Stubborn Martin

Lao work is like playing dodge ball in heavy traffic – or whatever metaphor will work explaining that you can’t always get where you want to go, work is sometimes slowed to a halt and that accidents happen On the other hand, there are always ways to simply jump on another bus and try another direction.

I get a new idea and chew until its finished. The other day I found an empty storefront for rent right across from a major high school. The owner said he’d rent for 6 million a year (Something like $700 US). I wanted to rent for one day and give it a try. The floor just needed sweeping and I didn’t care about the sand lot in front or the reinforcing cables strewn around in the back. I needed a table, two chairs and some string to hang up books and make it attractive. Shop is open for business. No problem.

I had to talk to the son to get his permission. We were on the phone for more than 40 minutes. No language, English or Lao could convince him. I wouldn’t give up because he had no legitimate excuse. “The room’s not finished”. He said. “For me, it’s not a problem.”, I would say once or twice or eventually shouted three times to try to get through. It’s like those forest fire warning signs. We start with damp, cool and safe and progress to red-hot flaming. I went in for my final power shot. “You’re privileged. You’ve had a chance to be educated. Most people in Laos don’t have that chance. I don’t want this room for my own interests. I’m trying to help you country so that this miserable state of education doesn’t have to last forever. Do you understand? Why can’t you help me? I’m only asking for one day.”

I can sense a change in tone. He’s softening. I have the phone to his father to see if they can agree on a final deal. My phone battery is ready to give out, but he gives in. I’ve got a day.

His mother says, “He’s a stubborn bastard, isn’t he?” I can’t believe she’s saying this. I apologize for being so rude. “You weren’t rude at all. You talked kind of loud, but he’s got a stone head. My daughter-in-law is much more reasonable.”

They tell me that ten, mind you, ten people have called to rent the place and each time he’s said, “Oh, ho hum, I don’t know.” I’m the eleventh and the first to get through to him. Not bad for broken Lao. Not surprising for stubborn Martin.

Shop is open
We hand out flyers in front of the school gate across from our new shop. It’s after eight and the late students are streaming in. The stream includes late teachers. They’re ready to close the gate and then there’s a reverse stream of students leaving. It’s like a fish ladder with not many fish spawning. What’s going on with this school?

I decide to use my thick skin and get my way into the school. A teacher takes me to the administrator and I get ready for another stubborn moment. He understands, but clouds over saying that he’d need to clear it with this committee and that committee and that we’d need a microphone. I can see the read stamps.

Then I go again for the power point. “I don’t have time. I’ve come from Vientiane to promote books. You don’t have time, because your school and your country is bleeding. I’ve seen students streaming out of this school and I’ve seen students finish higher education with knowledge so low that they are unemployable. I just need three minutes for each class. It’s not just about books sales, it’s about inspiring them to study, to use their brains and give themselves a decent future.”

He gives in. I get three classes. The teacher takes me around and I end up getting to talk to eight. He’d be ready to take me to all 74, but I’m losing my voice. The students are OK. They’re fairly responsive and what you’d expect from teenagers, but many classes don’t have a teacher or if they do, they seem too sullen to be good educators.

I expect a flood of students to come and buy books. By lunch, we’ve sold one. We eat lunch and call it a day. This is not where we need to sell books. BounNgeun wants to sell at the ethnic orphan high school that he graduated from. He says it’s poor, but the teachers are strict, they care more and he feels he got a decent education. He’s convinced that students will pay for books with their own money.

We chalk it up as a learning experience. Later, a private school administrator describes the situations as “weird”. It’s “weird” she says. It’s weird that students say they want an education, but don’t know the value of a book. She says country kids want to study, but can’t. She says city kids have the chance to study, but don’t. It’s another mysterious, but convincing formula that can explain education in Laos.

It takes a bit of stubbornness. It takes stamina to explain to people about something they have no concept of. It takes persistence to stick with something that doesn’t promise quick results. It takes stubbornness to say, “No, we don’t have to settle for this.” There’s got to be something better than this.

Culture Talk

I chose this guesthouse for three reasons. 1) the price 2) the garden 3) the sense that the young man working the night shift was a bright-minded and ambitious student. I was correct on all counts.

Aside from just being smart and ambitious, BounNgeun is a wonderfully social person. I make it a habit to be back by 8:00 and we spend the rest of the evening talking around the table in the lobby. Guests come in to get their keys and there is a nightly procession of small conversations. In the course of the conversations, we’ve collected what he calls lessons in “talking culture”.

“Where are you going?” ເຈົ້າຊິໄປໃສ?
This is the first phrase that should come in any Lao language book. It’s the national greeting of Laos, though it doesn’t translate well for guests leaving in the morning. Nor does, “where have you been” work well when asked abruptly in the evening. “Why? Was I supposed to stay in my room?” is the natural reaction. We practiced, “How was your evening?” and he’s used that ever since. Where otherwise guests would march to their rooms, this greetings makes people stop in their tracks, smile and start chatting.

“How much did it cost?”
The other night a nice lady gave BounNgeun a big pillow. He really liked it and asked how much it cost. Her natural reaction was to laugh and say, “Well, at least $3,000 dollars. Why do you ask?” We had to get to the bottom of why asking the price is such a common thing in Laos. What we determined was that in a Lao phrase book, the following would be a perfectly natural conversation.

B: Why are you giving this to me?
A: This is a present for you.
B: Thank you very much. It’s so nice, but it must be expensive. How much did it cost?
A: It cost $5 US at the morning market.
B: Oh, it’s expensive. How could I ever return my gratitude?
A: Don’t worry about it.

It’s kind of hard to get up the nerve to ask, but I’ll try the next time I get something.

“May I be excused?”
I got kind of concerned hearing talking about table manners. I had assumed it was Lao manners to simply leave the table without saying anything because I’d seen it happen so often. Usually, someone would get a drink of water, pick his teeth and maybe just sit around, but away from the table. I’d lived near a Hmong family and ate every meal with them for six months and that was customary. I had even done so myself though I’ve always wanted to say something like, “Oh, that was a delicious meal” or “Thank you, I’m stuffed.”

He says it’s disrespectful and downright bad manners. He’s says it’s a sign of an unhappy family. Maybe I’ve been eating with unhappy families too much. I lived near a Hmong family and ate with them every day. Come to think of it, the silent meals started to get to me. One day the older brother said, “My stomach hurts” and I caught the younger brother smirking. That’s when I realized I wasn’t in happy company.

The woes of the middle child
My own older sister loves to talk about birth order. The famous book on birth order basically says there are three patterns; one for the oldest, one for the youngest and one for the middle child. I asked BounNgeun about the cases in which there are ten in a family. He had enough information to write his own Lao version.

There are endless combinations, but let’s say the oldest is a boy and the four that follow are girls. It’s a pretty good set-up. The oldest boy has it made and doesn’t have to lift many fingers. The younger sisters can work in shifts and share the housework.

If they’re all boys, it’s hard on the parents because of dowries. Of course this varies according to ethnic groups, but they’ve got a big financial burden if they want to marry them all off.

In Khamu culture, the youngest child inherits the family fortune, if there is one. At the same time, he/she is responsible for taking care of the parents. In both cases, the spouse comes to live with the youngest child’s family. A man might be happy to marry into the wife’s family and have the security of the future inheritance, but he is always in a bit subservient position. I knew of someone in that position and he wasn’t the happiest guy around. What happens if both are the youngest? There’s discussion until a reasonable agreement is made.

“Good luck”
A: “I’m leaving first”.
B: “Good luck”.

That’s how it’s said in Lao when people part. It makes sense, but doesn’t always sound right in English. The other night, a young honeymoon-type couple stopped to chat and then excused themselves to go to bed. BounNgeun said “good luck” and they laughed.

I explained that in English “good luck” is usually used when someone is concerned if they will succeed at something or not. If BounNgeun says, “good luck” to guests who are taking a trip north on a Lao bus, they might start to wonder if they’re going to come back alive.

When useful language is learned, there’s always the joy of testing it out. The next morning, it was only natural to say, “good luck” to each other when we left to sell books. “Good luck and sell a million.”

“You’re fat”
BounNgeun was getting pretty good at charming the guests with, “How was your evening?” One night he followed that up with, “Oh, you’re fat” while patting the guest’s tummy. The guest’s smile pretty much froze and there was no comment made on such an accurate observation.

I was in an herbal sauna once and a really, really big guy walked in. The other guy who was not so petite himself immediately asked, “So, how much do you weight?” I figured it wasn’t the rudest thing to say on earth because the big guy answered that he was easily over 100 kg and then they continued to talk about his weight in detail.

In fact, I don’t know some people’s names in Vientiane because they’re referred to by their appearance. “Miss fatty this, Miss fatty that”. Apologies to those out there who might take offence. It’s culture talk.

Bad Education

No, this isn’t an example of student writing. This is an example of what one teacher wrote on the board for the students to copy. Do you believe me now? Can you imagine how hard it is for someone to learn here?

Government teachers get paid around $40 US a month. Many teachers in the countryside aren’t sure if they’ll get paid at all. In Luang Prabang, teachers make a better living working in private schools, but to make an even better living, some teachers take on classes at two different schools at the same time. It’s so common for a teacher to be absent that few people think this double-timing is strange.

Or how about this scenario for generating commerce? You teach at the university and teach so terribly that students are forced to spend money to study in the evening at a private school. That’s where you get your second job, sort of teaching the students who didn’t get anything from you where you were originally supposed to teach. If nobody complains, you’ve created your own cycle of supply and demand.

It’s not fair to talk like this. Not all teachers are like this. Let’s just I haven’t met the exceptional ones yet.

Children of a Lesser God

Sign it right

At 3:00 today, I debated whether to go to the deaf school or simply make it another day. I ended going and coming home with 400 photos.

Now I finally know which wall makes the best backdrop, who makes the best sign models and what color shirt is needed to avoid 10 hours extra work on Photoshop.

A few months ago, the intention was to simply collect a few signs to use when teaching English. Now, I’ve ended up working on a small dictionary. Of course, there’s a big need for one, but it is a big project. A conventional dictionary can hold 40 definitions on one page, but for signs, we need photos and that amounts to four words a page. Sometimes we need close-ups or side shots and often times a progression of shots to capture what should be meanings in motion. I’m not sure how I got tempted into this project other than the fact that it is immensely fun. I leave the deaf school with my right brain refreshed. I forget to speak to people who hear and the usual thought-babble in my head is tamed.

Today I brought an American sign-language book. Someone had asked for one. It was more popular than the Thai one as they had probably been educated to avoid Thai signs to prevent Lao language loss. I was curious what they were seeing. The explanations were in English, but there seemed to be enough recognizable signs. I’m sure they would find ways to communicate if given the chance. For them, it’s probably only the resistant people who can hear that are the problem.

I can’t trust that I understand, but I’m sure one boy is saying that if he could learn enough American sign language, he could go to America and communicate with a wider world. I can tell that the book helps make this dictionary project real for them. More kids are volunteering to have their pictures taken. They will be thrilled to have their own book in print.

The kids’ personalities seem more vivid without spoken words. They live together in a tiny world and though they might feel fettered at times, I sense something very special about their world, so special that I won’t be able to find words to explain until much later.

They are neither miserable nor pitiable. I cringe when the do-gooders come. The other day a couple shyly handed out plastic slippers. On another day, a troupe of rich high school girls came to entertain, singing and screaming in shrill voices. How do the kids feel? They seem to play their roles cooperatively, granting the do-gooders enough satisfaction that they can go home feeling they’ve helped miserable people. Who is more miserable? Am I too cynical?

This is one my favorite pictures. You can guess what it means. This is the boy that wants to go to America. It’s a big dream, but you can see it in his eyes. He knows how to get there too.

"S" is for "Tiger"

I had to work in Japan to make some cash. Two weeks for good money doesn’t sound like anything I should complain about, but I feel wrung through a wringer. It was cold and I could feel the blood in my ears freeze. The chill wasn’t just the temperature, it was the sight of grim commuters marching in black that gave me the shivers.

I’m back in Vientiane. The tuk tuk driver ripped me off, but reading about increasing incidents in the Vientiane Times like this assured me that I’m not the only one. (Lao people get ripped off too). Anyhow, it’s warm enough here that birds can sing in the morning.

So what could go wrong now? The printer welcomed me back. We chatted a bit and then almost casually, was invited to see the mistake they had found. In the ABC book, “S” was for “Tiger” rather than “Snake”. The printer’s daughter caught the mistake, fortunately before the books were bound, but only after 10,000 had been printed.

My heart sinks every time I find a mistake, but the mistakes just keep popping up like pimples. In the proofing stage, people give a quick OK sign. Then after it’s printed, people spot mistakes like they were printed in bold. I myself, just can’t catch things because I’ve already seen the text a thousand times. I need help.

There was a short discussion about the options and then it was decided that stickers would be printed to cover the mistake. I told them to charge me for the extra labor, but the printer said we’re here to help each other. I know it’s about give and take, but I’m not sure if I’m giving enough.

Perhaps, they had all finished their trauma because they were quite calm about it - or maybe they could see that my heart was sinking like a failed bank and they wanted to support me. I marvel at how they can teach me to keep on going. Mistakes are mistakes. Let’s fix them and move on.