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.