Life in Laos

Hi guys!

I know I have been a terrible blogger lately!!! We left Canada with four computers for four people, but along the way we lost two. My partner's computer stopped working as soon as she put a foot in Laos and Alison's decided to crash a few weeks later. Therefore I do not have access to a good computer so often.

So here is the story of Laos so far...

First I will introduce my partners from VWB. Nicole is my partner on the wildlife project with the Eco-Guides. She is from PEI and she is a first year like me. Alison is a very expressive girl from Newfoundland who studies is Saskatoon. Her partner, Jen, from New Jersey, also studies in PEI. Alison and Jen will be part of Savannakhet University (SKU) project and are supposed to work on the new veterinary curriculum.

The first few days we were here, we lived in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Even if it is very different from Canada, it quickly felt like home. We found a couple restaurants that we likes and we lived in a pretty nice guesthouse. At this point, we met with Sonia, Blanaid and Camille. Sonia is the project coordinator for all Asian project with VWB, Blanaid is our "direct supervisor" that is going to live in Vientiane and help us if needed and Camille is a PhD student from the French Carabeans who was hired to design our survey.

After spending time in Vientiane and buying our first sin (traditional Lao skirt), we departed for Savannakhet with a night bus. These busses are big and kind of confortble but the drivers are crazy. In fact, half way to Savannakhet, we hit a motorbike! I do not think anybody got hurt but it was kind of scary.

The first week in Savannakhet was mainly filled with meetings with governmental institutions. That's when we learned that Lao burocratie is the most complicated and inefficient thing on the planet. All they do is write letters to each other. After 10 000 letters, we finally got the bad news. We did not get approval for our project by the government of Lao PDR. :o

Instead of being able to spend 1 month surveying the Silver Langurs in Dong Sakee, we were only allowed a 4 days trek... Which is highly insufficient to anything remotely scientific according to Camille.

Thats when we left for Vongsikeo, a Katang village near Dong Sakee Sacred Forest. Despite being unable to survey the monkey population, we decided to go to the forest and map it. Nobody had done it before so we thought it would certainly be useful... until we realized that Dong Sakee is about 5km long and 200 m wide... a tiny little island of forest in the middle of a destroyed habitat..

In the village, I experienced my first culture choc. We lived in a small house comprising one room and two tiny subdivisions that serve as rooms for the parents and children. All the children followed us around and spied on our every movement. Even when we were showering at the water pump, trying to get undressed under our sarong (piece of fabric sewed in a circle), trying to wash ourselves without showing skin and then getting dressed again, there were over twenty children watching us. The food was prepared by the eco-guides so there was nothing too different about it. We were sleeping in the big room on a tiny little mattress. I must say, the first day made me uncomfortable but I got used to it faster than I imagined!

The village counts over 50 families and every family has its own cattle, poultry and swine that are free roaming. In fact, the pigs are the villager's garbage and there are hundreds of them all around the houses. Everything we did had to be approved by the village chief and before we left, they organized a Baci Ceremony to wish us good luck with the rest of our lives.

Back in Savannakhet, Camille took a night bus to Vientiane in order to sort out some Visa issue and she was planning to use that time in the capital to map the forest, write a report and print some posters. Therefore, most of the work on wildlife conservation would be accomplished by her which left my partner and I without a project. We sat down with the eco-guides and tried to get them to tell us what to do. They did have some ideas, but nothing to fill an entire summer.

Since then, we have been working on leaflets on wildlife, helping the eco-guides with their computer skills and teaching them english. We also started the translation of Camille's report.

The situation changed much since, we are still trying to work hard but since we don't have any idea of how to fill our summer I made a decision. I will be dedicating another three weeks to the project, which should be enough to complete, and then I will go back to Canada.

I am not sad to leave early because I feel like I've accomplish all that I could here. I've given all my energy to this project and I will spend the rest of my time with my loved ones at home. I will be posting more pictures as soon as I can but this computer does not allow me to load pictures...

I miss you all at home and will see you soon!