I laughed when he saw the guide to arrive this morning: this is not the one with whom I negotiated! Lao Loum who knows nothing about mountain cultures here, or nature, he was barely fifteen years. Very nice, but unable to cope when problems arise. I am glad not to be alone with her party.
- What is this fruit? It is eaten?
- I do not know. Sorry.
- You know since when the trees are cut?
- No, I do not know, really sorry.
- And this bird is what?
- Sorry. Sorry.
He does not know Nor where you can get water, or if there are nearby villages. He looks at me with round eyes. My questions are uncomfortable. Obviously, we had not warned that I wanted to do a story, or that I needed a guide that can educate me and bring me to what residents say. Him, he explained the way he guides us. Point. Good.
At noon meal in the cabin of two workers at a rubber plantation in the works. They camped here alone in the middle of this desert land to live.
- You work for who?
- A Chinese company.
- You're Laos?
- Chinese.
morons of the sun, it crosses at a run of desolate hills. Stumps of trees cut very recently. Bare earth. Dead silence. Laos still I had not imagined.
Late afternoon we arrive at Bansa, leu Thai village on the edge of a Mekong I do not know in this state. Momentum muddy and bordered with black rock roaring and wide sandy beaches that are covered in the rainy season. Misleading impression of a nature preserve, yet when the river carries each day of tons of pollutants coming directly from Chinese industries. On the other side, a dark and dense jungle. It's Burma.
Village on stilts. Pigs
black freedom.
Sol littered with shit and piss.
Children play in bare feet.
When they see us, they become silent and suspicious.
Chief absent - gone to China on business, on his boat motor - our "guide" does not really know how. The neighbor invited us to go home and we install. She has an air rider, curious, sincere. You sit on both low stools to smoke while others will be washed into the stream. I handed him the packet of cigarettes:
- Ya soup? She prefers her
tobacco house, rolled like a huge firecracker in a school notebook worksheet. It looks long, we smiled. It's the end of the day, she is tired, but still very beautiful, very dignified, with the bun of hair graying carefully knotted.
We smoke, looking in the same direction, as friends.
- Why you came here?
Uh. I came here to be there. How to say it?
- Where is your husband?
is true that, where it is?
- My husband and I have not found it yet. And you, your husband, he is where?
- At the rice field.
- Ah. We look
pigs gnawing thongs left at the foot of the stairs.
The night falls, the others have returned from their bathroom. We moved into the house, around the home - a square of dirt. No opening in the roof to vent smoke, no window except a small day in a woven bamboo walls. In one corner, an ancestral altar with plastic flowers and garlands. Wall, an advertisement for a beautiful glossy red car is used for decoration.
A young man brings a small chicken for our meal. He will be killed without a noise, a knife in a dark corner of the house. A woman brings her vegetable garden: several kinds of cabbage are cooked with chopped meat rubbery and peppered with cinders.
We observed all smiling. Our small group behaves quite well, I feel. Squatting or sitting on the ground, many villagers are there to see falanga. Children, especially. Some women, including Akha, who came to visit a village a few hours of operation: traditional costume, headdress ostensibly tree. While they were setting up for the night - it takes the place of children who, themselves, go to the neighbors - each of our actions and our objects is discussed in whispers.
During the night I'm going to pee outside. In one house away from town, wheezing and sounds dull and regular. I'm telling myself that it was the shaman who lives there. Or a prostitute.
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