to make patterns of prediction based on how people dress as to what kind of place they will alight?
By the time our bus departed two quiet, well-informed Dutch travellers had joined us making a total of four foreigners and the rest assorted rural Lao people.
But before we even left the bus station I had a moment which cracked open my mind and set me on fire.
There was one young woman at the bus station evidently waiting for her bus who was tall, elegant, and looked completely out of place: she was clad entirely in traditional tribal dress. She wore a long narrow black skirt and a kind of black jacket or blowse adorned with many silver discs, and some sort of headdress that I can't recall. She stood out from everyone else in the grace of her garments and gestures. I don't know what tribe she was from (Akha perhaps?) but she looked a little bewildered and uncomfortable in this city context. Yet she had a distant look in her eyes that stopped my mind and fascinated me: she moved with a power, a command, a wild and independent freedom that was palpable and captivating, and that I have only seen in women from remote villages, women who know how to bring life from the earth around them with their own hands, women (and men) who are thereby free from the 'umbilical cord' of urban civilization that so constricts most of us Westerners. Although she seemed uncomfortable in the bus station, this tribal woman had a kind of power that made my heart pound. She knew what most of us do not; she knew how to make life: how to support a family deep in the jungle using her wits and skills; how to craft clothes, grow food, husband animals, build houses, facilitate births, raise children intuitively, make baskets, live in community, and all the myriad other skills that peasant villagers' take for granted, but that are life-arts that Westerners have usually lost---and that so many of us in the alternative movements are trying--without role-models--to re-learn from scratch. Somehow, with her feet grounded on the earth she deftly tilled and her head held high in fierce pride, it seemed as if this tribal woman looked through and over everything around her at the bus station.
And what is even more remarkable is that she was a *young* woman, in 2008, in a major Laos town, still wearing full tribal dress! Traditional dress is usually one of the first things a culture loses as Westernization starts to spread its greedy fingers into a community. And usually it is the young people who lose it first. Somehow, she had chosen to keep hers. Who was this woman? Where was she returning to? What was she doing in Luang Prabang?
Luisa later spotted an apparent husband and child with her; neither of them were in tribal dress but already jeans and T-shirts. Yes, as Helena Norberg-Hodge writes with such insight in her fantastic book, 'Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh' , it is the young men who are the most vulnerable to cultural change--who feel backward and in their adolescent search for identity and acceptance, try to be 'cool' following new, media and tourist-influenced role-models, typically wearing jeans, black T-shirts or leather jackets, and sunglasses; smoking, drinking and riding motorbikes...hanging out on street corners self-consciously dragging on cigarettes...you know the package. It is sad. You don't see that in the traditional villages, where young men have a role, a place in the community, and a sense of meaning and identity that fills the space otherwise occupied by teenage angst and acting out. I have seen it, so I am convinced. Boys who aren't embarrassed to help their mothers, or to show affection to their younger sisters; who have no concept that it isn't 'cool' or good for their image to help with caring for the neighbours' toddlers.
If the mere bus station offered me this, what would I find if I reached a traditional village?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)