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Published: April 10th 2006
Burning the hillsides
This gives you a sort of idea of what it looked like driving from Luang Prabang to Sayabouli in the middle of the burning seasonHappy Easter everyone! yes I have managed to get myself together to present to you a very LONG next installment....
Work takes me to Sayabouli province quite a bit as we have 3 projects up there at the moment (in the north/west of Laos) and this time I was on a mission to visit a community based disaster preparedness project in Hongsa district. Sivisay (the Hongsa project driver) and I jumped in the ute and headed off on the paved road toward Luang Prabang. Then, about 2 minutes into the smooth journey we took a left hand turn onto a dirt road. All seemed well for about another 10 minutes, the usual dirt road bumps and dips, that is until we arrived at the river. There was no bridge at the river. Now when I say river, I don’t mean a little stream. I mean an actual wide, fast flowing river. So, discovering why we needed a four wheel drive on this project we drove straight into the river with the water pretty high up the car doors. I have to say Sivisay made it seem all too easy, but I suppose he does cross it every week or so.
The road on the other side didn’t actually start for about 100 metres from the bank, and we drove up a wide cart track that ran through the centre of a village until we hit the next main dirt road.
The road to Hongsa District winds its way through an incredibly hilly landscape. Now when I say hilly you have to imagine in your mind drawing a bunch of tight zigzags as the photos don't really do it justice. There was literally no flat ground whatsoever, at one point we drove over a hill and it opened up into about a 2 sq km flat land, and I was literally shocked, I had grown so used to seeing hill after hill. I always find it incredible to imagine ploughing, planting, weeding, harvesting on a steep hillside inorder to grow enough to feed your family let alone be able to have enough produce to sell in the market. It is basically incredible that anything is able to be produced at all.
Going back to the road though, it was very rare for the road to go straight for more than 50 metres. Essentially for 2 hours we were climbing
Burning the hillsides
This is a photo taken on the way to a village visit in Hongsa to give you an idea of how much is cleared. People clear one area of land one year and move on to another, letting the vegetation regrow on the old land. up one side of a mountain or hill, going down the other, all the while turning sharp blind corners every 10 - 20 metres or so. The road itself had so many small hills within it there was a stage where I literally felt like I had been on a rollercoaster for maybe a little longer than is actually healthy. You know those stomach dips you get when you are on a rollercoaster? As thrilling as they are occasionally, having them every couple of minutes for 2 hours tends to make you feel a bit queasy.
Last time I was in Sayabouli province it was cold and misty. You could barely see the mountains as the cloud cover was so low. This time however, farmers were clearing and burning off large sections of the hillsides to preparing them for this years crop. As you can see in the photo the fires are pretty large, sometimes taking up an entire hillside right down to the side of the road. If one of these was to go astray the impact could be huge. The effect of all this burning was that the sky was filled with smoke and ash. The sun
Hongsa Village
This is a scene of Pu Toui Village in Hongsa which I visited with the project team. There is a point on the top of the hill where the road demarkates the Thai/Lao border. You could (if you had long arms like me....) Hold the leaf of a tree in Thailand and Laos at the same time. was almost completely blocked out so that is appears like sunset/dusk all day long and pieces of ash float around in the air around you. Even landing at Luang Prabang airport on the way here, we couldn’t really see the airport until we were extremely close to actually landing because the air was so thick with smoke.
I also made a field trip to Khammoune province in the south of Laos last week with some people from CARE France who came to see a project they helped contract. As a side part of the field visit we managed to visit a village were CARE Laos had worked previously on an rural development and unexploded ordinance (UXO) clearance project. Laos is the most bombed country in the world, and the eastern side of Laos bordering with Vietnam in particular was carpet bombed with explosives from upwards of 500 pounds, to tiny bombies. Not all of the thousands of bombs dropped exploded on impact, and the result is that a large proportion of land in eastern Laos is dotted with UXO. Prime agricultural land, village land, everywhere could have UXO lying on, just below or buried deep beneath the surface.
Hongsa Village
The village is in one area and people have small huts where they raise their animals and have their agricultural land. This is a scene of someones's work hut in Pu Toui Village, Hongsa In some areas people have begun to plough land they know is contaminated with UXO because the land is fertile and they need to be able to develop it in order to produce some sort of agricultural product.
The UXO are actually also a source of income themselves, and the most injuries that happen are through people trying to remove the explosive devices/material from the bomb so they can sell the scrap metal for cash. It is also common for children to pick up the bombies and play with them, only to have them explode in their faces.
The bombs are so old now, and tempermental youknever know if one is going to go off or now. I was told about the story of a grandmother that had used a small bomb as a hammer for over 10 years. It is a heavy, long, useful shaped instrument and it never exploded. However, one day the impact of her using it as a hammer must have jarred it enough to explode in her hand.
The photos probably don’t show it well, but the village we visited is completely dotted with bomb craters/holes many of which were turned into
Hongsa Village
The project in Hongsa also provides water supply to households for irrigation. This activity has resulted in households planting vegetable gardens that they previousl did not, which means a more varied and nutritious diet and things to sell in the village/area market as well. These two men are standing near the water pipe that has allowed them to expand their rice paddy land and establish a flourishing vegetable garden. fishponds as part of the project. It is literally like walking on the face of the moon; crater after crater after crater…
On our way to the village we passed some UXO clearers at work and they told us that they were about to explode/clear a couple of 500 pound bombs they had found. They were using a technique that meant they could blast open the bomb casing to remove the explosive device inside to be exploded in a safe place later. In all cases a safe area of over 2kms sq is cleared of all people, with scouts patrolling the perimeter to ensure no one innocently walks into the area. On our way back from the village however we had stopped for a toilet break and suddenly the car shook, my heart stopped and in the distance we saw a cloud of smoke rise over the trees. We were probably over 2 KMs away, but it felt as though it had gone off right next to us. We saw the team later and they explained that the technique they used on the first bomb had worked but the second one resulted in the actual bomb exploding instead.
Hongsa Village
This house was the only decorated house in Pu Toui and the words at the top say "house of love". I have had some visitors to Vientiane over the last month or so. Stephen C and Amanda come by for a weekend of sunset beers, massages, and just general lazying about. Sarah G from CARE Aust came to stay for a while and did some work for CARE Laos even though it was essentially still her holiday in Lao. That’s the trouble of going on holiday to a place with a CARE office!
I headed off for a long weekend in Cambodia to attend Morivan’s wedding in Kampong Cham, catch up with Jen, Dan, Claire, Toughy, Stephen, Pun, Molika, Seyda, Pete and Fie and all my other Phnom Penh based friends. The wedding was great, lots of dancing ramwong around a table with a bunch of roses and leftover wedding cake in the stinking heat, beer, drunk uncles, speeches, but with a kind of game show feel to it all as a comedian was hosting the reception and had all the sound effects down pat with drum rolls,, cymbal clashes and snazzy modern keyboard sounds for everything that was said or happened on stage. Everyone looked great in their specially made clothes for the wedding, but I have to
Hongsa Market
Hongsa market can be limiting at times. IT depends on the day, month, weather conditions to determine what will be available that day. There are times where there is no meat available, or only 1 or 2 kinds of vegetable for example. admit I was concerned about the well hairsprayed flammable hairdos walking around when someone brought out packets and packets of sparklers. I was waving my in the air when I looked down and realied that I was towering over the flammable hairdos showeing sparks all over them. I stopped playing with sparklers.
I managed to fit in drinks on a Mekong cruise with Stephen, Jen and Nell (Nell is a good friend of Jen’s from Scotland who randomly bought a one way ticket to Cambodia, and turned up to surprise Jen the week I arrived). The Phnom Penh riverside is constantly changing and it just isn’t the same without the Naga Casino boat. The Casino has now moved into a monstrosity of a building but there is something about an ancient, rusting, somehow still afloat boat hosting Phnom Penh’s only casino that I vaguely (I said vaguely) appealing.
Some of you may be pleased to know that I met up with some my old Koh Kong team who happened to be in Phonm Penh when I stopped into the CARE office to say hellow. Unfortunately it appears that the story of my incident with the mud crabs is
Bombing of Laos
You may be able to make out the bomb crater in this photo. The village is basically built on the small bits of flat land in between the craters. one of those silly foreigner stories that gets told and retold and retold to all the new staff out there! I am famous!......ummmm……
Friends International is an organization that helps street children, and children at risk of living on the street. They are very well known in Phnom Penh and still relatively new in Lao. Friends put on a public concert right on the Mekong riverside (on the stage where the outdoor public aerobics classes are held every night at 6pm). The kids sang, danced and acted out skits which they had choreographed and written. Then on came this group of about 3 teenage boys, one girl and a 4 or 5 year old boy. They started breakdancing away on stage, headspins, and all the other strangely contortionist things that breakdancers seem to do. There was this one boy who was doing a caterpillar type roll with his body but he would land and roll, somehow launch himself mid roll about a metre into the air. It was pretty impressive performance. Apparently there was a French dance group in town for a while and they trained some of the kids to dance and they have continued practicing and dancing
Bombing of Laos
The village leader and his family described how they were keeping this bomb casing as a souvenir. since.
I mentioned in one of my other blogs that I have stated playing (or trying to play as the case may be….) touch football. Yes I know, I didn’t play in Australia, in fact I think I may have avoided it, but here I am in Lao and I have found myself turning up on Sunday morning for training. The other week there was an extra session down on the Mekong sandbar. As it is the dry season the river level is really low and there is an area of the Mekong in Vientiane (right in front of the centre of town) where it seems over half the river width is a sand bar. So there we were running around barefoot playing football in the hot sun on a beach in the middle of the Mekong wondering if we were in Laos or Thailand (answer was apparently the sand bar is Laos). As we were finishing someone turned up with a Frisbee so I hung around with a couple of others to throw a Frisbee around as the sun was setting. To make things even more bizarre, that night I went to a ninja party at someone’s house
Bombing of Laos
People call the bomb craters many things, but one of the best is the "fishponds from the USA" or fishponds from the sky. There are jokes about ask and you shall receive.... (ashamedly I didn’t even try to get into the theme), but…and I know there are those of you out there that will understand my excitement, there was a jumping castle in the backyard! A jumping castle for big people! Finally! Actually it was more like a huge blow up castle with a rope ladder to climb up and then a really steep slide down the front but it was bouncy and a castle!!
I found my first snake in the front yard a couple of weeks ago. I was heading out to the front gate, and just as I was going to reach for the lock I turned my head to the left and saw a snake frozen on the gate. It was black and green diamond patterned, very thin and very long. I tiptoed away backwards and ran to get my housemate Andrew to come and have a look. When we both got back to have a look the snake decided it didn’t like us strangely enough, and started moving. It was so fast we could barely see it move til it was gone. It slithered its way up the fence, through the bushes up a tree the
Bombing of Laos
These boats are made from the casing of bombs that landed. It turns out that they are the perfect size and shape for making long boats! practically jumped from the branch of one tree to another. I think we both breathed a sigh of actually illogical relief as the other tree is in the yard next door. Oh good, the snake is next door it can’t hurt us now…but umm…do you think it might find its way back again?
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hee hee
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Nami, it's about time you sent another update. Surely you must have got yourself into an embarassing, clumsy or silly situation again by now!