Good Days, Bad Days!

So the original thought was three to four weeks of hard but interesting project work in the beautiful, friendly setting of the Nam Ou river basin in Northern Laos. Seven weeks later we are finally emerging from our temporary and cut-off-from-the-world home in the small village of Hat Sa. A fairly straightforward project of a water tank and sink had many unforeseen components and setbacks than anticipated. Although we are leaving a little battered and bruised the final result was project success and many happy kids now have running water!

There is so much to be said for our time in Hat Sa- how wonderful the life is, how frustrating the work could be… it could fill a book. To make a feeble attempt to give a glimpse into our life the past 2 months, here are typical “good day” and “bad day” timelines:

On a good day:
~ Wake up just as Peng (our host mother) is returning from collecting wild greens that she turns into a scrumptious breakfast along with eggs and ubiquitous sticky rice (delicious and a part of every meal- you grab a handful and roll it into a ball, eating whatever other food along with it)
~ Get to the school/work site early when it is cool and the sun has not burned the clouds away yet.
~ We get two community helpers for the day and they arrived even earlier than expected- two of our favorite guys from the community and very hard workers. No troubles communicating and they jump into the work along with us, have their own ideas of how to complete the work at hand take ownership of the project .
~ Work is getting done even faster than expected, while someone runs to get a needed tool we introduce the Frisbee to our community helpers and it’s a blast. Let them know we’re not all work and no play!
~ Work’s gone well and we get a long lunch break that includes a nap! Lunch is leftovers from breakfast but it is so good we’re just thrilled to have more, plus one new addition of fried cicadas which upon trying for the first time we learn are quite delicious.
~ I go to teach English class and Donny heads back to the work site.
~ This class has some of my best students and we fly through the review- they are engaged and answering my questions. Even if they’re not getting the sound of the letter right they are at least trying at it and getting close!
~ Try out a new educational game I’ve worked on for the Teacher’s Manual I’m writing and find out it works very well, though learn a few ways to tweak it to make it even better and throw in possible variations.
~ Donny joins us and we finish up with a lively, if ill-pronounced, rendition of “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” and “The Hokey Pokey.” Think of how adorable and eager the wonderful kids are.
~ Get back into construction mode- go down to the bathroom to find all the kids already helping Donny to make cement and marvel again at how wonderful and helpful they are.
~ The kids were so helpful we got our work done early! Time for a 4 o’clock swim in the river. Introduce the kids to snorkels and get tired out throwing them in the water.
~ Back to the house for some relaxing before it is time to cook dinner.
~ Go with Peng to collect some more wild greens to cook then start preparing supper- learn her Lao cooking secrets.
~ Sit on the floor around the bamboo table and feast- it’s a wild mushroom dish, fried pumpkin flowers and delicious greens. Delicious and good conversation to go with it- our Lao language skills are continually improving with the family’s help.
~ Donny plays a game of Lao-style checkers with Te (our host father) as the rest of us sit around and read/talk/write in my journal.
~ Go to bed happy and sleep soundly through to a new great day.

On a bad day:
~ Go for breakfast and there are a few meager leftovers from the night before (some blood soup and a dish with only the pig fat left) in the cabinet to go along with the sticky rice- eat it quickly since we’ve got lots of work to do.
~ Arrive at the work site to find that the torrential downpour the night before (thank you rainy season for coming early) has washed away half of our previous day’s work
~ Also find that our new cement has been written in all over by the students that live in the boarding house, despite our best efforts to keep them away and all our time making it perfectly smooth
~ Work for a few hours in the relative cool trying to figure out how to arrange the rocks on the top of the foundation we have been building up for the sink, only to find most of the rocks break apart when even slight pressure is applied- can’t use them and must hunt for more.
~ Workers arrive about 2.5 hours into our work day- first we have the difficulty of actually identifying them as our workers for the day and not just the average person that walks by and stares at us for a half hour.
~ Finally get workers on a task but we need to constantly watch over them to make sure they do it right. Occasionally find the missing worker in the children’s dorm room asleep. We give each other a look, both fully knowing that this is not what GROW is all about- we’re not here to force people to work on something they don’t want to do, we’re here to assist people to accomplish what they have been trying to achieve.
~ Shake head and resign yourself to accepting project imperfections at the quality of work of our helpers.
~ Send workers home after 2 hours once it becomes obvious they’re done “helping” and you’re done dealing with them and being stared at.
~ Keep working in the blistering heat.
~ Go back starving for lunch and find that there is only cold fish soup and cold sticky rice- the small fish with lots of bones, mostly heads left.
~ Go back to the school, this time in English teaching mode for the 2 lesser capable of your 4 classes- find only half have shown up and no one brought their notebook.
~ Try to get them to answer questions only to get blank stares.
~ Review of material takes whole class, don’t get to anything new. Again.
~ Back to construction mode- still unbelievably hot.
~ Find that the kids are helping Donny cut wood for the frame of the sink, so helpful! Then realize they cut on the wrong lines and also took the saw to the railing.
~ You go to your work basket to find that the small pieces of rebar you had been saving for this part of the project are now missing and of course no student has seen anything.
~ After mixing the concrete finally, an unexpected rainstorm comes. Scramble to cover cement.
~ Work on laying the foundation rocks but find that the “gravel” in your concrete is too big to work with- need to find a different place to use the concrete so you move to another aspect of the project that you haven’t fully prepped yet.
~ Work until dark, breaking out the headlamps. Te comes to see when we’ll finally be home for dinner and our rumbling tummies ask him to help us finish up.
~ Go home to hot bony fish soup- an improvement over lunch but still the same old thing; this time with a side of fried pig fat.
~ Pass out exhausted and then work through the night in our dreams in between getting up for the bathroom because of diarrhea.

Now of course any given day was a combination of the good and the bad and a lot more happened than written in here. (if you want a really thorough description, Donny wrote a day-to-day account you can view on our new GROW blog- gives an idea of what development work is often all about)

Intersperse these roughly typical days with:
~ Went to a bocce ceremony where we were honored with being treated as part of the family holding it- means we were blessed by all in attendance as they tied strings of good luck around our wrists. Then we had a feast of delicious food, plus lao-lao to drink, of course!
~ Went with Te to catch fish/catch bugs/looking for bamboo shoots or mushrooms to eat.
~ Kids pay us a porch visit and we learn some more Lao from them while drawing and doing origami.
~ Work on the Teachers Manual and learn some new Lao words in the process.
Or:
~ Show up to the worksite and the only tree within a 30 meter radius has fallen on the rebar frame of your new water tank
~ Show up to the worksite to see a mango tree, the biggest tree within a 100 meter radius has fallen and completely destroyed the children’s bathroom, and the site for the sink we just about to start building.
~ Step away from our community helpers just briefly, but enough time that they put too much water into the concrete. Next day realize just how bad this was when the newly poured tank lid crumbles apart and you have to start over to make a new one.

Hat Sa, we are both happy and sad to be saying goodbye. The Lao culture is wonderful and so very different from our own- so we’ll take with us the good events and leave only this small blog as remnants of the bad, and also take away the 1,000+ photos we took as fond memories of our cultural immersion that seemed a bit like going back a few decades to a much simpler time.