Three thousand thirty years ago
A mermaid dwelt on Dweffir Reef
Known to all and loathed by none
Called by dolphins “Iki-uit-uit”
By jellyfish, “Hu-hufala”
“Šëkoj” in the human tongues.
Šëkoj danced among the corals
Cavorted with the horseshoe crabs
Sweetly shimmied with the shad
Dug hunks of dirt with dugongs
Slept in seaweed, dozed in kelp.
But after such a frolicfest
Her hair became a matted nest
Of tiny uninvited guests
Stinging mites and parasites
Lice the size of grains of rice
Burrowing baby barnacles
Concatenations of crabs
Obtuse oval anemone eggs
Showy, shiny –shelled shrimp
Hungry hopeful ropes of salps.
Her fingers wrangled with the tangle
But the knots were not unknotted
Snags and snarls marred her curls
But mermaid hair is live and feeling
It fears and shuns the knives and scissors.
Called the mermaid to the Deep Ones
Called to her ancestral parents
In the oceanmother tongue
Voice of churning waves and gurgles
Slips and sloshes, wishes, washes.
“O Ilmatar, Oceanmother
O Bearded Straasha, in your cave
Lend me now advice and succor
About these tangled snarled strands
How may I quash this nappy loaf?”
“Šëkoj,” said her patient mother
“Your hair is perfect in appearance
You don’t need to preen or primp
Keep for friends those who revere you
Ignore the hollow shallow masses.”
Šëkoj vented her vexation
“This is not for friends or masses!
Wordy balms on my frustration
Do not cure the situation
Nor rid me of my cake of dreds.
Said Straasha from his crusty cave
“Then you must go on journey brave
To apply techniques and tools
To unravel, unknot, unknit
This hairy mess upon your crown.
Go then, to the Pacific Plains
Where deep rivers flow together
Where earthen roots bind rocks fast
To the glowing chthonian vents
Spraying curling sour sulfur-fumes
In deep caverns within these,
Among platyhelminthes
Live the Ekhinokrinoi
Noble ancient sea-colossi
Relics of Siluria.”
Ilmatar, the Oceanmother
Said “Seek that kind abyssal race
I will let them know you’re coming
They will host a feast of plenty
You will be the guest of honor.”
Šëkoj prepared for travel
Sharpened her fins, sponged her gills
Stretched her arms and flapped her tail
Then she bid the reef farewell
And set off to the Pacific Plains.
She swam one day, swam another
Currents carried her on the third
To the oceanic plain
Down to the abysmal canyons
To the deepest of deep places
In the cold and crushing darkness
Like a porpoise full of purpose
She swam with supple strength and sleekness
Toward the vitriolic glow
Toward the warmth below the waves.
Šëkoj found a golden gateway
Cavern carved by snail-tusks
Portal to a porous palace.
In the doorway sat a watcher
Ekhinokrinoi gate-guard.
No head nor eyes could Šëkoj see
Arms asway like breezy branches
Legs like burly knotgnarled roots
Trunkless tree, all leaves and buttress
Cup of hands and dome of feet.
It spoke to her in ocean language
So deep and plain her teeth could hear
Spleen and kidneys understood.
“Welcome, friend, to our abode
Enter now our humble hovel.”
Stout stilts stirring, it led her in
Through labyrinthine oystered cloisters
Constellations of sea-stars
Tubewormed hot cloacal grottoes
To a hall of lofty splendor.
They sat in gem-encrusted alcoves
Splendid Ekhinokrinoi
Ancient giants, wise and noble
Many-limbed with glowing souls
Perched on lustrous thrones of pearl.
The eldest reached an arm out to her
Took her hand into its own
Extended psychic tentacles
Spoke directly to her cells
In the very voice of life.
“Welcome, warm Shallows-dweller,
Welcome, backboned voyager
We know you and know your line
Know your mothers, know your sisters
Know your daughters not yet born.
We affirm the bond between us
And will gladly lend you succor
Help you with your tangle-problem
But first, join us for a feast
Incorporate our tasty chow.”
They sat around a whalebone table
Piled high with choice sea-treats
Spicy suction-cups of squid
Clams sautéed in sea-grape wine
Seahorse eggs with hagfish slime.
Briny bitter barnacle paste
Upon cold soused sea-pig’s face
Callipash and calipee
Paté of gravid seal-flea
And pycnogonid fricassee.
Šëkoj ate more than her fill
Though some dishes made her ill
Especially the brains of krill.
Her hosts retreated to their thrones
And combed their arms with herringbones.
The eldest Ekhinocrinoi
Extended ropy arm again
Spread the comblike hand before her
Wiggled the small bony teethtines
And said “This will be your comb.”
The hand detached then from the arm
Stiff-toothed comb, so slightly curved
Šëkoj touched it gingerly
Then pulled the hand-comb through her hair
Pulled the tool through the tangles.
Her visitors decamped in dozens
When she served her comb-eviction
Untangled kelpy knots and snarls
Unmade the nests and mini middens
Freed each strand from tiny tenants.
Her hosts detached a dozen hand-combs
And told her to take them all.
“Give one to your patient mother
To your sisters and your cousins
To your daughters when they come.
“If you need more, we will send them
Via octopus and squid
From our deep abyss abode
Call us with the ancient cantrip
Utter these ensorcelled words:
Ouagadougou Utnapishman
Puying geen blah-meuk mai dai
Saya makan ubur ubur
Minun täyttu juustohöylä
Wo de shengri bu kuai lai.
With grateful heart and flowing hair
Šëkoj departed from the depths
Rose in roiling beds of bubbles
To the warm and shallow waters
To the turquoise sun-kissed surface.
She swam one day, swam another,
Currents carried her for a third
Until she reached the reef of Dweffir
Home at last with comb in hand
To frolic with her happy friends.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Crag Shaman
Crag Shaman
The morning after our cave hike was warm and sunny. At breakfast I spied Annika, one of the Swedes from Nong Khiao. Pasco, her companion, was laid-up with a hangover, and they were planning a rest day. I told her about my plan to hike up to Ban Phoon tomorrow, and she said that sounded good.
The rest of the day was spent lazily, walks around the village, chats with mynah birds, hammock and Thomas Mann, waging war on the little black ants that were trying to colonize my bed, and swimming in the river. Night fell, the stars came out in resplendent sparkles, joined by fireflies and the flash of distant lightning.
The next day I met the Swedes at 7:30. This was the earliest they were willing to rise. We had a slow breakfast, then set off on the same trail as before. Two days of sun had largely dried it out, and there were far less gooey patches. We made good time to the first village, where we had big mugs of coffee. I mentioned to the proprietress that we were heading up to Ban Phoon, and she immediately began telling me the shortcomings of that place. There was no guesthouse, she said, and no water. The first was frustrating to hear because just yesterday she said there was a guesthouse. I reminded her of this, but my Lao evidently wasn’t good enough to convey the idea of “You said two different things, and they can’t both be right.” It’s a fairly common problem here, inherited no doubt from the Thais, who are so eager to please visitors that they tell you what they think you want to hear, regardless of the reality they are allegedly referring to. The proprietress suggested we go up to Ban Phoon and then come down and stay in her bungalows. It was tiresome. I walked around town and asked other people if foreigners could stay in Ban Phoon, and they all agreed it was so. The water thing was slightly more perplexing. I simply could not believe that a whole village full of people could sustain themselves without water. Nevertheless, we loaded up with as many water bottles as we could carry, and set off.
BREASTWORKS OF BAN NA PADDY
A simple fellow with a smiling mouth that hung open guided us to the trailhead, and indicated with his hand that we were in for a long climb. This proved 100% accurate. The initial three hundred meters or so were dizzyingly steep and left us sagging in the shade. Annika had particular trouble with the beginning, panting redfaced and thinking of going back. But she swallowed some water, and looked resolute. Pasco and I assured her it was not a race, and we were not impatient. She nodded and we continued to climb.
There were several large millipedes on the trail, both living and in various stages of decomposition. Those who had been dead for some time looked like empty suits of armor, all rings and coils. I surmised they were on the trail to lick salt dripped by buffalo and humans, and had been trodden on.
Unknown Bug, Ban Na
Buffalo clearly used this trail. Their tracks were everywhere, and on especially steep parts, their feet had gouged smooth slide-marks into the clay. I wondered about the economics and practicality of marching a buffalo up and down this incline.
We eventually came to a crest, and thought that things must now level out or descend. A little further on, the trail began to rise again, slightly less steep than before, but still hard going. This repeated itself several times, till we began to see sky through the trees and the broad expanse of valley on either side.
Pasco and I chatted quite a bit, each time we stopped to watch Annika labor up behind us. He had an extraordinary command of English, a rich vocabulary and a mastery of the little particles that usually identify a native speaker, like “yeah” and “stuff” and “you guys.” He told me he changed his name to Lotharion during his Dungeons and Dragons years, and couldn’t be bothered to change it back. It seemed he was amused at his past self, and kept the elvish-sounding name as a shrine to passions of youth. He did look something like an elf, as well, very fine-featured and fey, but wiry and untiring. His gaming days were over, and now his fascination was with shamanism, energy-healing, and the forces of life and earth. The pair of them were planning to head down to a small village in southern Laos for several months, where he was going to learn about some kind of meditative energy practice.
The Swedes talked amongst themselves in English, out of politeness, they said. Annika had a thicker accent than Pasco but no trouble whatsoever expressing herself. It was charming to observe them uttering endearments to one another, or having the minor spats that are part and parcel of any relationship, all in very precise and somewhat slow English.
On the flat parts, Annika walked side by side with me and we talked about life, work, vacation, family, and interests. I was surprised and pleased at the confidence Annika and Pasco had in each other – often, travelling couples are plagued with a wide variety of issues when it comes to communicating with strangers. And, let’s face it, it can be extremely hard to have a casual three-way conversation in which one person doesn’t have much chance or substance to contribute. It was refreshing that there was not an expectation that each member of the group would be included in each discussion, as our interests were widely divergent. I have often encountered resentment from the third party, whomever that may be, when the other two parties discover a mutual love of Star Trek or sphragistics or what-have-you.
We finally came to a crest where the earth sloped away steeply on both sides, and we had a view. The valleys had been completely stripped of trees, as far as we could see in both directions. Each minor hill had a miniature shade-structure on it where peasants slept during the heat of the day, surrounded by stubbly stumps and burn scars. Hardwoods had been cut, and the rest burned, and nothing had been replanted. It was dismaying and puzzling. Why would they do this? There was no way to transport giant tropical trunks from here to the river. Where was the wood?
We thought the crest must surely be the apex of our climb, and that soon the trail would begin winding down into the valley. It did descend, but only because we went across a long hogback saddle, and began going up again. We came to a gated fence and took that as a sign of approaching the village, and inside the fenced area were broad grassy meadows one usually associates with Alps, replete with a passel of browsing cattle. There were a few jackfruit trees, and cow pads full of jackfruit seeds. The view was the same as before, but now in the distance we could see a few higher hills that still had cloudforest crowns.
At a small creek, I stepped on what I thought was a rock in the water, only to have it squish. It was a cow pad, and though I washed my foot carefully, the smell lingered for a long time. We passed another gate and began to climb again, reaching some older forest that was cool and shady. Mushrooms grew in profusion, including some giants that were as tall as my forearm and bigger than my handspan across the cap.
Three teenage boys came down the trail and barely looked at us. They were wearing ragged T-shirts and flip flops, and carrying homemade guns. To me, they were indistinguishable from the three youths I had seen on my first trip up Puhipii in February, and I wondered if somehow they were the same people, roving from hilltop to hilltop in search of targets.
We stopped after another long climb and had to make a plan. Ban Phoon was supposed to be three hours from the last village, but it was already four and a half hours later, with no sign of a settlement. We needed to allow ourselves enough time to get down off the mountain if we didn’t reach the village, and none of us wanted to go down in the dark. I volunteered to scout ahead, leaving my heavy pack behind and zipping up the hill at top speed. I came to a flat place where there was a mud pit full of water buffalo. They stared at me as if ready to be alarmed, but I had no wish to deal with huge panicked herd beasts, so I did not tease them. I kept going for about fifteen minutes with no sign of a village, only a continuously-climbing path. I returned and reported my findings. I then calculated we could safely go another forty-five minutes up and still have time to get to Ban Na and the promised bungalows.
So, on we went. Shortly after we came to the spot where I last turned around, we spotted a wooden building on a ridge above us. At last! Heartened, we continued, and soon came to a little group of children playing in the mud.
“Sa-leep?” they asked, pantomiming sleep. We nodded, and they pointed up the path. We passed another buffalo-wallow, and then found ourselves looking up at the very top of the hill, where a wooden fence surrounded a cluster of wood buildings on stilts. We climbed over the fence, and found ourselves under the stares of a dozen people. They had dark skin and very strong features, pointed chins, high cheekbones, and large eyes. None of them smiled, waved, or made any kind of greeting. We felt uneasy, but made our way to the center of the village. A few children started following us, but hung back a safe distance. We were either openly stared-at or ignored outright.
Ban Phoon
We walked past a house on stilts that was full of people and noise. A radio blared from within. The street was clean of animals and garbage. A young man approached us and said “Sa-leep?” We followed him to a house, and he showed us a long platform-bed that would easily accommodate the three of us. We nodded, and he gestured at the bed as if we were so tired that we wanted to sleep right now. I brought up the age-old question, “How much?” This led to a long and uncomfortable haggling session, as the price he initially quoted was completely ridiculous. His father, a man with wiry steel-gray hair and a machete, sat nearby on a bench, glaring at us. Although he was two heads shorter than me, he had a solidity and authority that lent considerable heft to the glare. I employed a standard bargaining technique, telling the young man that the accommodation he offered was not worth the price he was asking, and the older man’s gaze turned even more steely. I realized that it sounded like I was criticizing his house. Another man, with a mustache and a yellow stare, pounded his stomach and said “We’re all hungry here!”
Although I can converse perfectly clearly in Lao, especially when it comes to numbers and prices, the young man wanted to scratch the prices into the hard orange earth with a twig. Somehow we could come to no common ground. I tried to tell him we wanted to eat as well, but he would not assent that he understood, no matter how much pantomime I employed. Finally we sat in the shade and started making faces at the children, who were losing their suspicion. Another man came down from a house and trumped the young man, quoting us a reasonable price that included a meal. We agreed, and then to alleviate the cold vibes coming off the older man, I gave him a roll of duct tape. I gave a roll of steel wire to the reasonable man, and to the young man, nothing.
I’d been carrying a bunch of junk around for five months, for handing out to village kids, but somehow there hadn’t been the right occasion for a lot of the stuff. Now I unloaded the last of my bug cards, some sheets of stickers, various small toys, and some pens and pencils. I let them look at my book of pictures from around the world. Then we walked around the village, and every time I saw a mother, I gave her a little bar of soap. The old women of the village came toward us one by one and pointed at their eyes, then held out their hands. What did they want? Eyedrops? Later, it was clarified to me that they wanted glasses.
A younger woman approached us and showed us the top of her foot. She had some kind of smooth, puffy infestation that looked painful, and she clearly wanted us to treat it. All we had was a tube of aloe lotion in Annika’s bag, which we gave to the woman. She sat down next to us and applied it to the affected area with the tip of a feather.
The village was about thirty houses, surrounded by a low wooden fence. Although it was perched on the very edge of the highest part of the hill, there were no views of the valleys available from any vantage. Banana trees, bamboo, and tapioca obscured the view in every direction. Just inside the fence were small houses, also on stilts, that held pigs and chickens. I was impressed at the will of the villagers to keep their livestock segregated from their children and food, unlike in the Hmong village I visited earlier.
One of the houses had a second-story window with an old man leaning out. He had a weary, pained expression on his face. His arms were resplendent with tribal tattoos. He looked at me and spoke in Khamu, but I could not understand him. He gestured to his stomach. Then, above his shoulder, appeared the steely man to whom I had given duct tape. The steely man explained this was his father, eighty-six years old, and suffering from a stomach malady. All I had was buffered analgesic, which I gave him, hoping it would alleviate some of his pain.
We walked further, past a severely-slanting house. Another of the village’s young men followed us furtively, fingering his mustache and obviously keeping an eye on us. A little horde of kids ran up, and I noticed several of them had pictures out of my picture book. The savages! They had dismembered my picture collection! Oh well, they were easily replaced, and now it was one less thing to carry. Still, it nettled me somehow that the children had destroyed a book in about ten minutes.
Around a corner, I spotted a man carrying an inexplicable object. It looked like a mobile or a bird-feeder, some strange arrangement hanging from a string on a stick. He was moving with a purpose, and I had to hurry to catch up with him. Hanging from the string was a platter with four bowls on it, and each bowl contained a dead bird and a piece of metal. I intercepted the man as he was about to climb over the fence.
“Are you a shaman?” I asked him. He grinned and said no, and pointed. I moved in the direction of his finger, and he climbed over the fence and disappeared. Soon I was near the house that had the noise coming out of it, and a shirtless old man with a sword was staggering around in the street. The Swedes caught up to me, and we steered clear of the old man. I asked a woman with a baby where the shaman was, and she pointed vaguely. Then a hand grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around.
The old man was glaring fiercely at me with pale eyes, and pointing the sword at my sternum. It was a homemade weapon, slightly curved like a katana, with a handle made of bamboo and sinew. “You want a shaman?” he asked, and then started to bustle me forward. I didn’t want to get stabbed, so I let him escort me up the stairs and into the noisy house.
Inside, about twenty people were sitting around on the floor. The old man shoved me toward one corner and told me to sit. The Swedes came in as well but sat in a different section. I looked around. The people inside were all ages, male and female. They were taking turns sipping through long bamboo straws that stuck out of big lacquered bamboo jugs clustered in the center. A radio squawked out the daily news in Lao.
The old man seated himself near me, and faced outward into the room. He set his sword down and tied a piece of faded cloth onto his head. Then he leaned back and started sneezing and twitching. When he sat up, his eyes had a wild look.
The man we had seen outside brought in a bowl with a dead bird in it. It was some kind of jungle bird with the feathers boiled off. The old man, who was apparently the village shaman, took the bowl and waved it slowly around, as if he were wafting its odors into the air. Then a woman came forward out of the crowd, carrying a child of about two. The child was decked out in colorful clothes and silver bangles, all of which were several sizes too large. Some of the bangles had been tied onto her wrists and ankles with white string. Her hair had been teased into a little tuft on top.
The shaman muttered and chanted some more, then unwound a long, knotted, multicolored string from his sword-handle. He used a small knife to slit the abdomen of the dead bird, and pushed the string in, bit by bit, dragging it through the entrails. Then he withdrew it and leaned in toward the child, who struggled and cried. The shaman wrapped the string around the child’s wrists, one at a time, and began on the ankles, but the child panicked and kicked at him. The mother tried to soothe her, but to no avail. The shaman said something; the mother shrugged, lifted her shirt, and offered the child a nipple. She calmed instantly, and the shaman returned to the string project. After that, someone produced a large basket of sticky rice, and the shaman held little clumps of rice against the child’s forehead, chin, and the backs of her hands. He chanted some more, and then the mother tied white strings around his wrists. He burned the excess string off in a candle. He and his assistant, the man from outside, then picked up the bird and examined it from all angles. Satisfied, the shaman shredded the boiled bird’s breasts and thighs with quick motions of his fingers. The mother ate the pieces, offering them to the shaman, but he refused. Then she rose and backed away.
The shaman leaned back again, and repeated his barking/sneezing routine. When he sat back up, he pointed at a ferret-faced man with a jug. That man poured shots of rice whiskey for everyone sitting there. It was a hot afternoon, and we were low on water, but we accepted the drink anyway. The man from outside then helped the shaman with the next part of the ceremony. He balanced his sword on a very old, leaned-over Coke bottle and an empty rice basket, and placed two candles on the flat of the blade. He used a white paste to scrawl symbols onto the blade between the candles. His assistant lit the candles, and they both chanted for a minute or so. The shaman turned to the room at large and, with a simple gesture, instructed the fox-face to give everyone another drink. After the gasping had died down, he uttered something, and everyone began producing small objects. The shaman reached past the dead bird in the bowl and pulled out two very old coins. Other people offered bits of metal ornamentation, knives, shiny stones, and more old coins. I offered him two Sharpie markers and a piece of quartz. He took a basket full of uncooked sticky rice and dumped it out, making a little mountain. Then he adorned the mountain with all the odds and ends he had collected. More whiskey was distributed, then more chanting ensued.
The shaman raised an arm and pointed at everyone in the room, one by one, including the visitors. The natives rose and began heaping 2000 kip bills in front of him. I joined in. The Swedes did not have 2000s, so they threw in a 5000 and a 10000. The ferrety whiskey man made a statement and reached in to grab the 10000, but the shaman stared him down until he put it back. The shaman wrapped the colored string around the pile of bills and then handed it to a soot-stained old man with thick forearms who sat on his right. That man shuffled the bills together and then handed them to the woman with the baby, who bowed and accepted. The family resemblance was unmistakeable: this was surely her father and the baby’s grandfather.
This seemed to signify the end of a routine, for people started talking more loudly. They had been chatting through the entire ritual, but now they relaxed and began to move around in the room. The radio was turned back on. The shaman and his assistant continued to mutter and gibber over the pile of rice and the sword. Someone motioned me over to the center of the room where the big bamboo tubes lay against a centerpost. I took a drink through one of the long straws. It was like a punch: rice whiskey leavened with fruit juice and spices. It was warm and made my throat itch. I thanked the person who had motioned to me, using the Khamu “Ko par ngium,” which sounds like Coparnium. This got a big laugh from the whole room. I tried some of my other words and phrases; the one that seemed to delight them most was “Dtalang-tang,” meaning “dragonfly.”
The final phase of the ritual began a few minutes later, centered around the grandfather. He sat at a low round table with candles burning in bottles. The shaman sat next to him, humming and chanting and singing, and everyone in the room came and tied little pieces of white string around the grandfather’s wrist. Some of the people sang as they did so. I tried out a little Mongolian throatsinging as I tied my string; this earned me a look from the shaman that was a perfect mix of confusion, curiosity, and irritation. After all the strings were tied, the men started handing cigarettes to each other. I refused multiple offers, pantomiming gagging and coughing. The room soon filled up with acrid smoke, and we excused ourselves to step outside.
We sat on a bench in the shade for a while, marveling at what we had just witnessed. The villagers behaved in a much more friendly fashion toward us after that. Many of the young mothers brought their button-eyed babies over to stare at us.
As the sun began to set, the man with whom we had arranged to stay approached us with a battered-looking wok and asked us if we were ready to eat. We most certainly were, and we followed him back into the shaman’s house, where the little round table had been surrounded by three chairs. A long blanket was spread on the floor where the shaman had been sitting, and all the men in the room were sitting cross-legged on either side of it. It was covered with food, but I never got a good look at what they were eating. We were served ramen noodles in bowls, with extremely salty scrambled eggs and sticky rice on the side. It was simple but nourishing, and we ate it with gusto. The women and children lingered around the sides of the house, waiting for the men to finish.
We went back outside after the meal and sat in the last pink and orange rays of the sun as it disappeared behind distant mountains. Our landlord appeared instantly and suggested we go to sleep. It was far too early, and I told him so. We sat on the bench again, and I gave away the remainder of my loot to the crowd of children. They dispersed as soon as they realized no more treasures were coming out of my bag. The landlord had been hovering nearby, chain-smoking cigarettes, drew close and again suggested it was time to sleep. Since there was no electricity in the village, it did not sound quite so unreasonable to go to bed at this early hour. We followed him to the house, and on the way I asked if we could have some water.
The short, uncomfortable episode that ensued will forever be a source of confusion for me. He stared at me without comprehension. The iron-haired man had appeared again, and stood with the younger man, facing us. I repeated my request, and there was still no sign that they understood. I acted out thirst and drinking from a cup, a bowl, and out of cupped hands. I said “People get thirsty, people drink water. Where is the water?” Their faces darkened, and the older man shot the younger one a look of controlled disapproval that seemed to say “They don’t know how it’s done here.” I looked at the older man and asked him “Where do you go when you’re thirsty?” He frowned and did not reply. I translated all of this to the Swedes, who had no suggestions. Finally we accepted that there was to be no water, and let the younger man urge us upstairs.
It was barely past seven when he ushered us into the main upper room of the house, where three sleeping mats had been laid on the floor. I asked him if he had mosquito nets. He was surprised that we wanted them, but I insisted. We sat on their porch and watched the village prepare for nighttime while the man prepared our nets. It took him a very long time, compared to the complexity of the task, but it was still fairly early by the time he came out and told us our beds were ready. I asked for a bathroom, and he said there were no bathrooms, just go anywhere near the boundary fence. I theorized that if the people here drank no water, their solid waste would form dense discrete nodules that could be easily eaten by pigs, with relatively little chance of spreading contamination.
There was a single candle burning in the bedchamber as we prepared for sleep. Three children played in their pajamas, and the landlord watched us carefully from his seat on the floor. We held a short conference about water, and decided we could not afford to drink any of our reserves tonight because we would need it for the hike down tomorrow. We resolved to rise as soon as the sun came up so we could hike during the cool part of the morning. We had two liters of water between the three of us, and we all had a burning thirst following the salty eggs, the whiskey, and the hot climb.
The landlord watched us until he was satisfied that we were going to sleep, then he extinguished the candle and left. I lay there in the strange bed, thinking of water. It is very hard to sleep when you are thirsty, and even harder when there is a container of water within arm’s reach. My thoughts were focused on that liter bottle of fresh, cool, delicious water, and I could not relax.
The other impediment to sleep was the noise from the street outside. The villagers decidedly did not go to sleep this early – the shouts of children mixed with the barking of dogs and the laughter of adults for several hours. The children quieted down, but the dogs never did. I felt like a child who had been sent to bed while the parents are having a dinner party, and listening to the sounds of people having fun on the other side of the dark door. After a long time, the sounds died down to one localized noise-source, which I presumed was the house where people were sitting around drinking rice-whiskey. There was a very yappy dog in the street just below us, and it was only intermittently loud, the cur. A constant source of noise is possible to ignore, but when it erupts at unpredictable intervals, it renders sleep all but impossible.
Much later, the landlord, his wife, and their youngest child came into the room. The wife and child were the ones we’d seen in the shaman’s house. They set up a bed in a little closet-like space and lay down. The reason for the shaman-ritual soon became apparent. We had conjectured that it was a naming-day or some other age-related affair, but in fact the child was sick. She had a loud, difficult cough, and after each bout, began to cry. This continued through the night; needless to say, I did not sleep much.
When the bluish light of dawn began to steal through the gaps in the wall, we rose and packed our belongings. The village was slowly coming to life. We skulked away, not wishing to speak to anybody. The water and bed situation had made us all feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, and we wanted to leave. On the way out I saw the grandfather, squatting near a fire and using a hand-powered bellows to heat it up. I saw metal-working tools nearby, including a big iron knob used to beat metal into bowls. I was extremely interested in Khamu metalwork, and wrestled for a few minutes with the idea of staying and watching him work. In the end my parched throat won out: even in the early morning, it was evident that the temperature was rising, and my animal brain was ringing with dire warnings. So we climbed the fence and headed down the hill, and four hours later reached Ban Na, where water was available in plenty.
Khamu Smithy
I wondered about the world view and cosmology of a group of people who were not exposed to constant advertisement and flashing images of technology-based capitalism. Unfortunately, with the lack of televisions, advertising and commerce came an absence of schools, doctors, and comfort. It is a great temptation in the Western world to idealize such a people, and project onto them a close-to-nature nobility or purity, an antediluvian innocence. The reality is that a sick toddler gets colored string and ritual in place of antibiotics, and that an old man must endure his pain without palliatives.
CRITTERS ALONG THE WAY
Arlo, Pasco, and Annika after the hike down.
The morning after our cave hike was warm and sunny. At breakfast I spied Annika, one of the Swedes from Nong Khiao. Pasco, her companion, was laid-up with a hangover, and they were planning a rest day. I told her about my plan to hike up to Ban Phoon tomorrow, and she said that sounded good.
The rest of the day was spent lazily, walks around the village, chats with mynah birds, hammock and Thomas Mann, waging war on the little black ants that were trying to colonize my bed, and swimming in the river. Night fell, the stars came out in resplendent sparkles, joined by fireflies and the flash of distant lightning.
The next day I met the Swedes at 7:30. This was the earliest they were willing to rise. We had a slow breakfast, then set off on the same trail as before. Two days of sun had largely dried it out, and there were far less gooey patches. We made good time to the first village, where we had big mugs of coffee. I mentioned to the proprietress that we were heading up to Ban Phoon, and she immediately began telling me the shortcomings of that place. There was no guesthouse, she said, and no water. The first was frustrating to hear because just yesterday she said there was a guesthouse. I reminded her of this, but my Lao evidently wasn’t good enough to convey the idea of “You said two different things, and they can’t both be right.” It’s a fairly common problem here, inherited no doubt from the Thais, who are so eager to please visitors that they tell you what they think you want to hear, regardless of the reality they are allegedly referring to. The proprietress suggested we go up to Ban Phoon and then come down and stay in her bungalows. It was tiresome. I walked around town and asked other people if foreigners could stay in Ban Phoon, and they all agreed it was so. The water thing was slightly more perplexing. I simply could not believe that a whole village full of people could sustain themselves without water. Nevertheless, we loaded up with as many water bottles as we could carry, and set off.
BREASTWORKS OF BAN NA PADDY
A simple fellow with a smiling mouth that hung open guided us to the trailhead, and indicated with his hand that we were in for a long climb. This proved 100% accurate. The initial three hundred meters or so were dizzyingly steep and left us sagging in the shade. Annika had particular trouble with the beginning, panting redfaced and thinking of going back. But she swallowed some water, and looked resolute. Pasco and I assured her it was not a race, and we were not impatient. She nodded and we continued to climb.
There were several large millipedes on the trail, both living and in various stages of decomposition. Those who had been dead for some time looked like empty suits of armor, all rings and coils. I surmised they were on the trail to lick salt dripped by buffalo and humans, and had been trodden on.
Unknown Bug, Ban Na
Buffalo clearly used this trail. Their tracks were everywhere, and on especially steep parts, their feet had gouged smooth slide-marks into the clay. I wondered about the economics and practicality of marching a buffalo up and down this incline.
We eventually came to a crest, and thought that things must now level out or descend. A little further on, the trail began to rise again, slightly less steep than before, but still hard going. This repeated itself several times, till we began to see sky through the trees and the broad expanse of valley on either side.
Pasco and I chatted quite a bit, each time we stopped to watch Annika labor up behind us. He had an extraordinary command of English, a rich vocabulary and a mastery of the little particles that usually identify a native speaker, like “yeah” and “stuff” and “you guys.” He told me he changed his name to Lotharion during his Dungeons and Dragons years, and couldn’t be bothered to change it back. It seemed he was amused at his past self, and kept the elvish-sounding name as a shrine to passions of youth. He did look something like an elf, as well, very fine-featured and fey, but wiry and untiring. His gaming days were over, and now his fascination was with shamanism, energy-healing, and the forces of life and earth. The pair of them were planning to head down to a small village in southern Laos for several months, where he was going to learn about some kind of meditative energy practice.
The Swedes talked amongst themselves in English, out of politeness, they said. Annika had a thicker accent than Pasco but no trouble whatsoever expressing herself. It was charming to observe them uttering endearments to one another, or having the minor spats that are part and parcel of any relationship, all in very precise and somewhat slow English.
On the flat parts, Annika walked side by side with me and we talked about life, work, vacation, family, and interests. I was surprised and pleased at the confidence Annika and Pasco had in each other – often, travelling couples are plagued with a wide variety of issues when it comes to communicating with strangers. And, let’s face it, it can be extremely hard to have a casual three-way conversation in which one person doesn’t have much chance or substance to contribute. It was refreshing that there was not an expectation that each member of the group would be included in each discussion, as our interests were widely divergent. I have often encountered resentment from the third party, whomever that may be, when the other two parties discover a mutual love of Star Trek or sphragistics or what-have-you.
We finally came to a crest where the earth sloped away steeply on both sides, and we had a view. The valleys had been completely stripped of trees, as far as we could see in both directions. Each minor hill had a miniature shade-structure on it where peasants slept during the heat of the day, surrounded by stubbly stumps and burn scars. Hardwoods had been cut, and the rest burned, and nothing had been replanted. It was dismaying and puzzling. Why would they do this? There was no way to transport giant tropical trunks from here to the river. Where was the wood?
We thought the crest must surely be the apex of our climb, and that soon the trail would begin winding down into the valley. It did descend, but only because we went across a long hogback saddle, and began going up again. We came to a gated fence and took that as a sign of approaching the village, and inside the fenced area were broad grassy meadows one usually associates with Alps, replete with a passel of browsing cattle. There were a few jackfruit trees, and cow pads full of jackfruit seeds. The view was the same as before, but now in the distance we could see a few higher hills that still had cloudforest crowns.
At a small creek, I stepped on what I thought was a rock in the water, only to have it squish. It was a cow pad, and though I washed my foot carefully, the smell lingered for a long time. We passed another gate and began to climb again, reaching some older forest that was cool and shady. Mushrooms grew in profusion, including some giants that were as tall as my forearm and bigger than my handspan across the cap.
Three teenage boys came down the trail and barely looked at us. They were wearing ragged T-shirts and flip flops, and carrying homemade guns. To me, they were indistinguishable from the three youths I had seen on my first trip up Puhipii in February, and I wondered if somehow they were the same people, roving from hilltop to hilltop in search of targets.
We stopped after another long climb and had to make a plan. Ban Phoon was supposed to be three hours from the last village, but it was already four and a half hours later, with no sign of a settlement. We needed to allow ourselves enough time to get down off the mountain if we didn’t reach the village, and none of us wanted to go down in the dark. I volunteered to scout ahead, leaving my heavy pack behind and zipping up the hill at top speed. I came to a flat place where there was a mud pit full of water buffalo. They stared at me as if ready to be alarmed, but I had no wish to deal with huge panicked herd beasts, so I did not tease them. I kept going for about fifteen minutes with no sign of a village, only a continuously-climbing path. I returned and reported my findings. I then calculated we could safely go another forty-five minutes up and still have time to get to Ban Na and the promised bungalows.
So, on we went. Shortly after we came to the spot where I last turned around, we spotted a wooden building on a ridge above us. At last! Heartened, we continued, and soon came to a little group of children playing in the mud.
“Sa-leep?” they asked, pantomiming sleep. We nodded, and they pointed up the path. We passed another buffalo-wallow, and then found ourselves looking up at the very top of the hill, where a wooden fence surrounded a cluster of wood buildings on stilts. We climbed over the fence, and found ourselves under the stares of a dozen people. They had dark skin and very strong features, pointed chins, high cheekbones, and large eyes. None of them smiled, waved, or made any kind of greeting. We felt uneasy, but made our way to the center of the village. A few children started following us, but hung back a safe distance. We were either openly stared-at or ignored outright.
Ban Phoon
We walked past a house on stilts that was full of people and noise. A radio blared from within. The street was clean of animals and garbage. A young man approached us and said “Sa-leep?” We followed him to a house, and he showed us a long platform-bed that would easily accommodate the three of us. We nodded, and he gestured at the bed as if we were so tired that we wanted to sleep right now. I brought up the age-old question, “How much?” This led to a long and uncomfortable haggling session, as the price he initially quoted was completely ridiculous. His father, a man with wiry steel-gray hair and a machete, sat nearby on a bench, glaring at us. Although he was two heads shorter than me, he had a solidity and authority that lent considerable heft to the glare. I employed a standard bargaining technique, telling the young man that the accommodation he offered was not worth the price he was asking, and the older man’s gaze turned even more steely. I realized that it sounded like I was criticizing his house. Another man, with a mustache and a yellow stare, pounded his stomach and said “We’re all hungry here!”
Although I can converse perfectly clearly in Lao, especially when it comes to numbers and prices, the young man wanted to scratch the prices into the hard orange earth with a twig. Somehow we could come to no common ground. I tried to tell him we wanted to eat as well, but he would not assent that he understood, no matter how much pantomime I employed. Finally we sat in the shade and started making faces at the children, who were losing their suspicion. Another man came down from a house and trumped the young man, quoting us a reasonable price that included a meal. We agreed, and then to alleviate the cold vibes coming off the older man, I gave him a roll of duct tape. I gave a roll of steel wire to the reasonable man, and to the young man, nothing.
I’d been carrying a bunch of junk around for five months, for handing out to village kids, but somehow there hadn’t been the right occasion for a lot of the stuff. Now I unloaded the last of my bug cards, some sheets of stickers, various small toys, and some pens and pencils. I let them look at my book of pictures from around the world. Then we walked around the village, and every time I saw a mother, I gave her a little bar of soap. The old women of the village came toward us one by one and pointed at their eyes, then held out their hands. What did they want? Eyedrops? Later, it was clarified to me that they wanted glasses.
A younger woman approached us and showed us the top of her foot. She had some kind of smooth, puffy infestation that looked painful, and she clearly wanted us to treat it. All we had was a tube of aloe lotion in Annika’s bag, which we gave to the woman. She sat down next to us and applied it to the affected area with the tip of a feather.
The village was about thirty houses, surrounded by a low wooden fence. Although it was perched on the very edge of the highest part of the hill, there were no views of the valleys available from any vantage. Banana trees, bamboo, and tapioca obscured the view in every direction. Just inside the fence were small houses, also on stilts, that held pigs and chickens. I was impressed at the will of the villagers to keep their livestock segregated from their children and food, unlike in the Hmong village I visited earlier.
One of the houses had a second-story window with an old man leaning out. He had a weary, pained expression on his face. His arms were resplendent with tribal tattoos. He looked at me and spoke in Khamu, but I could not understand him. He gestured to his stomach. Then, above his shoulder, appeared the steely man to whom I had given duct tape. The steely man explained this was his father, eighty-six years old, and suffering from a stomach malady. All I had was buffered analgesic, which I gave him, hoping it would alleviate some of his pain.
We walked further, past a severely-slanting house. Another of the village’s young men followed us furtively, fingering his mustache and obviously keeping an eye on us. A little horde of kids ran up, and I noticed several of them had pictures out of my picture book. The savages! They had dismembered my picture collection! Oh well, they were easily replaced, and now it was one less thing to carry. Still, it nettled me somehow that the children had destroyed a book in about ten minutes.
Around a corner, I spotted a man carrying an inexplicable object. It looked like a mobile or a bird-feeder, some strange arrangement hanging from a string on a stick. He was moving with a purpose, and I had to hurry to catch up with him. Hanging from the string was a platter with four bowls on it, and each bowl contained a dead bird and a piece of metal. I intercepted the man as he was about to climb over the fence.
“Are you a shaman?” I asked him. He grinned and said no, and pointed. I moved in the direction of his finger, and he climbed over the fence and disappeared. Soon I was near the house that had the noise coming out of it, and a shirtless old man with a sword was staggering around in the street. The Swedes caught up to me, and we steered clear of the old man. I asked a woman with a baby where the shaman was, and she pointed vaguely. Then a hand grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around.
The old man was glaring fiercely at me with pale eyes, and pointing the sword at my sternum. It was a homemade weapon, slightly curved like a katana, with a handle made of bamboo and sinew. “You want a shaman?” he asked, and then started to bustle me forward. I didn’t want to get stabbed, so I let him escort me up the stairs and into the noisy house.
Inside, about twenty people were sitting around on the floor. The old man shoved me toward one corner and told me to sit. The Swedes came in as well but sat in a different section. I looked around. The people inside were all ages, male and female. They were taking turns sipping through long bamboo straws that stuck out of big lacquered bamboo jugs clustered in the center. A radio squawked out the daily news in Lao.
The old man seated himself near me, and faced outward into the room. He set his sword down and tied a piece of faded cloth onto his head. Then he leaned back and started sneezing and twitching. When he sat up, his eyes had a wild look.
The man we had seen outside brought in a bowl with a dead bird in it. It was some kind of jungle bird with the feathers boiled off. The old man, who was apparently the village shaman, took the bowl and waved it slowly around, as if he were wafting its odors into the air. Then a woman came forward out of the crowd, carrying a child of about two. The child was decked out in colorful clothes and silver bangles, all of which were several sizes too large. Some of the bangles had been tied onto her wrists and ankles with white string. Her hair had been teased into a little tuft on top.
The shaman muttered and chanted some more, then unwound a long, knotted, multicolored string from his sword-handle. He used a small knife to slit the abdomen of the dead bird, and pushed the string in, bit by bit, dragging it through the entrails. Then he withdrew it and leaned in toward the child, who struggled and cried. The shaman wrapped the string around the child’s wrists, one at a time, and began on the ankles, but the child panicked and kicked at him. The mother tried to soothe her, but to no avail. The shaman said something; the mother shrugged, lifted her shirt, and offered the child a nipple. She calmed instantly, and the shaman returned to the string project. After that, someone produced a large basket of sticky rice, and the shaman held little clumps of rice against the child’s forehead, chin, and the backs of her hands. He chanted some more, and then the mother tied white strings around his wrists. He burned the excess string off in a candle. He and his assistant, the man from outside, then picked up the bird and examined it from all angles. Satisfied, the shaman shredded the boiled bird’s breasts and thighs with quick motions of his fingers. The mother ate the pieces, offering them to the shaman, but he refused. Then she rose and backed away.
The shaman leaned back again, and repeated his barking/sneezing routine. When he sat back up, he pointed at a ferret-faced man with a jug. That man poured shots of rice whiskey for everyone sitting there. It was a hot afternoon, and we were low on water, but we accepted the drink anyway. The man from outside then helped the shaman with the next part of the ceremony. He balanced his sword on a very old, leaned-over Coke bottle and an empty rice basket, and placed two candles on the flat of the blade. He used a white paste to scrawl symbols onto the blade between the candles. His assistant lit the candles, and they both chanted for a minute or so. The shaman turned to the room at large and, with a simple gesture, instructed the fox-face to give everyone another drink. After the gasping had died down, he uttered something, and everyone began producing small objects. The shaman reached past the dead bird in the bowl and pulled out two very old coins. Other people offered bits of metal ornamentation, knives, shiny stones, and more old coins. I offered him two Sharpie markers and a piece of quartz. He took a basket full of uncooked sticky rice and dumped it out, making a little mountain. Then he adorned the mountain with all the odds and ends he had collected. More whiskey was distributed, then more chanting ensued.
The shaman raised an arm and pointed at everyone in the room, one by one, including the visitors. The natives rose and began heaping 2000 kip bills in front of him. I joined in. The Swedes did not have 2000s, so they threw in a 5000 and a 10000. The ferrety whiskey man made a statement and reached in to grab the 10000, but the shaman stared him down until he put it back. The shaman wrapped the colored string around the pile of bills and then handed it to a soot-stained old man with thick forearms who sat on his right. That man shuffled the bills together and then handed them to the woman with the baby, who bowed and accepted. The family resemblance was unmistakeable: this was surely her father and the baby’s grandfather.
This seemed to signify the end of a routine, for people started talking more loudly. They had been chatting through the entire ritual, but now they relaxed and began to move around in the room. The radio was turned back on. The shaman and his assistant continued to mutter and gibber over the pile of rice and the sword. Someone motioned me over to the center of the room where the big bamboo tubes lay against a centerpost. I took a drink through one of the long straws. It was like a punch: rice whiskey leavened with fruit juice and spices. It was warm and made my throat itch. I thanked the person who had motioned to me, using the Khamu “Ko par ngium,” which sounds like Coparnium. This got a big laugh from the whole room. I tried some of my other words and phrases; the one that seemed to delight them most was “Dtalang-tang,” meaning “dragonfly.”
The final phase of the ritual began a few minutes later, centered around the grandfather. He sat at a low round table with candles burning in bottles. The shaman sat next to him, humming and chanting and singing, and everyone in the room came and tied little pieces of white string around the grandfather’s wrist. Some of the people sang as they did so. I tried out a little Mongolian throatsinging as I tied my string; this earned me a look from the shaman that was a perfect mix of confusion, curiosity, and irritation. After all the strings were tied, the men started handing cigarettes to each other. I refused multiple offers, pantomiming gagging and coughing. The room soon filled up with acrid smoke, and we excused ourselves to step outside.
We sat on a bench in the shade for a while, marveling at what we had just witnessed. The villagers behaved in a much more friendly fashion toward us after that. Many of the young mothers brought their button-eyed babies over to stare at us.
As the sun began to set, the man with whom we had arranged to stay approached us with a battered-looking wok and asked us if we were ready to eat. We most certainly were, and we followed him back into the shaman’s house, where the little round table had been surrounded by three chairs. A long blanket was spread on the floor where the shaman had been sitting, and all the men in the room were sitting cross-legged on either side of it. It was covered with food, but I never got a good look at what they were eating. We were served ramen noodles in bowls, with extremely salty scrambled eggs and sticky rice on the side. It was simple but nourishing, and we ate it with gusto. The women and children lingered around the sides of the house, waiting for the men to finish.
We went back outside after the meal and sat in the last pink and orange rays of the sun as it disappeared behind distant mountains. Our landlord appeared instantly and suggested we go to sleep. It was far too early, and I told him so. We sat on the bench again, and I gave away the remainder of my loot to the crowd of children. They dispersed as soon as they realized no more treasures were coming out of my bag. The landlord had been hovering nearby, chain-smoking cigarettes, drew close and again suggested it was time to sleep. Since there was no electricity in the village, it did not sound quite so unreasonable to go to bed at this early hour. We followed him to the house, and on the way I asked if we could have some water.
The short, uncomfortable episode that ensued will forever be a source of confusion for me. He stared at me without comprehension. The iron-haired man had appeared again, and stood with the younger man, facing us. I repeated my request, and there was still no sign that they understood. I acted out thirst and drinking from a cup, a bowl, and out of cupped hands. I said “People get thirsty, people drink water. Where is the water?” Their faces darkened, and the older man shot the younger one a look of controlled disapproval that seemed to say “They don’t know how it’s done here.” I looked at the older man and asked him “Where do you go when you’re thirsty?” He frowned and did not reply. I translated all of this to the Swedes, who had no suggestions. Finally we accepted that there was to be no water, and let the younger man urge us upstairs.
It was barely past seven when he ushered us into the main upper room of the house, where three sleeping mats had been laid on the floor. I asked him if he had mosquito nets. He was surprised that we wanted them, but I insisted. We sat on their porch and watched the village prepare for nighttime while the man prepared our nets. It took him a very long time, compared to the complexity of the task, but it was still fairly early by the time he came out and told us our beds were ready. I asked for a bathroom, and he said there were no bathrooms, just go anywhere near the boundary fence. I theorized that if the people here drank no water, their solid waste would form dense discrete nodules that could be easily eaten by pigs, with relatively little chance of spreading contamination.
There was a single candle burning in the bedchamber as we prepared for sleep. Three children played in their pajamas, and the landlord watched us carefully from his seat on the floor. We held a short conference about water, and decided we could not afford to drink any of our reserves tonight because we would need it for the hike down tomorrow. We resolved to rise as soon as the sun came up so we could hike during the cool part of the morning. We had two liters of water between the three of us, and we all had a burning thirst following the salty eggs, the whiskey, and the hot climb.
The landlord watched us until he was satisfied that we were going to sleep, then he extinguished the candle and left. I lay there in the strange bed, thinking of water. It is very hard to sleep when you are thirsty, and even harder when there is a container of water within arm’s reach. My thoughts were focused on that liter bottle of fresh, cool, delicious water, and I could not relax.
The other impediment to sleep was the noise from the street outside. The villagers decidedly did not go to sleep this early – the shouts of children mixed with the barking of dogs and the laughter of adults for several hours. The children quieted down, but the dogs never did. I felt like a child who had been sent to bed while the parents are having a dinner party, and listening to the sounds of people having fun on the other side of the dark door. After a long time, the sounds died down to one localized noise-source, which I presumed was the house where people were sitting around drinking rice-whiskey. There was a very yappy dog in the street just below us, and it was only intermittently loud, the cur. A constant source of noise is possible to ignore, but when it erupts at unpredictable intervals, it renders sleep all but impossible.
Much later, the landlord, his wife, and their youngest child came into the room. The wife and child were the ones we’d seen in the shaman’s house. They set up a bed in a little closet-like space and lay down. The reason for the shaman-ritual soon became apparent. We had conjectured that it was a naming-day or some other age-related affair, but in fact the child was sick. She had a loud, difficult cough, and after each bout, began to cry. This continued through the night; needless to say, I did not sleep much.
When the bluish light of dawn began to steal through the gaps in the wall, we rose and packed our belongings. The village was slowly coming to life. We skulked away, not wishing to speak to anybody. The water and bed situation had made us all feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, and we wanted to leave. On the way out I saw the grandfather, squatting near a fire and using a hand-powered bellows to heat it up. I saw metal-working tools nearby, including a big iron knob used to beat metal into bowls. I was extremely interested in Khamu metalwork, and wrestled for a few minutes with the idea of staying and watching him work. In the end my parched throat won out: even in the early morning, it was evident that the temperature was rising, and my animal brain was ringing with dire warnings. So we climbed the fence and headed down the hill, and four hours later reached Ban Na, where water was available in plenty.
Khamu Smithy
I wondered about the world view and cosmology of a group of people who were not exposed to constant advertisement and flashing images of technology-based capitalism. Unfortunately, with the lack of televisions, advertising and commerce came an absence of schools, doctors, and comfort. It is a great temptation in the Western world to idealize such a people, and project onto them a close-to-nature nobility or purity, an antediluvian innocence. The reality is that a sick toddler gets colored string and ritual in place of antibiotics, and that an old man must endure his pain without palliatives.
CRITTERS ALONG THE WAY
Arlo, Pasco, and Annika after the hike down.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Spelunking in Ban Na
I arrived in Muong Ngoi in late afternoon, and checked into the same bungalow I had stayed in before. At $2.75/day, it was quite a nice deal, overlooking the river and bordered by a monastery and a steep hill. I had some new neighbors: a charmant French woman named Sophie, a Sri Lankan woman named Nathali, and a Spaniard named Moise. This latter was several inches over six feet and thin as a famine-goat. He had intense bulging eyes and a natural, endearing physical awkwardness, as if he had just reached this prodigious height last week and did not know the boundaries of his physical self. One of the first of his acts that I witnessed was when he got into a hammock which was far too short to contain his legs, so he flung them both out over the sides. One foot smashed into the railing of his bungalow-porch and sent it crashing into the underbrush far below. He looked shocked and amazed, looking back and forth between his foot and the railing. Later he wore the same expression when he lost his wallet and tripped over his own feet.
I went with this new little group to get some food, and we met up with Andrea, the Italian man I had seen last night down the river, and Lisa, his British companion. They seemed tense. We ate dinner with them, and a few other backpackers, and hatched a plan to hike up to the cave tomorrow.
After we ate we were joined by an individual who looked so unusual that I had an instinctual hesitation as he approached. His hair looked like a huge woolly shaving brush, rising straight up from a round forehead. He had one wormlike dreadlock dangling off the rear. This was the first afro-dreadlock mullet I had ever seen. His eyebrows were big eruciform carpets, black and thick, surmounting great round dark eyes that seemed ready to emanate a paralyzing mind-control ray. His nose was long and thin, the bridge so narrow it looked like translucent alabaster, and his cheekbones were similarly finely-sculpted and very prominent. His mouth was droopy, his lips purple, and his arms and legs seemed to be composed of knots and burls. He spoke English with a peculiar accent, but I could not place it, nor did I learn his name or his nationality. After he left, someone referred to him as the “Israeli guy,” but an Israeli at the other end of the table quickly spoke up and said “He is not Israeli.”
It rained that night, and we anticipated a muddy hike. The next morning we met at the same place and ate a local delicacy called farang rolls: peanut butter, honey, and raisins rolled into a tube of sticky rice. Our expeditionary team arrived by ones and twos over the course of an hour. In addition to myself, Sophie, Nathali and Moise, there was the bizarre-looking guy from last night, who was called Teizel, from Frankfurt, Germany. Then Andrea, who looked sad and sported a black eye, looking wistfully at the river as we ate our farang-rolls. “Lisa is leaving today,” he said. He showed up a couple from Israel: Lily, slender and muscular with grim gray eyes and a determined manner; and Nir, built the same, with dreadlocks over a handsome square-chinned face and a ready smile, who seemed he would be at home in any environment. Our fast was soon over, and it was time to walk.
We set off along the muddy red road. At many points, buffalo and sandals had churned the entire trail into a slop of varying thicknesses, that imparted a clay sliminess long after you walked through it. Inexpert flip-flop wearers had their footwear sucked off repeatedly.
The sides of the path were bursting with jungle-weeds, fast-growing thornvines and big shaggy bushes with poisonous leaves. Cowbells sounded in the thickets. Sometimes the trail passed under enormous old trees clinging to chiseled-looking boulders. Sometimes villagers paused in these shady spots, studiously avoiding eye-contact with us. To our right the small river flowed in full spate, brimming at the sides, nut-brown and swirly. Children wearing diving masks and carrying spears and primitive crossbows waded around at deep bends.
A wide creek joined the river, and there were stepping-stones across. We all took the opportunity to wash our footwear, as we suffered miseries of clay-clotting. Across the river, there was a short flat area that was fenced off with barbed wire, where shoots of young rice grew. The trail was deeply-churned here, but under the fence was a kind of little ridge you could balance on and avoid the muck. I was walking behind Sophie, who had already slipped once. Despite her care, she slipped again, and her body went straight toward the barbed wire. She stuck an arm out to break her fall, and caught the wire on the upper part of her elbow. She took the force of the fall on the little ridge when her hip hit it, and her arm sprang off the fence. I was in a state of high alertness for the stream of blood and chaos that was about to ensue – but Sophie, kissed by luck, had caught the wire on a space exactly between two of the barbs, and suffered a bad scrape but no punctures or tears.
We reached the entrance to the cave directly after. There was a little kiosk manned by a woman I recognized from the village, and she accepted our entrance fee of ten thousand kips.
The cave was at the foot of a huge steep rock shaped like a camel’s hump, thickly covered with vegetation. A fast stream came out of the gaping mouth of the cave, and we splashed in the cool, clean water for a while. Sophie bathed her wound, and I looked for dragonflies.
The cave entrance was split: the lower hole was filled by the river and impassable except by swimming. The upper hole was at the top of a staircase carved into a jumble of boulders. The stairs were mossy and bore Buddhist inscriptions. This entrance received some sunlight and there were carpets of moss on some of the rocks inside. We climbed down and found ourselves on a shelf overlooking the stream, which curled away to the left. The shelf received much less light, so we slid down the clay slope to the stream and walked up it. It was emanating from a triangular hole at the left rear of the cave. It did not reach the top of the triangle: there was about a foot of clearance.
After some discussion, Moise went in with a headlamp and scouted it out. He returned a few moments later with encouraging words about an open, dry area up ahead. Lily, who had exuded some reluctance even before going into the cave at all, suddenly announced she would wait for us outside. The rest of us stripped down to lights and underwear. There were three lights for six people. We ducked through the hole and found ourselves unable to touch the bottom, swimming upstream toward darkness. Nathali, with no light, struggled toward Moise who waited halfway. He reached under the water with his long arm and gave her a little pinch, and she let out a shriek that was hard and flat in the closed space. Sophie immediately shrieked as well, and they both started thrashing around. Then the noise turned to panicked laughter and a couple of fierce looks at Moise.
After this affray I managed to slip past Moise into the dark tube that ascended from the river. It was smooth and round, as if made by a colossal burrowing worm. After a couple of twists, there was a window in the side of the tube, and total darkness beyond, a chamber so big that my Grade D Chinese Headlamp could illuminate nothing. A few feet away was a little apron of stone that stuck out into the chamber. I shouted encouragement at the people below, and my attention was immediately drawn to the sharply-sloping pit to the right. The light could not get to the bottom, so it was impossible to guess how deep it was or if it was filled with water. There were no loose stones whatsoever in that cave, so a Took toss-assay was out of the question. To the left, however, was a series of cavities in the stone. Reaching out over the darkness, and using the edge of the window-hole as a holdfast, I was able to crawl crabwise over the steep part and onto a wide flat area inside the chamber.
I ran my lamp over the vaulted interior, dislodging bats who whirled away into the darkness. There were a few stalactites, but not of the typical conic shape – these were more bulky, and composed of the kind of wavy, crinkly deposits that look like the edge of an overturned snail’s foot. A path led around the crown of a vast boulder, that could have been some giant monk’s shaved head, and through to another chamber. A gigantic centipede ran away from me, and I screamed in genuine panic. This was no red-and-yellow Scolopendra, no, this was the giant cousin of the common house centipede, with the huge masses of arched legs, as big as a toilet brush and ten times as fast. It wanted nothing whatsoever to do with me, and ran off like Dr Richard Kimball.
I paused, and listened to my comrades. Nir, Teizel, and Andrea had negotiated the breach, but Sophie had convinced herself it was impossible, and there was a loud delay. Moise made it across with no problem, as did Nathali, but they fell well behind the rest of us and did not follow. We had two lights and four spelunkers, and we went on.
The next chamber had startling white streaks on one wall, with a crystalline sparkle, and many more bats that wheeled a couple of times and vanished. This chamber was sloped to the right, also tube-shaped but much larger, large enough that boulders the size of cars were lodged at oblique angles. I imagined it was the trachea of a fossilized Brobdingnagian bosun. We could hear the quiet purr of the river coming from somewhere near the bosun’s larynx. Nir took the lead, lowering himself with ease into a gap and chimneying down past the first big boulder. The rest of us followed and found him deep below us, crossing a smooth round ridge onto a flat space. It was fairly steep but also slimy, and large cave-crickets scuttled unhurriedly away at our approach. Nir helped us across the smooth saddle, and we had a moment of regrouping before we began to descend again. It was not as steep now, and there were piles of guano on the little shelves of the cave-wall.
The path ended at a short drop-off, about five feet or so, into the river. There was a big deep pool fed by a torrent from another chamber further up; the water rushed through a gap and into a bowl-shaped depression before whirling into the pool. The water sent back some of the blue light from our headlamps, giving it a magical sparkle. Nir found a few handholds along the edge and dropped into the water. We followed him, and stood in the deep, cool, fast current for a few moments. I began to crawl upstream, past the waterfall-cauldron, and a little ways up, I saw a bat clinging to the wall. This was the first bat who had not reacted to the light, nor did it as I approached. There was something disquieting about a fearless bat – was it ill? So I slipped back down and joined the other gentlemen, who were heading downstream to see if there was a loop we could make.
The river went into another round tube, and in the glowing-blue water I spotted a white, eyeless fish. I had never actually seen one of these in the wild, and it was an exciting moment. We kept going down the tube until it ended, the air part of it anyway, for the water was going somewhere. We turned off the lights to see if there was any hint of daylight coming up. There was no hint of any light at all, and our ears suddenly sharpened to the sound of the water gurgling down this tube, a great stygian borborygmus that we felt in our ears and noses. We were quickly unnerved and turned the lights on again. The sight of each others’ faces was comforting and we all shared a laugh to break the fear-spell. There were no votes for going upstream. We turned back. On the way up it was more difficult with just two headlamps. Andrea was a perfect gentleman, politely requesting illumination each time I went a little too far ahead of him. There was no trace of shortness or impatience.
We heard the others’ voices after a little while, when we began to approach the white-streaked room. Moise and Nathali had wanted to come down after us, but were anchored by Sophie, who would neither go further nor wait by herself in the dark. It was a puzzlingly easy problem to solve: escort Sophie back and then travel forth, but I suspect some energy from inside the cave was confounding their reasoning. I escorted Sophie out, and we waited a few minutes while Moise and Nathali explored. They did not go as deep, and soon we were all standing in the stream in brilliant sunlight with Lily. The sky was blue and the temperature climbing fast.
It took a few minutes for us to reintegrate with the colors and openness of the surface. Nir, Andrea, Teizel and I traded looks as we described our descent to the others. Their faces were as familiar to me now as if I had spent a weekend camping with them. We were all full of smiles and spirit as we continued up the path.
Another cave opened on the same hill a little ways away, but it was fenced off with barbed wire. Further on the trail became harder and more passable, and there was more evidence of agriculture on both sides. We went through a rocky area shaded by a big tree with buttress-roots, and were swarmed by tiny mosquitoes. There was no trace of wind and they followed us for some distance. Then we came to a big open area the size of a sports field, all terraced into rice-paddies. A little way into this and the hills dropped off into the distance, and we were standing in a broad green valley completely covered with rice terraces. There were numerous trails along the top of the breastworks that formed the divisions.
Winding our way among these, like rats in a labyrinth, we were repeatedly awed by the vast natural beauty around us: great jutting hills with sheer blocky edges, caked with vegetation and casting long shadows across the valley floor. There was a tractor in one of the paddies, and the blatter-blattle of its motor echoed around the walls of rock. Our group divided repeatedly as we chose different trails, but eventually we caught sight of a village at one end of the valley, and all converged there.
We split up to explore Ban Na, which was inhabited by Lao and Khamu people. I found an old woman with tattooed wrists, and got into a conversation with her. Nathali sat nearby, and the woman kept trying to draw her into the talk, although they had no languages in common. At one point I said something that made the old woman burst into laughter, and she turned to Nathali and excitedly related something to her, impervious to the language barrier. Then we were all three laughing, and the village children gathered around us. I passed out cards, and they crowded closer, until the old woman barked at them, scattering them like pullets.
We regrouped at one of the town’s two restaurants, where the proprietress strongly suggested we stay the night at their bungalows. We were happy to relax in the shade. We all ordered the same thing: fried rice with eggs and vegetables. There were hammocks strung on the large open deck of the restaurant, and we made ourselves comfortable. The wall was decorated by a National Geographic World Map in Swedish (the legend said Världen) and a few Beerlao posters.
Teizel talked to Nathali and Sophie, discussing the effects of tourism on villages. His accent was decidedly not German; I had spoken to him in German a couple of times, and while he was clearly fluent, he had the same accent in German as he did in English. He spoke several times of Jordan as a familiar place. Sophie finally asked him what we had all been wondering: what was his heritage? His mother was Romanian and his father Palestinian. There was a sudden electricity in the air, not a bad energy, but a heightened energy, as Nir and Lily looked at him with alert eyes. He said his father came from a Palestinian community in Jordan but had emigrated to Germany to work. He didn’t have anything against Israeli people; he said he felt more German than either of his ancestries. Then he said he met an Israeli guy on a bus who told him the only Palestinians he’d ever seen before had been through a rifle sight.
“That guy was an ass,” Nir said immediately.
“Yeah, I didn’t know what to say, so I just sat back,” Teizel said. “But then the guy, he turned out OK, he told me he was sorry to say it like that, and we had a good talk after that.” The electricity dissipated. Lily mentioned a couple of other asses they had known, and group goodwill was affirmed. Lily was very amusing in a wry and dry kind of way; she had a gift for exposing the root silliness of human attitudes.
The food arrived and we devoured it – a well-earned meal if ever there was one, and the simple fare had a savor accented by exertion and novel experience. The portions were generous and the vegetables, local edible ferns with garlic and onions, were crunchy and fresh. Afterwards we were all drowsy, and lazed around the shady deck while the proprietress patiently reminded us that we could stay the night. I talked with people in the village about Ban Phoon, a Khamu village further up the valley. It was supposedly a three-hour walk and it was possible to overnight there.
When the sun began to sink, we roused ourselves and started the walk back. It was uneventful save for the numbers of farmers we passed, also on their way home. When we reached the cave I let the others go ahead. I went a little ways in and slid down to the creek. There were several large loose stones in the creekbed, and I rolled these around to create a sturdy ring of rock. This completed, I re-emerged and saw the light was fading.
I hurried along the path as best I could, but I was fatigued and slipped often in the mud. A couple of times my feet popped through the front of the sandals, and I almost went sprawling. I was tired when I finally reached the town again, and I saw a woman doing laundry at a small spigot. I asked if I could wash my feet, and she said yes, but when I turned the valve, no water came out. I pointed at it and asked her if there was a water-spirit, and she laughed and yelled to a neighbor downhill. That neighbor closed some distant piece of plumbing, and water pressure returned, rinsing off the clay glop. I washed my face as well, and felt incredibly relaxed and refreshed as I went back to the guesthouse. We swam in the river for a while, then made vague plans for dinner, and retired to our respective hammocks to watch the sunset.
I went with this new little group to get some food, and we met up with Andrea, the Italian man I had seen last night down the river, and Lisa, his British companion. They seemed tense. We ate dinner with them, and a few other backpackers, and hatched a plan to hike up to the cave tomorrow.
After we ate we were joined by an individual who looked so unusual that I had an instinctual hesitation as he approached. His hair looked like a huge woolly shaving brush, rising straight up from a round forehead. He had one wormlike dreadlock dangling off the rear. This was the first afro-dreadlock mullet I had ever seen. His eyebrows were big eruciform carpets, black and thick, surmounting great round dark eyes that seemed ready to emanate a paralyzing mind-control ray. His nose was long and thin, the bridge so narrow it looked like translucent alabaster, and his cheekbones were similarly finely-sculpted and very prominent. His mouth was droopy, his lips purple, and his arms and legs seemed to be composed of knots and burls. He spoke English with a peculiar accent, but I could not place it, nor did I learn his name or his nationality. After he left, someone referred to him as the “Israeli guy,” but an Israeli at the other end of the table quickly spoke up and said “He is not Israeli.”
It rained that night, and we anticipated a muddy hike. The next morning we met at the same place and ate a local delicacy called farang rolls: peanut butter, honey, and raisins rolled into a tube of sticky rice. Our expeditionary team arrived by ones and twos over the course of an hour. In addition to myself, Sophie, Nathali and Moise, there was the bizarre-looking guy from last night, who was called Teizel, from Frankfurt, Germany. Then Andrea, who looked sad and sported a black eye, looking wistfully at the river as we ate our farang-rolls. “Lisa is leaving today,” he said. He showed up a couple from Israel: Lily, slender and muscular with grim gray eyes and a determined manner; and Nir, built the same, with dreadlocks over a handsome square-chinned face and a ready smile, who seemed he would be at home in any environment. Our fast was soon over, and it was time to walk.
We set off along the muddy red road. At many points, buffalo and sandals had churned the entire trail into a slop of varying thicknesses, that imparted a clay sliminess long after you walked through it. Inexpert flip-flop wearers had their footwear sucked off repeatedly.
The sides of the path were bursting with jungle-weeds, fast-growing thornvines and big shaggy bushes with poisonous leaves. Cowbells sounded in the thickets. Sometimes the trail passed under enormous old trees clinging to chiseled-looking boulders. Sometimes villagers paused in these shady spots, studiously avoiding eye-contact with us. To our right the small river flowed in full spate, brimming at the sides, nut-brown and swirly. Children wearing diving masks and carrying spears and primitive crossbows waded around at deep bends.
A wide creek joined the river, and there were stepping-stones across. We all took the opportunity to wash our footwear, as we suffered miseries of clay-clotting. Across the river, there was a short flat area that was fenced off with barbed wire, where shoots of young rice grew. The trail was deeply-churned here, but under the fence was a kind of little ridge you could balance on and avoid the muck. I was walking behind Sophie, who had already slipped once. Despite her care, she slipped again, and her body went straight toward the barbed wire. She stuck an arm out to break her fall, and caught the wire on the upper part of her elbow. She took the force of the fall on the little ridge when her hip hit it, and her arm sprang off the fence. I was in a state of high alertness for the stream of blood and chaos that was about to ensue – but Sophie, kissed by luck, had caught the wire on a space exactly between two of the barbs, and suffered a bad scrape but no punctures or tears.
We reached the entrance to the cave directly after. There was a little kiosk manned by a woman I recognized from the village, and she accepted our entrance fee of ten thousand kips.
The cave was at the foot of a huge steep rock shaped like a camel’s hump, thickly covered with vegetation. A fast stream came out of the gaping mouth of the cave, and we splashed in the cool, clean water for a while. Sophie bathed her wound, and I looked for dragonflies.
The cave entrance was split: the lower hole was filled by the river and impassable except by swimming. The upper hole was at the top of a staircase carved into a jumble of boulders. The stairs were mossy and bore Buddhist inscriptions. This entrance received some sunlight and there were carpets of moss on some of the rocks inside. We climbed down and found ourselves on a shelf overlooking the stream, which curled away to the left. The shelf received much less light, so we slid down the clay slope to the stream and walked up it. It was emanating from a triangular hole at the left rear of the cave. It did not reach the top of the triangle: there was about a foot of clearance.
After some discussion, Moise went in with a headlamp and scouted it out. He returned a few moments later with encouraging words about an open, dry area up ahead. Lily, who had exuded some reluctance even before going into the cave at all, suddenly announced she would wait for us outside. The rest of us stripped down to lights and underwear. There were three lights for six people. We ducked through the hole and found ourselves unable to touch the bottom, swimming upstream toward darkness. Nathali, with no light, struggled toward Moise who waited halfway. He reached under the water with his long arm and gave her a little pinch, and she let out a shriek that was hard and flat in the closed space. Sophie immediately shrieked as well, and they both started thrashing around. Then the noise turned to panicked laughter and a couple of fierce looks at Moise.
After this affray I managed to slip past Moise into the dark tube that ascended from the river. It was smooth and round, as if made by a colossal burrowing worm. After a couple of twists, there was a window in the side of the tube, and total darkness beyond, a chamber so big that my Grade D Chinese Headlamp could illuminate nothing. A few feet away was a little apron of stone that stuck out into the chamber. I shouted encouragement at the people below, and my attention was immediately drawn to the sharply-sloping pit to the right. The light could not get to the bottom, so it was impossible to guess how deep it was or if it was filled with water. There were no loose stones whatsoever in that cave, so a Took toss-assay was out of the question. To the left, however, was a series of cavities in the stone. Reaching out over the darkness, and using the edge of the window-hole as a holdfast, I was able to crawl crabwise over the steep part and onto a wide flat area inside the chamber.
I ran my lamp over the vaulted interior, dislodging bats who whirled away into the darkness. There were a few stalactites, but not of the typical conic shape – these were more bulky, and composed of the kind of wavy, crinkly deposits that look like the edge of an overturned snail’s foot. A path led around the crown of a vast boulder, that could have been some giant monk’s shaved head, and through to another chamber. A gigantic centipede ran away from me, and I screamed in genuine panic. This was no red-and-yellow Scolopendra, no, this was the giant cousin of the common house centipede, with the huge masses of arched legs, as big as a toilet brush and ten times as fast. It wanted nothing whatsoever to do with me, and ran off like Dr Richard Kimball.
I paused, and listened to my comrades. Nir, Teizel, and Andrea had negotiated the breach, but Sophie had convinced herself it was impossible, and there was a loud delay. Moise made it across with no problem, as did Nathali, but they fell well behind the rest of us and did not follow. We had two lights and four spelunkers, and we went on.
The next chamber had startling white streaks on one wall, with a crystalline sparkle, and many more bats that wheeled a couple of times and vanished. This chamber was sloped to the right, also tube-shaped but much larger, large enough that boulders the size of cars were lodged at oblique angles. I imagined it was the trachea of a fossilized Brobdingnagian bosun. We could hear the quiet purr of the river coming from somewhere near the bosun’s larynx. Nir took the lead, lowering himself with ease into a gap and chimneying down past the first big boulder. The rest of us followed and found him deep below us, crossing a smooth round ridge onto a flat space. It was fairly steep but also slimy, and large cave-crickets scuttled unhurriedly away at our approach. Nir helped us across the smooth saddle, and we had a moment of regrouping before we began to descend again. It was not as steep now, and there were piles of guano on the little shelves of the cave-wall.
The path ended at a short drop-off, about five feet or so, into the river. There was a big deep pool fed by a torrent from another chamber further up; the water rushed through a gap and into a bowl-shaped depression before whirling into the pool. The water sent back some of the blue light from our headlamps, giving it a magical sparkle. Nir found a few handholds along the edge and dropped into the water. We followed him, and stood in the deep, cool, fast current for a few moments. I began to crawl upstream, past the waterfall-cauldron, and a little ways up, I saw a bat clinging to the wall. This was the first bat who had not reacted to the light, nor did it as I approached. There was something disquieting about a fearless bat – was it ill? So I slipped back down and joined the other gentlemen, who were heading downstream to see if there was a loop we could make.
The river went into another round tube, and in the glowing-blue water I spotted a white, eyeless fish. I had never actually seen one of these in the wild, and it was an exciting moment. We kept going down the tube until it ended, the air part of it anyway, for the water was going somewhere. We turned off the lights to see if there was any hint of daylight coming up. There was no hint of any light at all, and our ears suddenly sharpened to the sound of the water gurgling down this tube, a great stygian borborygmus that we felt in our ears and noses. We were quickly unnerved and turned the lights on again. The sight of each others’ faces was comforting and we all shared a laugh to break the fear-spell. There were no votes for going upstream. We turned back. On the way up it was more difficult with just two headlamps. Andrea was a perfect gentleman, politely requesting illumination each time I went a little too far ahead of him. There was no trace of shortness or impatience.
We heard the others’ voices after a little while, when we began to approach the white-streaked room. Moise and Nathali had wanted to come down after us, but were anchored by Sophie, who would neither go further nor wait by herself in the dark. It was a puzzlingly easy problem to solve: escort Sophie back and then travel forth, but I suspect some energy from inside the cave was confounding their reasoning. I escorted Sophie out, and we waited a few minutes while Moise and Nathali explored. They did not go as deep, and soon we were all standing in the stream in brilliant sunlight with Lily. The sky was blue and the temperature climbing fast.
It took a few minutes for us to reintegrate with the colors and openness of the surface. Nir, Andrea, Teizel and I traded looks as we described our descent to the others. Their faces were as familiar to me now as if I had spent a weekend camping with them. We were all full of smiles and spirit as we continued up the path.
Another cave opened on the same hill a little ways away, but it was fenced off with barbed wire. Further on the trail became harder and more passable, and there was more evidence of agriculture on both sides. We went through a rocky area shaded by a big tree with buttress-roots, and were swarmed by tiny mosquitoes. There was no trace of wind and they followed us for some distance. Then we came to a big open area the size of a sports field, all terraced into rice-paddies. A little way into this and the hills dropped off into the distance, and we were standing in a broad green valley completely covered with rice terraces. There were numerous trails along the top of the breastworks that formed the divisions.
Winding our way among these, like rats in a labyrinth, we were repeatedly awed by the vast natural beauty around us: great jutting hills with sheer blocky edges, caked with vegetation and casting long shadows across the valley floor. There was a tractor in one of the paddies, and the blatter-blattle of its motor echoed around the walls of rock. Our group divided repeatedly as we chose different trails, but eventually we caught sight of a village at one end of the valley, and all converged there.
We split up to explore Ban Na, which was inhabited by Lao and Khamu people. I found an old woman with tattooed wrists, and got into a conversation with her. Nathali sat nearby, and the woman kept trying to draw her into the talk, although they had no languages in common. At one point I said something that made the old woman burst into laughter, and she turned to Nathali and excitedly related something to her, impervious to the language barrier. Then we were all three laughing, and the village children gathered around us. I passed out cards, and they crowded closer, until the old woman barked at them, scattering them like pullets.
We regrouped at one of the town’s two restaurants, where the proprietress strongly suggested we stay the night at their bungalows. We were happy to relax in the shade. We all ordered the same thing: fried rice with eggs and vegetables. There were hammocks strung on the large open deck of the restaurant, and we made ourselves comfortable. The wall was decorated by a National Geographic World Map in Swedish (the legend said Världen) and a few Beerlao posters.
Teizel talked to Nathali and Sophie, discussing the effects of tourism on villages. His accent was decidedly not German; I had spoken to him in German a couple of times, and while he was clearly fluent, he had the same accent in German as he did in English. He spoke several times of Jordan as a familiar place. Sophie finally asked him what we had all been wondering: what was his heritage? His mother was Romanian and his father Palestinian. There was a sudden electricity in the air, not a bad energy, but a heightened energy, as Nir and Lily looked at him with alert eyes. He said his father came from a Palestinian community in Jordan but had emigrated to Germany to work. He didn’t have anything against Israeli people; he said he felt more German than either of his ancestries. Then he said he met an Israeli guy on a bus who told him the only Palestinians he’d ever seen before had been through a rifle sight.
“That guy was an ass,” Nir said immediately.
“Yeah, I didn’t know what to say, so I just sat back,” Teizel said. “But then the guy, he turned out OK, he told me he was sorry to say it like that, and we had a good talk after that.” The electricity dissipated. Lily mentioned a couple of other asses they had known, and group goodwill was affirmed. Lily was very amusing in a wry and dry kind of way; she had a gift for exposing the root silliness of human attitudes.
The food arrived and we devoured it – a well-earned meal if ever there was one, and the simple fare had a savor accented by exertion and novel experience. The portions were generous and the vegetables, local edible ferns with garlic and onions, were crunchy and fresh. Afterwards we were all drowsy, and lazed around the shady deck while the proprietress patiently reminded us that we could stay the night. I talked with people in the village about Ban Phoon, a Khamu village further up the valley. It was supposedly a three-hour walk and it was possible to overnight there.
When the sun began to sink, we roused ourselves and started the walk back. It was uneventful save for the numbers of farmers we passed, also on their way home. When we reached the cave I let the others go ahead. I went a little ways in and slid down to the creek. There were several large loose stones in the creekbed, and I rolled these around to create a sturdy ring of rock. This completed, I re-emerged and saw the light was fading.
I hurried along the path as best I could, but I was fatigued and slipped often in the mud. A couple of times my feet popped through the front of the sandals, and I almost went sprawling. I was tired when I finally reached the town again, and I saw a woman doing laundry at a small spigot. I asked if I could wash my feet, and she said yes, but when I turned the valve, no water came out. I pointed at it and asked her if there was a water-spirit, and she laughed and yelled to a neighbor downhill. That neighbor closed some distant piece of plumbing, and water pressure returned, rinsing off the clay glop. I washed my face as well, and felt incredibly relaxed and refreshed as I went back to the guesthouse. We swam in the river for a while, then made vague plans for dinner, and retired to our respective hammocks to watch the sunset.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Leaving Oudomxay
It was difficult to make the decision to depart from Oudomxay, because I had not yet had a single boring day, and indeed, the days seemed to grow ever more interesting. Furthermore, many people around town now recognized me, and I them, so I was beginning to feel like a real resident. But, I was faced with an intolerable bifurcation of personality and preference: if I was going to stay, then I would need to contact the various government officials about protecting Puhipii, because I couldn’t well walk around enjoying the benefits of that mountain without trying to help it somehow. However, I had no wish to spend fifty dollars on a cell phone, and then to spend my days arranging meetings and pleading on the mountain’s behalf. Looking at it now, it seems inexcusably lazy to avoid this path, but honestly I just didn’t want to do that at this time. I would be happy to return to Oudomxay in the future, necktied and shaven, with an attractive presentation, replete with bells and whistles. But today, this time, I still heard the call to adventure, the intoxicating tocsin of jungle, river, and mountain.
My departure was catalyzed by the arrival of Maria, a formidable Argentine woman travelling solo. We’d met before in Luang Nam Tha, and done some cycling and trekking. Since we had last met, she had gone up to Phongsali on the vomit-inducing bus, and gotten trapped for three days in Hat Sa during a sustained downpour, waiting for a boat down the river. Maria recounted her trip over a potato-and-egg lunch, seasoned with fizzy, fermented ketchup. The stay in Hat Sa would have been almost tolerable except for the presence of another foreigner: Mark, a middle-aged Australian drunk, who happened to get stuck in town at the same time. He was filthy rich and filthy drunk, and the locals soon got sick of him. With no other English speakers in the entire town, Maria had been forced to endure hour after hour of boring drunken stories about Mark’s many glories. She rolled her eyes and waved her hand as if to say, “It’s all done with now.”
After lunch we walked a long loop up the valley, and my eyes were drawn to Puhipii as my vantage changed and more of its topography was revealed. I found myself wondering what the other face of it looked like. Maria and I found a rust-colored mud road that skirted the hills, and passed through a couple of small villages, where old people and children shouted greetings. We made way for a herd of water-buffalo, and passed an amphitheatre-like brick factory carved into the side of a carnelian mud hill. Nearby was a collection of the least-quality housing available to modern humans: ramshackle crude huts made of bamboo, cardboard, rusted sheet-metal, and wide strips of plastic. Garbage was strewn about for meters in all directions, punctuated here and there by jagged chunks of scrap metal. The whole place emanated poverty, despair, and mephisis. We gave it a wide berth. A little further down the road was a palatial residence, apparently deserted, that combined colonial French styles with Lao temple architecture. It was gated by a small squat tower that imitated a Lao castle, adorned with a sign that said “Siphan Salika Import Export Co.Ltd. Lao PDR Lao Product.” What this place was doing so far away from everything was a mystery. What a giant home was doing deserted while people lived down the road in abject conditions was another mystery, one that had already endured the ages and was not likely to be solved anytime soon.
We walked back to town along the highway, an unattractive route but one that saved us having to backtrack, and went up to the temple to watch the sunset. Sulesit, the young Khamu monk, greeted us, and a few of his colleages sat with us to watch the day end. Sulesit and I had a good rapport by now, and after we exchanged a few sentences, he looked up at me and shyly asked: “Can I call you … ‘Big Brother?’” Of course, I told him, and that is how I got a Khamu little brother.
With sundown came mosquitoes, and it wasn’t long before we were driven off the hill by vampire hordes. Generations of natural selection must have protected the young monks, for they remained unperturbed. At dinner that night, I observed Maria’s interesting body language. She was broadly-built and very muscular, being an avid rock-climber. Her cheeks, eyebrows, and hands all danced while she spoke, with a very Latin American emphasis, but her round face and stocky frame did not seem to come from Iberian ancestry, somehow. When she told me her parents were Polish, it all clicked. If she had a sour, defeated expression, and dragged her arms heavily along at her sides, she would look perfectly Polish. It was just the fiery tropical energy animating those features that cancelled the effect.
The next morning, we met at the bus station. We were bound for Nong Khiao, a bridge town several hours away by bus. We got to the bus station over an hour early for the 11:00 bus, knowing full well that we could be compelled to sit in the aisle if we got there late. We got our tickets, loaded our bags onto the top of the bus, and then sat in the waiting area. All of a sudden Maria started halfway out of her seat.
“That’s him!” she said, pointing. “That’s Mark, the Australian guy!” I looked across the bus station and saw one of the seedy all-night bars among the buildings at the outskirts. A man was leaning against the doorframe, middle-aged, iron-haired, six feet tall, a beer bottle dangling from one hand. From the tone and the substance of Maria’s stories, I would have thought that she would want to avoid him at all costs. However, this was not the case.
“He owes me 60,000 kip!” she exclaimed suddenly. “He ran out of money when we got to Muang Khua, and there were no banks there, so I gave him that to get a bus ticket.” Then she got up and strode purposefully toward him. I watched from afar as she gave him a talking-to, and then he handed over some bills. She came back looking satisfied, but Mark followed her.
The reaction from the locals was immediate. They began muttering “Drunken foreigner” and averting their eyes. Mark slouched up and began talking at us. Even in the morning, he was deep in the state of drunkenness wherein the drinker believes himself to be the center of all interesting things, and readily inflicts himself upon anyone who does not recoil in disgust. Western politeness had been too deeply ingrained in me to hurl the man away with a shove, when his beer-humid breath intruded deeply into my personal space.
“I can’t remembah which guesthouse I checked into last night,” he said, dangling a key in front of me. He then told us how he’d wandered into a bar where he ended up until this morning. He then said he was looking for an ATM. I gave him quick directions, knowing the nearest ATM was about a mile away, and hoping this would be the last we saw of him. It was not.
Our bus (actually a minivan) was scheduled to leave at 10. We had already claimed our seats by laying clothing on them, but even this does not deter some people. As the hour approached, we relocated to a bench near the bus, so we could watch and make sure nobody scooted our clothes away and took our places. 10 o’clock came and went. The passengers were all present, and the copilot had strapped all our bags to the roof. The only thing missing was the driver. Public transportation rarely leaves on time in Laos, and there is often no identifiable cause for delay. Today was just such a case. I asked the copilot where the driver was, and he pointed to a mostly-empty minivan parked next to ours, where a man sat behind the driver’s seat. He was apparently doing nothing, just staring straight ahead. I pointed at the clock, now reading forty past ten, and asked the driver when we were leaving.
“Ten o’clock,” he said agreeably.
“What is the driver doing?”
“I don’t know.” So there it was. Eleven came, and we were growing very bored. It’s much harder to wait when you don’t know how long you will be waiting. Finally two other men came and got into the front seats of the minivan where the driver sat. The two new men got into a heated debate, with hand gestures and obvious emotion, and our driver was very alert, watching the exchange, but not participating. This lasted almost half an hour, and at last our driver came boiling out of the minivan. The copilot suddenly exhorted all the passengers to board, and we had barely squeezed in before the scowling, red-faced driver put the bus into gear. The copilot went to shut the door, but a final figure leapt in: Mark. He had two bottles of beer clutched in one hand. The copilot forced him in next to me. Maria was on the opposite side, against the window, with a disgusted look on her face.
The ensuing four hours were dull and dreadful. Mark began to tell me every story he could come up with, mostly having to do with how much money he made. “We went looking for gold,” which came out gaould in his accent, “but we faound nickel. Can you believe it? We went looking for gaould but we faound nickel!” He then told me about the wonders of modern mining, wherein you don’t even need to tunnel down anymore, you just remove the earth layer by layer with explosives and machinery. I also got to hear about several other financial projects which had earned him heaps of money.
Maria, on my other side, was rolling her eyes and told me in Spanish that she’d already heard all of these stories three or four times when they were trapped by the rainstorm earlier. We switched over to Spanish in hopes of excluding Mark, but he turned to a Lao man behind him and started yelling “Andale, andale! Arriba, arriba!” The man shifted uncomfortably but made no response. Mark took this as an invitation to a monologue, and loudly tried to explain to the man that Maria and I were speaking Spanish. The man looked at me and said in Lao “He’s really quite drunk.” I nodded.
We stopped in a small village to pick up other passengers, and Mark burled out of the minivan. He went between two huts, and in more or less full view of the village and the bus, urinated on the wall of one of them. The Lao people made sounds of disgust and muted anger, but did nothing. Then Mark went to the little village store and bought two more bottles of beer. These, understand, are Beerlao bottles, 23 fluid ounces, almost twice as big as a standard Western container. Mark’s antipodean kidneys were evidently able to handle repeated double-doses of that volume, and without ever causing him to pass out. On his way back to the minivan, he pulled out a huge wad of 20,000 kip bills and began handing them out to children.
What kindness, you may think, what nobility. Allow me to disagree, and to explain myself. 20,000 kip is roughly the price of a restaurant dinner for a family of five in Laos, and is no trifling sum. For a foreigner to hand out large-denomination bills to children reinforces the notion that visitors to Laos are walking ATMs, an attitude that has deeply infiltrated the more-travelled areas like Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng. It sets the foreigners to a further personal remove from the locals – it’s very hard to have a real conversation with someone who just wants to get money out of you. There’s no question that Laos is a poor country and can use foreign money, but it should be responsibly distributed: in the form of schools, books, medicine, shelter and infrastructure. I have witnessed countless instances of Lao people who get their hands on money, and spend it on expensive clothes and sunglasses, motorcycles and cars, mansions, and ostentatious jewelry. They do not spend it on improving their community. Fine, let the tour guides, the corrupt policemen, the landlords, and the petty drug dealers waste their money on shiny crap – it’s the same the world over, why try to stop it here? But if you’re going to show up and just hand stuff out, at least you should hand out things that will improve the quality of life for the community. If Mark had used that money to buy coats and shoes in Oudomxay for every child in the village, I would have thought him a completely different person. But by handing out cash, he is only contributing to avarice and making it harder for people like Maria and me to connect with the locals in a non-pecuniary way.
“Well, I think I made a pretty good impression,” Mark said as he got back in the minivan. He then launched into the gaould and nickel story again. And so it went. At the next stop he bought a whole case of beers and began distributing them to passengers. And old Khamu couple accepted beer after beer, storing them in a voluminous bag, with a bewildered expression on their faces. Finally Mark gave them a small handful of 20,000 kip bills. They bowed deeply to him before they got off at the local market town. Somehow this was different from handing out bills to children, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint how. The old couple were obviously poor and could almost certainly find a good use for that money. In my mind, I couldn’t see them spending it on shiny trinkets. I believed they would distribute it to family members who needed it, to buy things like medicine and clothes. Maybe I give that old couple too much credit, but there was something in the gravity of their expression that told me they were hesitant to believe in this good fortune, and were worried Mark might ask for it all back.
We finally arrived at Nong Khiao, which longtime readers will remember from the October 1999 edition of this publication. Now, as then, it was a small community along the Ou river, growing steadily around the grand and beautiful bridge built by the Scandinavians. The bus took us all the way to the boat terminal, in case we wanted to go upriver to Muong Ngoi or downriver to Luang Prabang. Maria and I ditched Mark as fast as humanly possible, which wasn’t hard because he headed straight for the standing cooler of beer at the terminal restaurant.
Nong Khiao
Maria and I checked into a charming little set of riverside bungalows, then took a walk across the bridge and up the valley. The area was surrounded by towering, blunt limestone peaks crowned with lush green vegetation, and all the evidence of human presence was made minuscule by the grandure. We walked a couple of miles up to a cave complex where several people had hidden from bombing during the Vietnam War. The caves were large, but rather musty, and had strange signs evidently indicating what certain parts of the cave had been used for during its occupation. As far as museums go, it was one of the most rudimentary I have seen.
Bug nymph
We headed back as night fell, and stopped at a small restaurant. There was a group of foreigners already there, and they invited us to join. It was two couples: one from Sweden and the other consisting of an Italian and a British woman. We had a nice long talk until everyone was ready to go home.
When we got back to our bungalows, I walked around a bit in the well-maintained garden. To my surprise and delight, I discovered a leatherleaf slug crawling about on a log. I captured it to take pictures of it the next day. Further investigation turned up the Asian slug-snail on a broad leaf. This strange creature keeps its snail-shell hidden inside its body, and has a large exposed lung.
Slug Snail
Leatherleaf Slug (Family Veronicellidae)
The next day Maria and I parted ways. She wanted to go further East, and I wanted to go back up to Muong Ngoi. We had breakfast together, but then I sat on my balcony taking pictures of slugs while she packed up and left. Later I walked toward the dock, but as I was passing the bus station Maria ran up and grabbed me. “Come with me,” she said, “we need to get this sorted out.” I went with her and quickly divined the problem. There was a bus heading East, waiting there and full of passengers, but the ticket seller wanted her to wait four hours for the next bus that was more expensive. His given reason was that the bus was too full. I pointed out that there is no such thing as a full bus in Laos, and that he would happily allow Lao people to get on such a bus. He simply refused: as a man in uniform, with the power to issue or not issue tickets, he had that right. He then blatantly sold tickets onto that bus to two Lao people who were behind us.
I had to leave Maria to catch my boat, and that final image of her stuck with me for a long time: muscular shoulders tense, cigarette dangling from her mouth, eyes afire, and one arm gesticulating in a frustrated-but-hopeless fashion. I would have liked to stay with her a little longer and try to shoehorn her onto that bus, but my boat was leaving and space was likely to be limited.
Jumping Spider (Nong Khiao)
Weevil (Nong Khiao)
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