Am I a Writer?

Time will tell. Note: Quite often, I write about people I know. If any of you object to anything I have written, let me know and I will remove it.

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Wannabe. Living in Vientiane, Laos. Has blog to avoid sending lengthy emails.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Hot Coals


A guy at work, who had been on exchange for the past three months in Canberra, returned to Vientiane on Tuesday, several days before his wife’s second child was due. He arrived on the 8pm flight. At 2am the following morning, the baby was born in the back of the car on the way to the hospital.
Anyway, Lao journalists being Lao journalists, this was the perfect opportunity to abandon the business of newspapers and descend en masse to the house, me included, where we cooed over the baby, ate a hefty meal and played cards.
This post is dedicated to his wife, who was unable to join us as she was busy lying on a bed of hot coals in the backyard, and I mean this very almost literally.
In Laos, a woman who has just given birth must then lie for a certain period on a low bed over a fire. Sometimes she stays there for several weeks, sometimes for nine or ten days, I think it depends on how many children she has already had.
It also doesn’t matter what the weather’s like. Now is a relatively cool period in Vientiane, but imagine how it would feel in July?
Plus, the bed isn’t padded or comfortable. The mother’s not allowed to get up and walk around or sleep in her own bed or bathe her own baby. Instead, relatives bring the baby to her to be fed, stoking up the coals, just in case she looks too comfortable.
I don’t know why they do this, or what it could possibly mean. We’ve asked many people, and received responses ranging from the superstitious (something about cleansing the spirit) to the purely vain (it tightens up the flabby, post-pregnancy flesh).
It’s baffling, and seems to have no logical foundation.
But try telling a Lao person that some of their nutty health-related theories are flawed, and you will get only a blank look. No woman here, no matter how educated or progressive, would consider NOT prostrating herself over a bed of coals during the first weeks of her baby’s life.
I shudder to think what the smoke is doing to the kid’s lungs.
[As an aside, my friend Mel immediately saw the potential of these low beds as a kind of offbeat seating arrangement, and bought up several of them. She fitted them up with cushions and they now serve as terribly funky couches in her living room.]

Commy hacks
More debates in the newsroom. The National Assembly is in the middle of one of its ‘sessions’, and the phonelines are open for concerned citizens to ring up and voice their complaints. Surprisingly many of these are addressed in parliament.
The complaints have ranged from corruption among officials to neighbourhood nuisances regarding late-night clubs. Some have voiced concerned about a multi-million dollar Malaysian investment project that will see a water theme park open up on the heart of Vientiane….in a protected wetlands area. Is this consistent with the government’s commitment to environmental preservation? the people are asking.
And are the traffic police even doing their job properly? Why are so many people still riding without helmets?
At least one of the journos has quite a nose for controversy, and it’s a guessing game each day to try and determine which of his stories will run the following day. The problem is, contrary to the image most people conjure up when they think of censorship, at my paper there seems to be a complete lack of defined policy as to what will or won’t be published.
I thought, for sure, the complaint about the fact that so many government officials drive luxury cars wouldn’t get a mention. Nor the one about retired officials who, having worked hard for 30 years, still don’t have subsidised housing, while young upstarts in the job for three or four years have several houses AND fancy cars already- where is this money coming from?
The story listing all these complaints ran on the front page.
But another story, about buffalo owners in rural Luang Prabang being forced to pay damages to Chinese rubber plantation owners, despite these investors refusing to build fences around their plantations, didn’t run, even though it was riddled with direct quotes from an official saying that buffalos aren’t good for the economy and rubber plantations are, so why are these bloody peasants (who have breeding buffalo for generations) complaining?
Never mind that the locals are yet to see a cent from the plantations, which have also been condemned by environmental NGOs.
Anyway, like I said, it’s a guessing game from day to day.

Also: dead bodies, gore
A young girl tried to kill herself in the middle of Vientiane a couple of weeks ago, drawing quite a crowd. She climbed up an electricity pole, intending to electrocute herself. She didn’t succeed, but she did give herself a nasty electric shock, causing third degree burns and frizzed-up, singed hair.
One of the journos was on hand to capture the event on camera, before hurrying back to the newsroom to record the whole thing in detail: her name, address, high school, possible reasons for wanting to die, and a lovely close-up of her messed-up face, wracked with pain as the rescuers pulled her down.
An argument ensued.
“You cannot, absolutely cannot, run with this story,” I said, without thinking.
Bafflement all round. But why? This is hot news! Great photos! Stupid girl, stopped traffic, the people have a right to know!!
After much debate, I managed to convince them to run a small story, omitting personal details and all mentions of suicide, and absolutely no photo.
The journo is still resentful.
“Sally, the news should be a mirror of society,” he pointed out.
At this breathtakingly ridiculous statement, given where we were (the newsroom of a government-controlled, heavily censored Communist mouthpiece), I had no choice but to abandon any complicated speeches about ethics and cut straight to the heart of things.
“Ekaphone,” I said, “this girl might have done something stupid, but she is still alive. Do you think she wants to see photos of herself all burnt up like this on the front page? And what about her family? Ekaphone, what if this was your sister?”
Boom. Case closed.
I’m almost ashamed, especially as I had to employ that little cliché a few days later, when they tried to run a photo of a motorbike accident victim- dead on the road.
“Somsack, what if that was your brother?” I pointed out, and again, it seemed to shut him up.
I would almost prefer it if they had some counter-argument, but the problem is that they want to run these stories without thinking. I suspect this is also the case in the Thai papers, from which the Lao journos draw much of their inspiration. Thai papers seem to have no qualms about publishing photos of dead bodies or accident victims.
It’s an age-old editorial debate.

Teeth and candles- books and root vegetables
There are only two more weeks left of this year. Amazing, no? Philippa and Caroline are joining me in Vientiane for Christmas, which has placed a strain on my language skills already. That’s because in Laos, the words are in a different order, and every noun comes with a classifier. So I can’t tell someone that I have ‘two younger sisters’, but rather ‘I have younger sibling, two persons, girls’.

So I can’t order ‘two cups of coffee’ but rather ‘coffee, two cups’.
Buying 12 roses? “I’ll take rose 12 [insert classifier specific to flowers, light fittings and nails].”
Or 3 turnips? “Please can I have turnip 3 [insert special classifier for books and root vegetables].”

I know, nuts. How am I supposed to learn all this? After a year, I think I’m improving a bit, but for a relatively rough language, it’s very hard to absorb.
I thought, because I already had another language, it would be easy. But I forgot about how hard it is to memorise stuff. I haven’t had to this since high school, pretty much. Even at uni, my exams were all open-book. And I can’t even remember learning French as a process- I was too young.
The problem is that Lao words mostly bear no relation to English or French words. It’s a pain in the ass.

Booker Schmooker
What else has happened in the last fortnight? Work is really picking up the pace, the Island has a new job, and I’ve been reading a lot. Finally got through Katharine Graham, all 680 pages of it, but I haven’t only been reading that. I brought back a slew of reading materials from home- some Quarterly Essays, Australian Vogue, a music mag, this year’s Booker winner The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Dessai. Yes, and I know I said last year’s Booker winner was one of the best books ever, but Inheritance was brilliant. Really stunning. [Incidentally, only one person I know liked The Sea, and that’s Billy in Melbourne. Typical, as he’s a writer himself.]
In the mood for some classical drama, I’ve now foolishly plunged into Anna Karenina. Up to page 80, with just 720 to go.
I bought a stack of DVDs recently, and marvelled at Helen Mirren playing the Queen in The Queen the other night. Ditto Gretchen Mol in The Notorious Betty Page.
Also, a friend gave me the first two seasons of The OC. That’s, like, 50 hours of TV right there. I decided, after the first two episodes, that I was ready to take the plunge, to jump in and invest my time and emotions in the lives of Marissa, Ryan, Seth and Summer. I’m 20 episodes in now, and practically dying of boredom. If only Mischa Barton could act, you know? Her lack of skills are stealing hours of my life! Enough.
Oh, and I’ve had a few nights out. That’s a photo of me bowling, by the way. I don’t like bowling, but the pic is kinda cool. Last weekend I got terribly drunk and had an awful hangover, and considered making a new year’s resolution to stop drinking.
But I really don’t think that’s feasible, do you?

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

I love nature









Last weekend, we drove eight hours south to the Konglor Caves in Borikhamxay province. Partly to counter those accusations I mentioned in the last post.
Anyway, driving through villages and dried-out rice paddies, surrounded by these towering limestone cliffs…there was a lot of not looking away, that’s all I’m saying.
It’s the kind of thing that makes you hear music in your ears (especially if you’ve seen a lot of movies), and makes you imagine living in their shadow, and seeing them every day.
It took us a long time to get to the caves. The road was bad, and sometimes non-existent. We used my friend Tim’s GPS device to get to the river, it was that bad. “You are heading south. You are heading south,” it kept saying.
We ended up paying a villager to take us there.
‘There’ was a surprisingly lovely but somewhat pricey hotel, where we left the car and took a boat 40 minutes up the river to a new resort closer to the caves- simple bungalows, cold water showers, and the most pristine river I’ve seen in ages.
The caves- when I say caves, I mean a river winding four kilometres through a mountain and out the other side, by the way- were pretty spectacular. Massive, pitch-black (and lit up sporadically by the navigators’ headlights), cathedral-like, 100 metres wide and 100 metres high in some parts, filled with sparkling stalagmites and stalagtites…what’s the difference by the way? Which is which?
You have to see these caves now, because in a year or two, the resort will be the new Vang Vieng. I mean it: they’re building a new road to get there this very second, and soon, the water will be murky, the rooms will smell funky and there will be beer bars all along the riverbank. Maybe even in the caves themselves, where the glittering formations will be tarnished with black fingerprints. They say that limestone stains for 1,000 years when you touch it. Imagine.
So we were lucky to see it when we did.

The boats we took chugged down through riverside villages, where kids, or sometimes whole families, lined up on the shore to wave hello and goodbye. They were happy, excited to see us, with our light hair, pale skin and fount of potential funds.
I thought about what it would be like if we were Asian people, winding our way between riverside towns in rural Australia. People there wouldn’t line up to wave and smile. They would be more likely to stare, hostile, or turn away and mutter. They would treat us with suspicion.
I know that without a doubt, and it made me sad.

This post is dedicated to my black Haviaina flip-flop that I left behind in the caves- it slipped off my right foot and floated away into the darkness.

It’s also dedicated to my friends Malikhone and Kek, who, like many Lao girls, made me look once again like a towering amazon in a field of random wildflowers that we came across on the way.

Big story in the past week:
The finalists were announced for the title of Miss Apone Lao, the country’s very own beauty pageant, put on by the Lao Women’s Union.
I was given complimentary tickets to the finals, but I wouldn’t have gone even if I hadn’t been away loving nature. After being photographed with the 18 finalists in our office last week- the Vientiane Times was a major sponsor of the event- I had seen all I wished to see of what is expected of the prototypical Lao woman. As stipulated by the Lao Women’s Union, that is.
Honestly, 18 girls with perfect hairdos, in heals and sinhs, bowing low and barely saying a thing just doesn’t do much for the sisterhood, does it?
I had a bet with an English colleague on who would win. We both liked a girl with honey skin and slightly Indian features- all the boys thought she was ugly because “skin too dark”. Of course, it was the most docile girl with the whitest skin and the roundest face who won.

Two more interesting stories in the paper here this week:
A women’s group is pushing to have marital rape criminalised. The rationale is that having sex with your wife when she doesn’t want to is a form of domestic violence, a fact that should be reflected in the country’s sexual assault laws.
It’s not rocket science.
Or is it? I thought, as I tried, as patiently as I could, to explain to the editor- the editor- that yes, in fact rape is still rape even when the parties are married…
The boys in the office all thought it was tremendous fun, as did the editor, until I pointed out the part in the story about how Laos is a signatory to a certain, you know, international convention that defines rape as such, and that the country is sort of 'lagging' a bit. Strangely, that seemed to shut them up…

The other story, or rather the lead up to the first draft being written, gave me enough of a glimmer of hope for the future of this country’s media, and the people involved, for me to keep doing what I’m doing. For a few hours, at least.
One of the journalists got wind of a group of workers, from an unofficial street-corner labour market, who were so poor that they had actually started selling their blood.
My journo went undercover down at the street corner, and posed as someone wanting to know where he could get some blood. He also spoke to a woman who had paid US$75 for some blood for her cousin, when she discovered the blood bank was empty.
I read his first draft and got really excited. I told him he should take it further- speak to the Red Cross and turn it into a campaign to get more people to donate blood, so that people wouldn’t have to buy blood from strange men on street corners. We had a heated, creative-differences type of argument, of the likes not previously seen by me in a Lao newsroom, and he finally agreed to speak to more people.
Before he could do this, the editor checked the copy and was outraged at the very thought that Vientiane Times could suggest that people were so poor they would sell their body parts, and made him change every mention of ‘selling’ to ‘donating’, and replace any mention of money with some kind of euphemism for ‘a small gift for services rendered’.
What we got was a lame story about random men on random street corners who were so kind-hearted they were giving away their blood.
Welcome to service journalism, Lao-style.

She really is an art nerd!
Anyway, you might have noticed the photo of my painting. I’m liking it more every day- what does everyone think?
I like the apple, especially.
This post is also dedicated again to Pat, whose entire computer was stolen last week by some kind of animal in the night- his computer and many thousands of songs, photos, articles, workplans and words of academic brilliance.
How is he coping??