On 27 February I posted her photo of the Mekong River sunset. She is still in Laos and just sent this reflective message.
I am writing to you from Vientiane, Laos, PDR. I am here to conduct a case study on the Xayaburi Dam project being developed on the Mekong River. The weather ismostly hot and humid, the food spicy, and the people gentle and kind. It has been months since I've written. I hope this finds you all well.
I have had some adventure traveling here. Learned to ride an elephant in a 3 day training course - incredible! Have traveled by boat on the Mekong. Gone mountain biking and hiking in the countryside. Seen performance and so many beautiful temples. Have gone kayaking on rivers and swimming in waterfalls. Eaten all manner of new and interesting food. Took a Thai-food cooking course. Spent two days on an island in the Gulf of Thailand snorkeling and relaxing.I just passed the half-way point of my stay here. I have conducted some national-level interviews and visited the dam site on an official press visit with Vietnamese radio, newspaper, and television crews. The country has grown on me - it has much natural beauty, you can swim in the rivers and waterfalls, climb limestone mountains. I have taken endless photos of the water buffalo and thatch-roofed houses in the rural countryside. I use the public buses and a motor scooter to get around and live in a house with guest bedroom if anyone is interested to come visit. The people here produce beautiful handicraft - wood carvings, gems, lacquer ware, woven textiles of silk and cotton, and finely detailed paintings. The local way of life here is quiet, very early morning rise - sometimes before the sun comes up - preparations of alms for the monks or food for the family - work - housework or out of house work - midday nap - afternoon cooking and work and early evenings to bed.
The Watts, or Buddhist temples, appear to be the center of social and personal lives. There is both a new moon and full moon celebration, plus many holidays in between. The singing from the temples is broadcast over loud speakers, reminding me of the call to prayer of mosques and Orthodox church singing in Ethiopia. The architecture is very different - lots of slanted pitched roofs, reds and rich browns of teak doors and window frames, many fish ponds and banana leaf gardens. Some places, especially the city of Luan Prabang, maintain historic French villas from the times of when the country was part of colonial French Indo-China.
The country has been ravaged by war, colonialism, deforestation, bird and other wildlife harvesting. For a country of only 6 million, it is amazing to me to see the heavy human footprint. The dam I am studying is the center of international criticism. There are tons of Europeans and Australians living here married to locals or working for the international community. They see Southeast Asia as a vestige of unique biodiversity, magical wilderness, an old-world lifestyle. But what I see is a rapidly developing part of the world - Thailand is to me visually so similar to the US and Europe to be confusing. Poverty is evident in the rural communities and parts of the city. I see people living in the back of their shops, parking their bikes inside at night next to their bed, cooking on a small electric stove on the floor. There was a whole family living in the construction site next door to me for a month. They had a platform and hammocks to sleep in. The poorer parts of the world are changing, rapidly. I see this where I have traveled this year. The richer parts of the world seem to want to keep living museums, romanticizing the rural subsistence lifestyle. Granted, in some places, living off of the land is possible and even peaceful and beautiful. But in the places I have been this year, I see the lack of access to medicine, sanitation, markets, education as being an alarming state to live within. There is a flip side to the simple life.
As I stated, the world is changing. We pollute our waters, air, and soils. We do not think about the fact that there are people living off this same waters, air, and soils. They are impacted. New health problems arise. Loss of livelihoods and lifestyles happens. I think of the case studies I read in school about the permafrost melting in Siberia so tribal people there cannot keep food for their horses through the winter without mold. When asked how they will adapt, they said they wouldn't. This is important - many of the people we are trying to protect from mass development will not be able to continue their way of life anyway.
We are witnessing a time of change, but we have always been in a time of change. A loss one place is a gain someplace else. The problem now is management of this global change - are we managing how these balance out? Are the changes necessary? Are we looking forward far enough to really know how what we do today will impact people tomorrow or in another part of the world? Are we just going to continue the suffering of the weak and voiceless? Continue the eradication of the rich and fascinating species of birds and animals and plants we have never even laid eyes on? I don't really have a big answer, just a small one for starters.
Please consume less and somehow get involved in this global awareness. These are our brothers and sisters, this is our planet, our home. We should not stand by and do nothing when we have the power to do something.
You can read more about her trip on her excellent blog, The Way of Water.
Safe travels, Jen.
"A person’s stripes are inside; those of a tiger are outside." - Lao proverb
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