First Full Day at the School

I wake up at 5am. I've slept for seven uninterrupted hours! I feel rested and alert and the sun is beginning to rise. I decide to go for a bit of a stroll and familiarize myself with the school site and surroundings. As the beautiful green outdoors greets me I feel positive and curious. Twenty or more dragonflies buzz about the front yard of the library, butterflies do their funny inefficient dance among the flowers and the sound of birds, insects and lizards greet me. The smell of plant life and the never-ending music of the babbling stream surrounds me. I decide to retrace the long pathway into the school and end up at the entrance to the school from the road. A sign for the school has been painted by So, Ramsey, Joren (a childhood friend of Ramsey's that visited last year), and Gong (a paid employee of the school and Ramsey's right hand man).

To the left of the sign is the "cow bridge" that leads to the school.

Ramsey explains the purpose of the school.

I walk back down the pathway towards the kitchen. I find some of the students cooking and try to communicate with them.

They are extremely shy and only know a few English words and I don't speak the Lao language. After unsuccessfully trying to convey a few things, I go back to the library to fetch some things I hope will help. I bring paper, pencil crayons and markers over and I also bring a hammock. Oh yeah...I should explain the hammocks.

Before I left, Ramsey told me the school had one hammock, and the students clamber over it all the time. It has the warm allure of a campfire. As a gift to the school, I have brought over three more hammocks. I got them in Guatemala last year, and now they're here with me in Laos. The carbon footprint on these things is a bit laughable. I wonder if my intended gift of relaxation will turn into a curse of slack and increased inefficiency. I can’t help it though - everyone should have access to a hammock. They feel awesome and they help slow down time, though I have heard from Ramsey that Laos doesn’t need any help with that. In Ramsey's first year in Laos he emailed me describing Laos time...that in Laos, time as not linear, or even traversing along a spiral, it is merely a point. It will be interesting to experience this singularity.

So I bring the stuff over to the students and this allows me to draw pictures to help me communicate with them. As they gather around me, I am aware that I'm truly a giant here. I am by far the tallest woman here and am taller than most of the men as well. Chalk it up to an Asian growing up on nutrient dense foods and hormones in the meat and dairy. At 5'4" I tower over most of them. Ramsey is 6'2", and they'll meet Nick in four weeks and he's almost 6'4". All us Canadians will be Gullivers and the student the Laollaputians. They like the hammock and begin to draw on the paper. A bit of ice has been broken.

I continue my self-directed tour of the school and make a mental map of the place. One kitchen (the centre of all non-school activity), one school, one girl's dorm, one boy's dorm, one beehive toilet facility, one library/So and Ramsey's house, one employee house/Gong's house, and one mushroom house under construction (they will grow mushrooms on site once the building is completed) all embedded within garden/farming land and cupped by a flowing stream. There is no internet for miles around. No land lines, and just recently (few months) they've begun to receive a cell phone signal. It's funny to see farmers wearing worn clothes while talking on their cellular. The whole land line thing has skipped most recently developing nations. Telecommunications has gone straight to cell phones because it's cheaper than setting up the lines. The school's electricity is supplied by solar panels.

Kitchen
School
View of the Stream from the School

Well
Solar Panels
Flora - pretty yellow flowers, and a papaya tree!

I help So make breakfast by making a Laos chili dip that will go with the sticky rice and fried egg breakfast. Inside a large earthen mortar and pestle, I mash up roasted chilis, roasted garlic and salt into a rough smashed mixture. Charcoal-fire barbequing is an important technique in Laos cooking. So adds a little bit of soy sauce to the paste at the very end. A chili sauce of some sort is made with almost every meal. I am enamored with the mortar and pestle - it's a great tool. I will get one for myself to take back with me to Canada. So, Ramsey, Gong and I sit down for breakfast. I really like the sticky rice and this time I avoid picking up any chilis while I dip into the paste. The paste is delicious and painful, but I keep on eating it. So and Ramsey tell me there's this Laos term - bach ve - for people who eat so much chili that their lips go red and puffy and the redness begins to extend beyond the borders of their lips (I imagine Ronald McDonald). They tell me I'm not puffy yet, but all of a sudden I feel faint and high, much like I did that first time in Pakse. My brain is a bit confused and Ramsey tells me I'm repeating myself. I feel dizzy and need to lie down so I carefully walk to the school and lie down on one of the benches until the body buzz passes and I feel a bit steadier. I come back to the kitchen to be greeted with admonishments from So about my chili consumption. Ramsey says he wants me to have as much of an authentic experience here as possible. The Laos people must have some of the hottest foods on the planet, seriously - what will I eat here without dying?!

Fruit? Ah yes. At lunch I eat rambutan, logan, custard apple and mangosteen. All super fresh and delicious. I am content and more comfortable. The fantasy of a vacation in paradise begins to return and transition into reality.

On a small motorbike, So takes me to see the village chief and the police to make my stay here official. I see the chief, but the police are not in. The bureaucracy here is high. Last year when Joren visited, Ramsey and So didn't take him to the proper officials soon enough, so the officials took it upon themselves to come to the school once they heard there was a new falang (Western foreigner in Lao) in the district. Ramsey doesn't want a repeat of this experience with me. I don't quite understand the ins and outs of the Laos government here, but it's taken a lot for Ramsey to convince the government that his intentions for the school are not ones that will subvert the norms of their society. Foreigners always pose a potential threat of this.

There are sixteen students at the school, seven boys and nine girls. They are all from farming families and don't have a lot of money for schooling. The school provides poor Laos youth with an opportunity for more education and for a chance to learn some English. Only three of the students are actually Laos, the rest are from the diverse ethnic groups that make up 40% of the population of Laos, but they can all speak the common Lao language. The youngest is sixteen years old and the oldest is twenty-three. They seem younger than that somehow. It's partially their small stature, but as well, their shyness. Most of them have had only limited or truncated schooling. They are very nice and polite. If only my students were as nice!

The student's daily routine at the school involves:
5 am - wake up, gardening/farming/food prep and cooking, washing in the river,
7:30 am - breakfast
8:30 am - morning class
11 am - food prep and cooking, lunch
1 pm - afternoon class
4 pm - more gardening/farming/food prep and cooking,
7/8 pm - dinner, free time
9-10 pm - sleep