Helping Laos: Meth in, Children out
In the heart of Indochina lies Laos, a landlocked country where forested mountains and lowland plains give the population a vantage for rice cultivation. The country’s population is roughly 7.3 million people, with most of them devout Buddhists. Through Buddhism and their strong attachment to tradition, people in Laos have developed a unique way of life. However, this does come with countless challenges. I previously talked about my overall experience in the country in a previous post (link here).
Laos’s big brother is China, with whom its economic bonds grow each year, as well as its debt. China's influence is immense, ranging from the financing of the Laotian highways, high speed trains and recently settled an agreement to co-manage the whole national electricity administration. Currently the slow economic growth and the devastating effects of the corona-related policies placed Laos in a tough spot, as it seems like it won’t be able to repay it’s loans. At the time of writing Laos has suffered a high inflation of around 10 percent in only a year. The net effect of all these (unfortunate) circumstances is that a major percentage of the population has now become vulnerable to poverty, and worse. Crime gives the a faint hope of escaping the hardship, or at least a temporary way out. The largest avenue of illegal activity is drug dealing. An authentic illustration of this was shown in 2021 when the largest narcotics seizure ever in the history of Asia was made: 55 million pills of methamphetamine and 1.5 tons of crystal methamphetamine. But it doesn’t end in drug trafficking; human trafficking is also rampant. Women and girls are smuggled out of the country for prostitution, sexual slavery and labor exploitation. This is the result of a despaired and anguished society ensuing an impoverished community.
The future generations have even more challenges ahead although they benefit from hope and the light of new opportunities due to the country’s efforts on transport and connectivity. Archaic methods in the government’s administration make education an arduous task. At first, children registration is done by the families reporting to the local authorities. School is obligatory in Laos until 11 years old but in practice this is not followed for several reasons. In part because there is a lack of qualified education personnel and teachers and in part because the children are expected to help the parents at work in the agricultural field (which gives jobs to around 70% of the population).
In the light of these events and my imminent presence in the country, I decided to involve myself and contribute lightly to improve the future of the upcoming generations.
In the vicinity of Vang Vieng in the outskirts of a 200-meter-wide village the Sae Lao project is located. Sae Lao is a restaurant by day and school by evening. During the day, the restaurant functions as any other, dedicating all its profit to fund the amenities that are available for the teachers and students. I served there as a volunteer for a week. The purpose of the school is to teach English for free to children from around the area. Later I came to discover that some travel as far as 8 km by bike every day to attend the class. This opens an opportunity for them to engage in the tourism sector and other international-related activities. Therefore this makes it slightly unlikely that they fall in the drug trafficking business, recur to narcotics, prostitution or forced labor. My aim during my stay there was to support education, offer my knowledge, share my practical skills and of course: learn like any other.
A 25-year old guy arrived in a single engined tractor to the riverside in Vang Vieng. The back side of the tractor (made of wood) was falling apart and the wood planks supporting me squeaking on every bump reminded me that in most of Asia (like in Africa) security is on your own.
Once I arrived at the premises I started preparing the lesson of the day. It was Friday and for the students it was a “fun day”. To my surprise-not-surprise the premises were in negligent conditions. Power wires were tangled from tree to tree, ruined constructions at a distance, old-fashioned toilets with ineffective sewage, salvaged parts, dangerous items, a pile of smelly trash next to the class, cats and dogs all populated the same land. Mor Lor, Jou Lee and a family lived in the property and the restaurant cook: Mien Ma only stayed there during the day. The family had an agreement with the owner so as they were allowed to stay in the premises and take care of the whole terrain so it wouldn’t fall neglected and eaten by jungle. In practice, vegetation had already eaten a big part of the compounds and weather was doing its thing with what used to be a dormitory. There was so much to do in such a short time but the schedule of such had to be done first. I couldn’t do it all, I had to prioritize.
The first lesson was fun. I had as much fun as the kids. I transformed into every known animal from the elephant with the biggest trump in the savanna to the fastest dolphin in the ocean. But the class passed in the blink of an eye and after singing: “heads, shoulders, knees and toes” for the five hundred and eleventh time the students were overwhelmed. The quietness reigned after they were gone and the forestry sounds slowly engulfed the whole compound accompanied by the pitch darkness. At dinner time at the porch, the insects were tremendously committed to giving us such a concert that even mosquitoes did not want to miss it.
Yeoh, in his sixties, Malaysian from Chinese origins, was an exceptionally energetic retired teacher that amidst his busy routine and tireless life decided to come to this remote place of Laos to contribute with his teachings and patience skills. In his free time he admired others and wasn’t reluctant to let that be known to others. He would give compliments for everything and his experience as an aged man was overshadowed by his youthful curiosity and eagerness to learn new things. He was always carrying his fanny pack and his backpack which was his signature outfit piece.
Another volunteer from The Netherlands completed the team of 3, including me. She was a relatively inexperienced traveler with her first backpacking experience being, of course, Thailand. She was open to every kind of dirty work independently of the roughness of its nature. With no words of complaint and a pair of big open arms she was eager to engage in every nature-related activity. Unlike me and the other volunteers she was able to deliver the lovely side to the children.
The next day I woke up early and after a talk with the coordinators of the facilities we made a list of things that required special attention. These include creating an orchid to provide food and being self-sustainable, electricity fixes, fixing social media and arranging a platform for future volunteers to find the foundation in Laos.
The first one was not easy. It involved heavy work with a machete through a dense part of wild jungle-like terrain. The objective was to clear off all the vegetation, cover it up with a fence, fertilize the dirt and prepare it for plantation. This involved clearing off several trees and getting rid of whatever litter was hidden underground. Years ago they left dry packs of cement in there and they needed to be removed as well. While washing off all those vegetations I realized that I was an intruder into such a small ecosystem where hundreds of insects lived. At some point I unleashed a pile of compost waste with a shovel and an intense odor started to spread through the area. This added to the intense heat of the summer and extended the tedious task throughout the course of two days. On the second day I found an apparently cute snake. I found it fun to play with it around the blade of the machete for a while. It turns out that, according to locals who saw me, the snake was lethal. Woops, I thought. Ignorance can be dangerous sometimes. After finishing the cleanup of the land we made a fence to prevent children from getting in there. I managed to improve the sturdiness of the fence with some rope and some leftover bamboo logs.
When I first saw the electricity installations up close I was terrified by the sloppiness and hazardousness. I managed to make my own tools. Instead of a multimeter I attached a 230V lightbulb with tape to two wires. I probed around wires and wires around the compound, especially the places frequently visited by kids. To my surprise I found a live wire next to the shower water pipe. This terrified me and later I kept discovering more and more. It was so that some lizards had hatched their eggs inside a switch and this was blocking the power for a whole burrow. Fixed this, fixed that and with the help of electric tape and a couple of more dirty tricks I set everything back to an operable state. It caught my eye that the organizers did not have working lights in their cubicle, where they slept, on the floor, but I will come back later to this topic.
I figured that fixing all these things was just a temporary solution due to the harsh, tough climate conditions of the place. The tape I installed will probably be wrinkled in a month or so, I thought. In my head these things were easy to repair but these people had so much respect for electricity. For these reasons I decided to organize a course for the administrators. I started with a theory class of 45 minutes and a not-so-short practice class, where I made them install 3-way connections, install lightbulb holders, switches and some more. My basic rules were: “Always dry”, “Shoes on” and “Always one handed”. The absence of grounding in this place made all the lessons simpler, but yet, dangerous.
The social media part was the easiest. A couple of posts here and there and some paid promotions around. I also set some advertisements in several volunteering platforms. Later I discovered that the latest brought dozens of volunteers in the course of the following months. I was happy and satisfied.
The administrators of the property: Mor Lor and Jou Lee were tough. They were volunteers. But they had a very tough resilient personality. They accepted every single idea with open arms and were disposed to do whatever was needed to improve something. The first time they invited me in their dorm, right above the classroom, I was amazed. Jou Lee slept in a tent over the wooden floor while Mor Lor had a small mattress. They didn’t have windows nor lights and the cracking of the wood paired neatly with the spider webs around. Was that human, I thought? The image of a cramped family sleeping in a hut in Tanzania came to my head and, even though I hate comparisons, it placed these people in a very advantageous position with respect to the sub-equatorial ones.
“Let there be light” - I said- “ We will install new lights here so you can see during the night”.
“Yes. Thank you!” - Replied Mor Lor with excitement. I knew he was Christian and he would get the reference. He was well educated and went to the university of Vientiane. He was quite humble and little expressive but I had a feeling that it was a big deal.
I went down the stairs after seeing their dorm and I thought of how stupid I was complaining about the heat during the night. At least I had a fan for God's sake!
For the next week I made endless improvements that, I thought, would make an impact on the lives of these people. Of course, I did not forget the children, which I got to treasure and learned, once more, from them. I gave them English lessons one after another and the children kept coming back at 18:00 the next day. The children always teach me the most valuable long-lasting lessons. They are, with their innocence and absence of corruption, the purest form of goodness of the human being. Was maybe Rousseau correct? It was crude to imagine that there, in that classroom, was a potential victim of sexual slavery, human trafficking, drug smuggling or other atrocities. But in between the crudest forms of life they were now lucky to at least have a second chance on the table. My relaxing thought was that these children will have the chance to read in English and access the amounts of information out there. I thought that the impact I would have on these children was minimal, I was only a small brick in the castle of their education. But should that prevail, it will pass on to the next generation, increasing the chances of good opportunities for these people.
