Blogs from South, Laos, Asia

On the 7th of October, just prior to my solo return to Laos, we witnessed Hamas slaughter and kidnap, crazily initiating what was sure to be, and was/is a terrible retribution. As heinous as the Hamas action was the Israeli response has justly seen world-wide condemnation, including many Jewish voices, who simply cannot condone the flippant disregard for the thousands of collateral innocent lives lost and the hundreds of thousands displaced, their livelihoods and homes destroyed, with starvation a very real threat. It is difficult not to view the Israeli offensive as a genocide of the Palestinian people and even harder not to consider the Palestinian scattering an ethnic cleansing. There again, the latter is hardly novel as what little was left of Palestine after the creation of Israel in 1947 (and the subsequent land-grabs of ... read more

In our last missive I decried the residual resistance to vaccine uptake in parts of the wealthy west, as well as its hesitant roll-out to their juveniles. Even more pertinently we worried about the limited availability and constrained distribution of vaccines within developing countries. Such outcomes were likely to see new, potentially more threatening, variants emerge. And sadly so it proved. Most of Africa trails far behind the rest of the world in terms of vaccination rates, whilst several countries there still have outrageously high numbers of individuals infected with (non-retrovirally controlled) HIV whose defining immunocompromising nature enables other co-infecting viruses to multiply to horrendous densities, thereby, mathematically, increasing the probability of new mutations arising. Thus, from somewhere in the soup, we saw the emergence of mega-mutated Omicron that, whilst it... read more

There’s a British phrase, oft rolled-out at times when their acquirement is in the ascendancy (think Christmas and pandemics): that a dog is for life. No such sentiment exists here, at least not rurally. Dogs are not so much owned as inherited; if they choose to live close to you then other humans may consider them yours, although the canine’s allegiance may flip at any time. Equally, if their presence becomes a hindrance there is little saccharinity involved in ridding yourself of the nuisance. Dogs are transient. Our original alpha male here at Sipasert, Chilo (my first Laos love), bit two individuals and was duly exiled. We have never seen him again. The same fate befell Pak Dam when, as a playful young pup, he nipped Ali. However, on that occasion, our impassioned campaigning did see ... read more

I finish a blog and, once posted, have absolutely no inclination to type any new thoughts for at least a week. Of course you do, typically, have to wait for something mildly of interest to actually occur before you can write about it. But, with current inevitable time on our hands, I re-read our previous blogs from Laos and they bring the pandemic’s projection very much into real-time focus, revealing the shocking reality of quite what can happen, has happened, in such a short period of time. In little more than 5 months (since the WHO announced the outbreak as a pandemic on the 11th of March) we’ve gone from 126,214 cases and 4,628 deaths worldwide to a position where several countries are independently recording half that number of new infections per day and globally we’ve ... read more

Our last day in Brasil found us in our most favoured of habitats, a local’s boozer. Here the indulgent management blessed their rare gringo visitors with a – lengthy - Celine Dion medley on the jukebox. We were touched and not too traumatised, but still thought this weird. Fast forward eight months to yesterday in Laos. Teaching was over for the day and we’d just polished off our self-caught fish dinner when Khamlar came running. “Teachers, come come, we go”. Where? Along with the elder children we piled into the back of the pick-up and off we sped into the sticky night. The throbbing neon lights that greeted us did not suggest a two year old's birthday party, but that it was… for the stocky bruiser that is Mario (yes, a further name we can pronounce). ... read more

Donnerstag, den 7. Februar haben Stefan und ich den 13h30 Bus von Vang Vieng zur Hauptstadt von Laos genommen, Vientiane. Die Busfahrt war ganz okay und zum Glück hielt der Bus nicht weit von unserem Hostel an, so dass wir nicht noch einen Tuk Tuk nehmen mussten, sondern ein paar Minuten zu Fuß laufen konnten. :-) Unser Hostel, das Barn 1920, war ein ziemlich cooler Ort : der Empfang, der Gemeinschaftsraum und das Kaffee im Hostel waren alle im Style der 20iger Jahre dekoriert und das Personal trug 20iger Jahre Kleidung. Auch die Zimmer waren super : jedes Bett hatte einen Vorhang und ein Schließfach, die Betten waren gemütlich und es gab genügend Toiletten und Duschen. :-) Als wir gegen 19h ankamen waren wir ziemlich hungrig und so sind wir sofort nach dem einchecken zum Markt ... read more