The making of ceramics in Hanoi

Continuing our trend of checking out the making of handicrafts, Andrew and I spent our last day in Hanoi visiting a neighborhood where the families have made ceramics for the last 500 years. As we (very carefully) wandered in and out of small ceramics studios, I tried to capture the process with some pictures. Above you can see molding of each piece (which vary from tiny to larger than Andrew), smoothing the surface, painting by hand, transporting using and old bicycle as a cart, then driving them off to Hanoi on the back of a motorbike.

Red Dao embroidery

While in Vietnam, Andrew and I had a great visit to Sapa, a region in the far northwest of Vietnam near the border with China. The highlight was trekking to local Red Dao (pronounced "zao") and Black Hmong villages. The first day we hiked from our guesthouse to our guide's home in Tauphin. Along the way, we learned about how the Red Zao weave hemp, hand dye hemp and silk using local indigo plants and imported plant dyes, and then embroider their clothing with elaborate patterns. As we all walked, the women with us spun hemp in their hands or embroidered cloth. After lunch, we arrived at Tauphin and were met by our guide's mother, sister, and daughter with a large basket of hand made embroidery in hand. The stuff was beautiful -- much more so than what I had seen in the market in Sapa -- so I proceeded to buy more than a few items. Our guide Sume then took us to her house where her family thought it would be great fun to dress me up like a Red Dao woman. You can see the results above -- in the group shot, Sume is on the left, I am next to Andrew, and Sume's mother is on the right. I didn't shrink on the trip -- I was bending down a little in the picture. The other pics are a close up of my sleeve and Sume's family walking ahead of us.

The following day, we headed off with Sume to a Black Hmong village. Andrew and I were suspicious that something odd was going on when a group of Black Hmong women kept peering at us throught the glass door of our guesthouse as we ate breakfast. Then we noted that the group of Black Hmong womem hiking with us along the way to their village was a lot larger than the group of Red Dao women the day before. The case was solved when after lunch I was descended on by a number of women with their embroidery, one of whom said "Yesterday you bought from Red Dao, today you buy from Black Hmong". Apparently I had developed a reputation as a buyer. They were persistant, but not too upset when I only bought one item -- I really had too much already.

Overall, I was impressed by how much better off these villages were compared to the villages Jeff and I visited in Laos -- nicer houses, handmade beautiful clothes, no malnourished kids. I imagine that tourism has brought in a lot of money for the villages because they are selling directly to tourists. I think the government is also a lot more helpful than in Laos -- we saw many well built schools and even a clinic in the villages we visited, all built by the government per Sume. She also told us that all the kids attend school for free until they are 15 and no one is illiterate -- a marked difference from the places I visited in Laos and Cambodia. Maybe, in the ideal world, the increasing amounts of ecotourism will help a little in Laos in Cambodia, but that certainly won't solve things without functional governments. In the meantime, am certainly glad for NGOs like one I talked about in my Cambodia post.

Al Jazeera in Hanoi (a post from Andrew and me)

So, we were having a lazy afternoon at the hotel that mostly involved aggressively flipping through all 48 of the available channels. And then we got to Al Jazeera.

It was the stereotypical Al Jazeera: a British anchor was inteviewing an apologist for the Iranian regime. She described the protesters as "hooligans." Andrew and I were dismayed at Al Jazeera's coverage and ready to flip back to HBO International. And then the anchor switched to the other guest, who proceeded to rip the apologist a new one in what felt like ten very well thought out points. In the US you'd have to watch Jon Stewart on The Daily Show to hear something as good.

We kept watching. The next show, the nightly news, had live reporting of of a Palestinian protest at the Gaza-Egypt border. The segment was very long with multi-layered commentary on the underlying political conflict between Egypt and Hamas. When shooting started, the reporter was careful to say that he didn't know if it was from Egyption or Hamas forces, and then went back to analyzing the underlying political situation.

Say what you want about its ideological slant. But if Fox/MSNBC/CNN are broadcasting at say the 8th grade reading comprehension level, we'd put Al Jazeera at least four grades above it . . .

I guess I am supposed to be blogging

My brother Andrew tells me that I am writing essays, not blog posts. This is my practice blog. We are about to go to our final dinner in Hanoi. He is starving so gotta run......

Elephant riding in Laos

I had been warned by my friend Kat about the possibility, strong likelihood even, of falling in love with elephants. I was kind of a doubter though. When in the presence of large mammals in the past, I have been impressed but not as awe inspired as other people. Jeff and I wanted to see for ourselves, especially when Kat's claims were backed up by a group of Brits who described elephant riding as "absolutely BRILLIANT".

So, after waking up all night to roosters and then spending a long morning hiking, we found ourselves in an elephant camp getting ready to go for a ride. We met Anh, our elephant, and, just as predicted, promptly fell in love with her. She was so big and gentle and wrinkly with these thick wire like hairs sticking out of her head. Jeff sat on her neck and I sat on a bench behind him. One of the pictures above is of Jeff's hands holding onto the top of her head. Anh managed to walk on narrow, steep trails without letting her body, and by extension, us, really move very much. She gingerly would move a little to the side at times to keep my bench from bumping a tree. She only seemed dismayed when I started calling her Ethel (she really looked like an Ethel to me) so I apologized and reverted back to calling her by her given name. The other elephant in our caravan was not quite as easy going as Anh. She seemed tired and stopped a few times. At one point the guide leading the elephant pushed on her tail a little to get her to move. She responded by lifting up her tail and letting out a long fart in his face. Hilarious.

After our ride, we got to feed Anh some bananas and hang out a little before we said our goodbyes. Jeff has decided that he would like an elephant for his birthday.

Visiting a Hmong village in Laos

During our stay in Laos, Jeff and I went on a two day hike in the mountains to visit a few different Hmong and Khmu villages with an overnight stay in one of them. It was definitely an interesting experience that left me with a lot of thoughts that I found difficult to tie together. On the one hand, one of the reasons that I like traveling is to learn about and experience other cultures. I think that being present in a place and talking to the people there gives me a sense of of it that goes beyond what I might understand by reading or watching TV. I often walk away appreciating just how huge and varied the world is. And idealy, if the people I encounter and other travelers have the same experience, that is overall a good thing. In that sense, the visit to the villages was incredibly interesting.

On the other hand, I don't like the idea of briefly checking out poverty out of some sort of morbid fascination and then walking away with not many thoughts beyond "sucks to be them." I also don't like the idea of watching people for a few moments and thinking I have some sort of deep understanding from such a brief observation. Or objectifying people who are just going about their business. I think our visit to the village left me with all of the above concerns.

The two villages we visited were impoverished. Although none of the children appeared too thin, many children had light colored hair, suggestive of protein malnutrition. I was also concerned about the smoke exposure -- unlike places I had visited in Cambodia, all of the families cooked on wood fires inside their homes. The entire village smelled like smoke. Jeff and I both woke up from the smoke as soon as breakfast was starting to be cooked. All of our stuff smelled like smoke when we got home. This type of smoke exposure has been shown in research to cause health problems similar to those of people who smoke cigarettes. I asked about why they don't cook outside (like the villages I saw in Cambodia) and was told that the families worry about jealousy from other families and even having their food stolen. Those are my judgements about their health. I am sure they had a lot of judgements about us. I wish I knew what they were... maybe a few comments about how unhealthy we are since hiking up to their villages left us so out of breath?

On another note, it was very interesting hearing from our local guide about the huge influence of belief in spirits on everyday life. Also really cool seeing a little about how village life works. There were tons of animals milling about -- pigs, dogs, chickens, pigeons, turkeys, cows, water buffalo. The animals ate all of the garbage so plastic was really the only thing the people had to dispose of. Certainly more efficient than composting or recycling! The families mainly survive raising rice and a few veggies (done by the women mainly) and hunting (done by the men). Unfortunately, there are very few animals in the forest (due to deforestation, war, and hunting), so the hunting seems to mainly bring back small birds and small mammals. Tourism (i.e. our visit) also brings some money to the village and goes towards community level stuff like mosquito nets, improving school buildings etc.

After Jeff and I arrived, and the sun went down, we sat by candle light outside our host house (no electricity). A bunch of curious kids came to check us out. They started teaching us Hmong phrases and would bust up laughing every time we said them. We were pretty sure that we were saying variations on "I have poop on my face", which was confirmed when the kids taught us the word for poop (using hand motions) and it sounded much like one of the words we had said a few times. We responded by teaching them the English word for booger. Tiring of embarrassing ourselves in another language, we decided to embarrass ourselves by singing instead. The kids responded by singing a Hmong song. Very fun. We went back and forth for a while -- shockingly, they actually seemed to enjoy our terrible singing. By far the hit was teaching them the hokey pokey. If any of you find yourself singing in front of kids in a foreign country, definitely go for the hokey pokey. Eventually we all got tired and headed off to bed only to be awakened all night long by the legions of roosters who weren't wearing their watches. Aren't they supposed to cockle-doodle-do at sunrise?

So, definitely an interesting experience. I think we learned a few things. Definitely left me feeling lucky to have been born into a prosperous family in a prosperous country. Felt guilty for that too and then felt a little better knowing that our visit did bring the villages a little money. Still thinking about it all.....

Cambodian kids

I have now been in Cambodia for 5 days and saw many of the amazing Angkor temples, but had quite a memorable day today, so I think I'll write about that instead of the temples.

A little background first: I am staying at this little hotel run by a Cambodian family, the Ly family, who also run a NGO that supports local schools. While kids do have free school here, they cannot afford the cost of the uniform or materials. The schools themselves are severely underfunded and lack most basic materials. As a result, kids often don't go to school and work for their families instead either on farms or selling things to tourists. In some areas, only about 10 percent of kids regularly go to school.

A little background on the Ly family: The Ly family have always been educators, and thus were targeted during Pol Pot's regime. During the four and a half years of the Khmer Rouge, the 7 Ly children were sent to live in a children's center. Their parents were sent to a labor camp elsewhere. Their youngest sister, a 9 month old baby, died of starvation. Whenever he could, their father would try to sneak them out of the children's camp to teach them to read and write. He and other members of their extended family were later killed by the Khmer Rouge. After Cambodia was occupied by the Vietnamese in 1979, the children reunited with their mother and came back to Siem Reap, but they still did not have enough to eat. However, being a former teacher, their mother was very committed to their education and sent the older kids to study English and French in secret, an offense punishable by imprisonment at the time. When the Vietnamese left and the UN arrived in the early 1990's, the multilingual Ly's were able to serve as translators and teachers for UN employees and Cambodians. When the country became safe and tourism started growing, their language abilities served them as tour guides, and, later, hotel owners.

The Lys saw that regimes like the Khmer Rouge depended on uneducated people for support so they channeled their anger about the past into trying to prevent illiteracy in the communities around them. They started off informally by encouraging tourists they were guiding to donate to a local school instead of buying souvenirs from children. They then partnered with an American woman, Lori, who had business experience and created the Ponheary Ly Foundation, drawing support both from private donations and international aid groups like the World Food Program. They now support about 2000 kids at 4 schools.

My last day in Siem Reap I decided to check out what they do by visiting one of the schools. The school had three buildings, a garden, and an outdoor kitchen surrounding a courtyard area. The original school building built by the government had two run down classrooms that were supposed to be used to teach 500 kids. No wonder that the kids just didn't go to school when that was all there was. The other two larger concrete buildings were built by the foundation. The kitchen had huge bags of rice, bottles of fortified oil, and cans of fish from the World Food Program, but unfortunately the WFP is underfunded themselves so each can of fish is supposed to be split up into 28 portions for the kids meals.

Lori and the principal asked if they could take advantage of my doctor skills by having me check out kids that weren't feeling well. Soon there was a crowd around me. I expected belly aches or colds, but instead saw a lot of wounds. The first girl had been cut with glass on her ankle, something that definitely would have gotten stitches if she had seen a doctor at the time. Thankfully it wasn't infected, so I just cleaned it out. So it went for most of the other kids -- lots of cleaning out of really deep wounds and showing Lori and the teachers how to take care of them until they healed. None of the kids cried or complained or even tried to pull away. So stoic. Then the principal dragged over a boy with a bloody rag wrapped around his finger. I peeled it away to find a poultice of leaves that is used by local people to clot blood. Underneath the leaves he had a deep gash across his finger caused by a machete, but the real problem was that he had a tight ring on below the wound cutting off circulation. The finger was swollen to more than twice normal but luckily was still pink with some blood flow. The principal, driver, and Lori didn't need me to see that the ring had to get cut off. The rest of the kids were dispersed and the boy and I hopped into a tuk-tuk (a three wheeled vehicle with a motorcycle pulling a two person cart) to find a ring cutter.

Thirty minutes later we arrived at the nearest market and the driver began asking around for the "gold man". We found him in his stall shirtless with his family hanging out in the living area behind the stall. Seeing the boy's finger, he took out a pair of small scissors with long handles, snipped the ring in half, and gently bent it off. Problem solved, but I was a little worried about what the boy's family would think of the broken ring -- after all, why hadn't they had the ring cut off themselves? So I paid a dollar to have the ring welded back together. The jeweler/gold man used a tiny welding torch operated by a foot pedal, then reshaped and polished the ring, all in a matter of minutes. By the time we got back to the school, the boy's finger had shrunken to just a little bigger than normal. Lori emailed me to let me know that it is healing well.

The Ponheary Ly Foundation is really making a difference in the lives of these kids so I thought I'd put a plug in for donations to them. They'd appreciate anything, but here are some options: $20 provides supplies/uniform for one kid for one year, $32 feeds 10 kids for a month, $40 buys a bike for older kids to get to secondary school. Check out their website for more info: http://www.theplf.org/