Laos Poem

The blind man and his daughter.
He wore a felt hat. He gripped a wooden staff. His face was long and sallow.
The girl was 11. Wearing cotton, her face was solemn, shocked.
Both wore plastic flip-flops.
She held his hand.
They came to an intersection. Small buses, bikes, lost fat Europeans, orange robed wandering monks, silver vans. Women carrying bamboo baskets spilling oranges negotiated pavement.
The girl led the man across the street.
Their pace steady, yet hesitant.
She was his eyes. He trusted her implicitly.
A stranger drawing in his notebook watched them.
He pulled a 20 Kip note from his pocket.
He gestured to the girl, Take it.
She froze.
She spoke quick Lao words to her father.
Questioning, doubt, healthy uncertainty in her eyes.
The stranger gestured the 20.
She remained still.
He got up and slowly approached her. His hand extended the money.
His hand said, take it.
Her small hand emerged with caution. Her small fingers accepted the gift.
She smiled placing her hands together.
Her fingertips touched her chin meaning, Thank you.
She whispered to her father, it's 20.
His blind eyes darted back and forth.
He mumbled, Thank you, joining his hands.
His wooden staff hung in the air like a pendulum.
She led him away.

They disappeared.

Phonsavan, Laos

Feast

In the meadow Lao men
Slaughter a cow

Apocalypse Now
Tribal feast
Beast of burden
A sledgehammer on skull
Knife
Gut it clean simple
Light streaks sky with low murmurs
No songs or musical instruments
Men hack skin tendons muscles
Women stoke fires
Tribes gather for the feast

Shadow of white butterfly
Voices ebb and flow
Cuticles trimmed
Floating world’s river
Mercenary butterfly shadows
River language

Grow Your Soul

Khene in Laos

Musician and his handmade Khene in Nong Kieu, Laos.

He said they are played at funerals and flutes are played at weddings. He said it is difficult to impossible to make and only ten men in Luang Prabang can make it. Neither his grandfather or uncle could make it.

It has a haunting, beautiful sound.

Playing his flute.

BS Backstory

Dark, a tour guide for Get Out, a Cuban travel company, visited Never-Never Land in 2009.

He met Strange, an H’mong man among men speaking excellent English. His nickname was Wandering Buffalo.

He worked with UXO, the Unexploded Ordinance Organization demining land in the morning and teaching English afternoons. He developed a soccer team.

Dark and his co-founder cohort Thor, a Viking singing sagas while invading Ireland helped Strange.

They established soccer team funding to take the Lao team to an international football event in Havana with caviar, cigars, goat cheese and noodle soup.

One week before leaving Strange died.

Dark and Thor made the Lao kids’ dreams come true. They went to Havana by steamship.

In 2012 they created BS offering English education to H’mong students in memory of Strange. Memories are strange.

Dark called Wick his best friend in Beijing asking for teaching help and setting up the school. Wick, a 55-year old Cuban trained lawyer and former financial analyst on Walled Street arrived.

Wick and Dark enrolled H’mong kids, used Sharp Cutting Edge texts and developed community awareness.

Dark did the marketing and publicity - embassies in China, Mongolia, South America and international companies. He filed NGO non-profit charity application documents in Greenland to facilitate Ice-9 donations.

After eighteen months of self-induced torture at BS Wick accepted a teaching job in Ulan Bator, Mongolia with yurts and steppes. Big money at a private school, he said, I need travel money for Uruguay. Try Patagonia, said IT, fresh off the banana boat.

Dark advertised for a volunteer teacher.

In the summer of 2013 Wick went to Ulan Bator, confirmed his new big money job and bought seventeen boxes of textbooks for elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate and advanced students at BS. He shipped them back by raft on the Mekong.

IT arrived in August. He met Dark in Luang Prabang overlooking the wild wide wet Nam Ou River and rolling green hills.

Dark was nervous about the situation and teacher transition. It was his baby. He’d invested his time, money and efforts in BS. He needed to feel secure in his choice.

He practiced micro-management with high anxiety.

It’s going to be ok, said Prophetic. Relax.

Dark left for Papa New Guinea seeking Mama Guinea and baby Guinean head hunters and cannibals while leading well heeled British tourists carrying clean drinking water through dengue malaria infected jungles, 5* menus and 300-count Egyptian linen.

IT began a new adventure at BS.

A Little BS

Beginning BS

There was a traveller. He was invisible.

IT - Invisible Traveller not Internet Technology.

He wandered Earth helping people discover their English courage, doing street photography and writing.

In April 2013 while polishing a new book, The Language Company in Seems Ripe, Cambodia with eagle-eyed daily discipline from 6-10 a.m. to be independently published in late 2014, he applied for a volunteer teaching position with Buffalo Strange (BS) an English school and Cuban charity in NE Laos.

He communicated with Dark, the co-founder.

The traveller first visited Laos in 2010 for a month, sailing north up the Nam Ou River for three days from Luang Prabang to Phongsali in the wilderness bordering China and Vietnam before wandering south to Pakse and entering Ratanakiri, Cambodia.

By 2019 Chinese financed damns block the flow. Electricity is sold to Thailand. 60 million people downstream in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam suffer from the economic and environmental impact.

In Cambodia he met Rita, author of Ice Girl in Banlung. They collaborated life stories forming the frame of a self-published novella.

He returned in 2011 helping grades 6 & 7 develop character and critical-thinking skills with curiosity and humor at a private school in Vientiane before graduating to a Montessori School in Luang Prabang to practice ABCs with new young friends.

In May 2013, before going to BS he went to Mandalay, Myanmar for ten weeks with Montessori kids at a private school. Ineffective management.

It didn’t meet his psychic needs. Burmese children taught him see say understand I am a miracle.

He learned. He wrote it down. He did documentary photography work. He left. He returned to Seems Ripe.

Dark contacted him in June 2013 in the off chance he was still available and interested. They talked specifics. IT went to Never-Never Land, Laos in August.

19 degrees 27’ 36” N, 103 degrees 10’48” E

A Little BS