Wat Phou Champasak...

Yesterday the sun melted into the clouds above Wat Phou and the sacred mountain, and I raced home on my bicycle to stay ahead of the deep black night. By the time I arrived at Champasak, behind the Kolao pick-up I'd followed closely for half the journey, the dark sky was full of wind and lightning. A short, fierce burst of rain was followed by a  downpour of an hour or so, and afterwards the air was fresh and cool, and my clothes relinquished their clinging grip on my skin.

The majestic mountain-side temple, half-swallowed by the jungle, is a breath-taking, early example of Khmer magnificence, and may have been the model upon which Angkor Wat was conceived. At the top of the steep jumble of steps, above the ancient lakes of the crumbling palace is the Buddha's Sanctuary, where the Hindu sculpture in the lintels mirrors the transformation between major religions that took place in the kingdoms of Angkor, Sukhothai, Ayutthaya, and so many other parts of Southeast Asia.

Above the Sanctuary is a spring, where water trickles from a wooden dragon's mouth into a stone trough. There are rock carvings: elephants, snakes, the Buddha's foot, and a much more ancient lizard, almost certainly carved long before the temple was dedicated to Vishnu, and long before Buddhism became the religion of the region. Wat Phu was built in the century after the Saxon settlement of England, when my ancestors lived in buildings not dissimilar to those occupied by the rural Lao today.

As the cool winds of the rainstorm drew the seething air from inside my room, I lay on the bed and watched  the insects, confused by the sudden lashing rain, as they gethered beneath the hall light. A blue dragonfly buzzed against the tube, while the lizards pounced on the slowest flies like electrified leather.

This morning, shortly after dawn, I cycled back to Wat Phou as the sun climbed above the opposite bank of the Mekong. Phou Kao, the Mountain of the God, was swathed in mists, and the Sanctuary was hidden from view. As the sun began to penetrate the early morning haze, it warmed the stone guardians of the temple to life, and the Buddha's robes began to blaze in the golden light. In the sunlight from the east it was easier to be absorbed in the intricacies of the stone carvings of the Hindu Gods and their mythological familiars. The Buddha seems almost as out of place there as I am.

The Buffalo Sacrifice...

There was a well-organised welcome for foreign visitors at Khiantanglae last night, at the party held as part of the annual buffalo sacrifice. The keyboard karaoke was preceded by an announcement in English, inviting foreigners to take a table close to the soundsytem and enjoy the evening with some Beer Lao. The sacrificial dance began within a few hours of sunset, and the men danced around the buffalo tethered with thick vines to a stock and a thick bamboo which had been split into a cascade of red and white palm streamers. Moving slowly to the beat of a buffalo skin drum, two men beat gongs, followed by eight men holding ceremonial swords and shields.

The next morning at 5.30 am, we arrived back to the village, where the only activities were butchering cattle and buffalo, and clearing the tables and chairs by the silent speakers. Eventually, assuming that we had once again misunderstood the Lao perception of time, we started walking back to Tad Lo to sleep. We met a number of people on the way back, one of whom was a Lao man who was sure that the sacrifice was to take place in the early morning. After much uncertain waiting in the village, activities began to spring up around the dusty square, and a game of dice erupted into the quiet shade of the village tree.

The square began to fill up with young boys and motorbikes, and girls returning from the river. Finally, the dancers dragged themselves from their hangovers and into the central meeting hall, which was painted with flowing swirls of ash, and topped with two buffalo horns emerging from the thatch. The young men were given Lao Lao, their cheeks painted white, with red lines drawn into the contours of their faces. They were wearing the same red cloth and wielding the same weapons as the evening before, and they were led by a cheerful man who'd greeted us warmly as he crossed the square earlier, holding a bloodied machete between dark red hands. We had a beer with him later, and the black clots of blood had dried hard when we shook hands.

The ceremonial dance seemed to follow the same pattern, around the buffalo, and around the village hall. The men were being given Lao Lao as they circled in the morning sun, and each time their orbit left the tethered buffalo's, the animal would receive a kick or the threat of a long, curved dagger. When the sacrifice began, the buffalo was hit with a bamboo stave to send it around the stock-post, and the leader of the dancers made a long slash  along its left flank, before stabbing it in the side as it ran from the bamboo lashes. The buffalo began to ooze dark, dehydrated blood from a cluster of stab wounds between its ribs.

The young bull stood strong until its lungs filled with blood and it collapsed, bleeding from its nose. Its head was propped on a rock, and as its shortening breath pushed blood pulsing down its ribs into the dust, its right ear was cut from its head. When this was done the long blade was pushed deep between its ribs, and its flanks fell, and the big black eyes stooped looking at the crowd. As the bull died, the palm fronds above were cut and pushed against the dying stream of blood, and the closest village boys ran with them around the village, shouting in triumph.

The leader of the dancers then began to throw the buffalo ear into the top of the bamboo weeping coloured palm fronds over the fallen buffalo. The man's coordination was no longer under his control, and eventually an official from Salavan threw the ear deftly down the woven funnel and into the bamboo, ensuring prosperity and happiness for the village in the coming year.

When the ceremony was complete, and the buffalo dead, the children gathered round with their festive balloons, and poked their fingers into the buffalo's wounds. We sat with some local men, and the men from the Salavan Tourist Authority, and  bought some beer. The leader of the ceremony came for a drink, and we were invited back to the chief's home for Lao Lao and some food. The steady supply of Lao Lao over the morning took its toll later, but it was the perfect accompaniment to the buffalo meat and fiery dips, sticky rice, and superb buffalo-blood paste seasoned with galangal, lemongrass and chili. It was hard to mentally accommodate the agonising fifteen minutes of merciless violence meted out to the buffalo, while simultaneously experiencing the warm intensity of Lao hospitality.

I had been prepared, and relieved, to miss the actual sacrifice of the buffalo, and resigned and content to leave after an extended and absolutely enjoyable buffalo chase that ought to have continued the comedy and remain unfulfilled. The enormous range of misinformation, mistranslation and incomprehension experienced in pursuit of the buffalo suggested that the occasion of the ceremony was a mystery beyond our understanding. When it became clear that the buffalo's reprieve was only a figment of my imagination, and the knives began to draw blood, I expected a greater surge of pity and compassion than I actually experienced. I felt immeasurably sorry for its predicament in a detached and distant way, and I imagine that the effect of the Lao Lao  I had been given after the dancers received their affected us all in a similar way. I didn't feel entirely able to hold compassion for the bull within my mind without also making judgement of the people and culture in which their treatment of the animal was a matter of social and spiritual necessity. When the buffalo finally died, I was so wholly relieved that the horror of its tortuous death was concluded, that I ceased to identify with its suffering almost immediately. I saw it instead as a process of skinning, butchering, cooking and eating, and not as a being whose process had ended in the suffering of captivity and the terror of a slow and agonising death. Sitting with the men in the chief's house it was mercifully impossible to make a moral judgement of these people, despite the moral horror I believed I should feel when faced with a spectacle in which I would under no circumstances actively participate. Perhaps my observation of it is nonetheless an active part of the ongoing process. I wonder how many years will pass before the ceremony takes place in front of a paying audience, shuttled in air-conditioned comfort to the village to be horrified by the morbid pleasure of torturing an animal to death in the name of spiritual necessity.

Waiting, waiting, waiting...

There are three little children crowded around the table, watching me write. We've been adopted by many of the  village children, who run up when they see me, hoping to be picked up, swung around, or just to hold hands as we walk from one place to another.

Yesterday we had to move from our hut so the roof could be re-thatched, and there are three men working next door, walking across the bamboo rafters, tying sheaves of dry leaves. They'll have the roof completed by nightfall, so hopefully we can return to the vastly more comfortable bed in the other building.

The children, who disappeared suddenly, have returned, accompanied by another friend, all of them munching on tiny green mangoes, and singing a Lao song in close approximation of harmony. There are four little hands holding on to the pen as I write, three now, either hoping to partake of the strange writing practise they are observing, or to relieve me of the pen so they can draw on themselves. It's becoming quite a task to write with this additional help.

The buffalo sacrifice is supposed to take place tomorrow or the next day, according to Mama pap, who was having her own ceremony performed in her house yesterday when we arrived for dinner. Her savings had been stolen from a locked drawer, on the same day that a European lady with two dirty blond children left the village unexpectedly, defaulting on three months' rent. Mama Pap's desolation is obvious: the breach of trust compounded by the very real threat of bankruptcy. Potential customers are turning away because she can no longer afford to stock pork and beef, and her supply of Beer Lao has been reduced to a solitary bottle in an increasingly empty refrigerator. I was very happy to make an offering to the man who performed the ceremony on Mama Pap's behalf. It sounded like the chanting of Buddhist prayers, but the ceremony involved eggs and candles, and the smartly-dressed man looked nothing like a monk. Mama Pap looks sad and tired, and she can't keep the tears from her eyes. Over the next few days she will make pilgrimage to all the temples in the surrounding area, to help mitigate the bad Karma that has brought this misfortune to her family.

All along the river banks behind me, the villagers are preparing vegetable plots, cutting into the packed dry earth with heavy hoes, breaking the rock-hard ground apart and covering rectangular patches with rice husks, to be burned for fertiliser. Makeshift fences to deter the pigs, chickens and cattle from dining on the new shoots are being erected, and all the members of the family are working hard, taking advantagen of the cloud cover to work through the day.

Sunday 20th March, 2011 - Tad Lo, Lao PDR

Arriving at Mama Pap's shortly after daybreak, we were told that the ceremony is to begin this evening. It was pleasant to rise with the sun, and to enjoy the privilege of the full day. The children left abruply yesterday: one girl, who seems quite emotionally unstable, began to hit out at another girl when she wanted to return to her place on my lap. I made it clear that I wouldn't tolerate her being violent, unnecessarily emphasising my point by banging once on the table. She left pouting, and went to her grandmother. Shortly afterwards the other three left at a word from the old matriarch, and they've kept their distance since then.

In the afternoon we walked up to tad Lo waterfall, intending to cross the river to Khiangtanglae. We were met by a small group of boys, with a catapult, and a small lizard taken as a trophy from the jungle. They asked for pens and paper, and we gave them a pencil and a copybook each. Shortly afterwards we met girls coming from the river, and the boys tried to dissuade us from giving pens and pencils to them, hinting at some ethnic rivalry between the tribal people of Khiantanglae, and the Lao people from Tad Lo. We handed out more, trying to be fair, but by the time we came close to the falls there were little naked children emerging from the bushes, all desperately hopeful that they would receive something from the foreigners. I was suddenly surrounded by a seething, shouting, swarm of little brown bodies, pushing, pulling, grasping, pinching and punching each other in their desire to obtain their share of the bounty. I suddenly realised the vast gulf between my naive intentions and the naked reality of what was taking place, and a feeling of shame and sorrow pervaded my senses. There were too few books and pencils, and an endless clamour from the children, the youngest of whom had been relieved of their prizes, and stood looking at us with resignation and feint hope on their faces. What had begun as a gesture of kindness and sharing had emerged into the daylight as a hopelessly naive, perhaps harmful, and disappointing act of interference in a clash of cultures that have only begun to interact on a regular basis in the last few decades.

The man from the temple who performed the ceremony at Mama Pap's told her that it was a Falang who took the money, and not a Lao, and this seemed to bring her a small measure of relief. Later she told us that two white girls traveling on a motorcycle had killed a local girl in a collision two days before, and I wondered how long the interaction between Lao people and foreign visitors will remain as benign as it appears to be now.