I was extremely excited when I knew that I was one of 12 students from Ubon Ratchathani University that was selected to take part in the Southeast Asia Field School 2009. I prepared myself to stay in Southern Laos with 24 Australian friends from the University of Sydney and 12 Laotian friends from Pakse Southern Agricultural College.
After the van crossed the Thai border, everyone who was a part of this journey, myself included, felt excited because most of us would be visiting Laos for the first time. The van took me and my friend to meet the Laos and Australian authorities and the students at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, in Champasak province. Here everyone welcomed me and my friends warmly. Laotian students dress modestly, and the girls wear their local skirts most of the time. I felt like I was still in Thailand because Laotian and E-sarn Language and cultures are similar.
So I got use to Laotian culture quickly and got along with the people there quite well.
After the warm greeting and the lecture from Laotian authorities, the group of a total of 24 students, was divided into two groups. The first group had to stay at Kaengpho village and the scond group had to stay at Khamyaad village. Every Thai student got two buddies, from Australia and one from Laos. The buddies had to take care of each other until their one week task was finished. It was there that everyone had their first friendship lunch and got to know each other more. After the lunch, we headed to the Sanachomboun district where the two villages were located. The two villages are situated along the Sedon River which flows into the Mekong River. I was in the first group and stayed at Kaengpho village. Every two students stayed in one house. My hosts were extremely nice. They feed my buddy and me very well with local fresh food. After I woke up early in the morning, the first thing I saw was food and a bucket of water for cleaning my hands after eating.
While other friends and I stayed there, we participated in many activities. There was interviewing the villagers about their life and the way they manage resources in the village. Our activities for the first day, were visiting a back swamp of the village, finding local food depending on students’ interest and building a brick pond for breeding fish. From the interview, which my buddies and I did, I found that the villager’s ways of living are sufficient and peaceful. They find food in the village and grow rice by themselves. They rarely buy food from anywhere else. The older people live in the village, while the younger villagers work in the city or other countries and send money back home to villages often.
The villagers’ management of the swamp is well organized. They make rules to preserve the swamp and birds which live around it, using only fishhooks and other small equipment to catch fish in the dry season. They do not catch birds, only a large number of fish when there are visitors arriving or there are annual ceremonies held in the villages. They also believe that there is a female spirit who protects the swamp. If any villagers break the rules, they must be punished by the spirit and also fined by the head of the village. However, this case is rarely found because the villagers trust each other. They also raise animals such as chickens, ducks, and pigs around the village which have never been stolen. Moreover, people make a fence to protect only the animals not the robbers.
An interesting activity that I did with the villagers was catching fish from the back swamp. We were riding a boat and collecting fish from the swamp at the same time. Although the weather was quite hot, I felt fresh because of the coolness of water that I touched and the nice wind that swept around the swamp.
We gathered enough fish to cook lunch, including food from another group, who collected red ant eggs. We then had another friendship lunch between students and the villagers. Because of my hunger and my exhaustion from finding food, I ate like a horse and felt like that meal was the most delicious meal in the world!!! After lunchtime, we went back to the swamp to construct a pond for breeding fish. Everyone worked hard and tried to finish building it before sunset. Before we went back to take a rest, we took some impressive photos with the almost complete pond.
The next day, before I left the villagers, they prepared blessing ceremony for my friends and me. Our friends from another group left Khamyaad and met us there. In the ceremony \, some of us drank a lot because we could not refuse when the villagers offered us a glass of whiskey. If we refused their offering, it would be considered to be impolite. We left the villagers with a big hug and smile, and stayed at a hotel in Pakse for two nights. During our stay, we visited Wat Pho and Tad Pha Suam waterfall. After that we spent one night at a village along Mun River. We again interviewed the villagers about how the contruction of the Pakmun dam has changed their lives. Here we had time to play with some lovely kids before we left.
Next we headed off to the Tai Ban Research Center to stay for the night. Afterwards, the Thai students left the Australian and Laotian friends and traveled back to Ubon. At that time, I felt sad and lonely having to go back and live my urban life in Ubon. I was envious of the
** this article was taken from Mekong Today, volume 5 issue 1, March 2009 (above photos were added later)
