Poverty: Epistemology & Politics

During the two months I spent in Savanakhet studying Lao Leum-the national language of Lao PDR-I had the opportunity to visit and spend some time in a village in order to practise my fledgling language skills. While there, and walking around the village with my fellow volunteers and the village chief, I witnessed a rather disturbing sight: we noticed an elderly man, dishevelled in appearance, who was chained up and sitting on a covered platform near the edge of the village. We asked the village chief what the story was, and thankfully we had our Lao Leum instructor along to translate the more difficult aspects for us. As it turned out the old man was mentally unstable, and as there are relatively few resources in Lao for communities to deal with mental illnesses, the villagers had decided to secure the man to keep him from hurting himself or others after he had become physically violent. It was a depressing site: the old guy sitting on the platform, arms and legs chained together and to a large beam at the centre of the platform. He looked as if he had been there for some time, a dish of food and a jug of water sitting next to him in the otherwise empty shelter.

For myself, the issues of mental illness has always been someone else’s problem, something that thankfully, fortunately, has never touched the lives of anyone I knew directly, and as such has always remained an academic question. I’ve always wondered how it was that people became to be defined as sane or insane. Who was the first person to make this decision? Who was it, and what motives did they have in deciding that someone was mentally incapacitated and in need of protection against themselves. I realized that day in the village, that for the residents and the gentleman in question, it was a direct issue with which they had to deal with on their own. They didn’t have the option of proselytizing, but had to take the only measures they could, which now sat on the edge of their village day in and day out as a constant reminder of what can happen to the fragile human mind and their inability to fully deal with it; chained, out of sight for the moment, but impossible to forget or just brush away.

I didn’t realize it then, but that old man has become for me a metaphor for the issues of poverty in Lao. Like mental illness, for myself poverty has always been largely been an academic exercise. Coming from a fairly affluent family in one of the wealthiest and most prosperous countries in the history of the world, poverty was always something that happened to other people, with little real connection to my own life. Travelling throughout the developing world, and having come to Lao with the intention of “alleviating” poverty has forced me to question precisely what it means to be “impoverished”. With what I have learned from spending time with the Khmu people, I have begun to believe that, like the man in the shelter, poverty is something that has been forced onto them, but with the chains being clasped onto the legs and arms of each and every person in the community in slightly different ways, and the people feeling helpless to do much about it. Most significantly, once someone’s is defined as being poor, it is exceptionally difficult to convince anyone you're not and “assistance” is showered down on you whether you want it or not, and quite often the treatment can be worse than the disease.

Who was it that first decided what poverty was and who was impoverished? I have learned that very often, the people who are designated as poor are rarely the ones who decide what the criterion is or what steps will be taken to address it. Also, the definitions of poverty and the application of poverty indicators are driven by epistemological and political factors rather than real human conditions or needs. One criterion that is often applied for deciding a community in Lao is poor is the question of rice self-sufficiency. Development professionals will visit a community for what is called a Rapid Rural Assessment, a practise whereby residents are visited on one or several occasions and asked a series of questions, which will usually include “Are you rice-self sufficient?” Meaning: is the village, or individuals within the community, capable of producing enough rice to meet their daily intake and nutritional needs over a 12-month period, or do they have to supplement any shortages through other means. If the person or community is unable to meet these criteria they are thereby deemed to be impoverished. You can imagine the dialogue going something like this:

Development professional to Khmu villager: "Are you rice self-sufficient?" (With accompanying explanation of definition)

Khmu Villager: "No."

Development professional: "Well then, you are poor."

Khmu Villager: "Oh my Buddha! I never realized."

Development professional: "Of course not. Poverty is relative after all. No one really knows they’re poor until someone, an expert, shows them that they are. But don’t worry, we have a comprehensive plan that will lift you out of poverty and show you the light of development and progress."

Khmu Villager: "I don’t feel so good."

Development professional: "Of course not. You’re poor."

Hence a flurry of activity and development programs and policies ensue, including the arrival of crazy Canadian kids with a penchant for BioSand Water Filters and drinking Lao Hai.

One minor problem: the Khmu people have rarely ever been rice self-sufficient. Their sustenance and livelihood strategies have always included options for making up for shortages of rice through the harvesting of wildlife, aquatic resources, and non-timber forest products. The irony is that the very programs that have been instituted to deal with the perceived status of impoverishment have resulted in reductions in the ability of the Khmu to make up for rice shortages or grow sufficient rice due to restrictions in access to land (Please see Resettlement essays for more details). In fact, when speaking with Khmu villagers I have found that many of them refer to their poverty as being a new phenomenon, which is understandable considering that before many of the development initiatives, when the Khmu were living more or less as they had been for the last 600 years, their access to a wide variety of food options and sustenance strategies were much greater than they are now. This is the perfect example of a self-fulfilling prophecy: the Khmu were defined as poor and the policies intended to address this ended up causing the very poverty they were meant to address. How’s that for a development kick in the head?

In my opinion, the central issue here is that when people are treated as victims of poverty and are targeted for development. The development processes and definitions are driven by external factors: the perceptions and beliefs of poverty from the international community, and political agendas both domestic and international. The results will inevitably produce the opposite effect of those intended. The defining of Khmu people as poor as a result of being rice insufficient, which has always been a part of life in upland areas, makes it that much easier to justify moving them or forcing them to adapt to new livelihood strategies.

Sitting in Ban Tangnguey, speaking with the villagers, and thinking of these issues, always causes me to think back to that poor man in the village in Savanakhet: a problem caused by factors outside the control of the village residents, sitting, chained up, always staring out at them, and the villagers with out the means or resources to do anything about it.

Romantizing Tribal Life

A key criticism of any person who speaks of the economic, social or environmental benefits of traditional lifestyles often centres around the accusation that you are romanticizing tribal life. The suggestion that the people living traditional rural lifestyles might be better off than their more “developed” contemporaries, is often viewed as heresy among the developed world and many development professionals. For example, among the Khmu people this could mean practising shifting cultivation, living in homes made from natural materials, harvesting non-timber forest products and wildlife, and basically living a subsistence lifestyle outside the modern economy.

Often charges of racism and a sadistic desire to trap people into an anachronistic and inherently inferior way of life are levelled at proponents for traditional knowledge and practises. What right does anyone have to say that the Khmu people, or any other group of people, should have to live under such conditions just to satisfy the perceptions of outsiders? Do they not have the right to develop their communities, and enjoy the benefits of modern life and scientific and technological progress?

In my opinion, the answer to these questions is that no one has the right to force their perception or their belief in the most appropriate way for a community to exist or develop, including development professionals such as myself. With respect to the Khmu, the threats to their development, the causes of their poverty is not coming from people trying to force them to live traditional lifestyles, but from top down development initiatives that view them as being victims, and seeks to “target” them for development.

More often than not, communities are not consulted about development programs and initiatives and are having them forced on them by outside forces including the development industry and the government. Efforts to conserve culture and traditional knowledge and practises, as an alternative, should not be viewed, or approached with intent of holding tribal and ethnic communities into static stereotypes or caricatures.

The one thing that should be understood about local traditional knowledge is that it is not static. It is an ever-changing dynamic series of processes and relationships that exists in communities between groups and individuals and the larger environment in which they exist. Preserving or revitalizing traditional knowledge and practises is ultimately about assisting ethnic groups to utilize and strengthen their own communal methods for developing knowledge; adapting them to the ever-changing reality and environment around them; making choices concerning economic and social development that are appropriate for their own needs; and, enhancing their ability to continuing passing that knowledge onto younger generations.

What it all comes down to is the need for people outside of ethnic communities to learn to respect and understand the value of the vast wealth of knowledge that ethnic communities such as the Khmu possess and seeing them as empowered agents who have the right to pursue their own destiny.

Romanticizing tribal life? That’s best left to Walt Disney.

Community Mapping

The Water for Life watershed management project is well underway. My team and I are very busy now visiting villages in the study area. Last week we started our vists to seven villages and will continue for the next two months to conduct a variety of participatory research methods including community mapping.

The idea behind community mapping is to work with the villagers and have them draw out the concept of their village and the local environment. This will hopefully give us some insight into how they view their local environment and their understanding of watershed management. It's a good tool for getting the government staff to sit down and listen to the village residents and see things a bit more from their perspective. It will also, hopefully, give us an idea of some of the environmental impact on local watershed services from the villagers perspective.

Last week we started out by visiting Homxai village, about 10km north of Oudomxay town. On a Friday evening and Saturday morning, we did the community mapping exercise. If nothing else, it was a lot of fun and it's great to watch the village residents and my staff get into the exercise and draw up some great looking maps.

Tomorrow we are headed out to another village, Konoy, for another round. Should be fun.

A Learning Experience Part 5 continued...

Resettlement & Riddles of Development

In a book of research papers published by the National Agriculture and Forestry Institute (NAFRI), a Lao government research organization, one author articulated two riddles with regard to resettlement and that of development generally. They were:

Riddle #1: When is a solution not a solution?

Answer: When it causes more problems than it solves; and

Riddle #2: When is a problem not a problem?

Answer: When it is part of a solution.

Resettlement, as I have learned over the last 16 months is a perfect example of when a “solution” ends up causing more problems than it solves. Over the last few years there has been an extensive amount of research conducted on resettled communities and on communities that have remained in the highlands, living more or less “traditional” livelihoods as shifting cultivators. The research has begun to develop, among development and international institutions as well as within the government of Lao, a consensus on what some of the impacts stemming from resettlement are. The impacts for local ethnic groups like the Khmu people of Oudomxay province are many, but a few of these include:

 Restrictions or limitations on access to land, resulting in food insecurity
 Higher mortality rates
 Devaluation/loss of traditional knowledge and practices
 Greater environmental impacts and degradation
 Loss of social cohesion

Access to Land

A key part of the resettlement program is to provide resettled communities and individual families with sufficient lowland paddy field to grow rice, cash crops for export and non-timber forest products from protected forests for new income. The government program to deal with this issue is the Land Use Allocation and Forestry Program. The intent was to have district level staff conduct land use planning alongside village residents and then ensure the proper allocation of land and forest resources for each village.

The problem here is firstly one of institutional capacity. As it turned out, according to research conducted by NAFRI and a number of international non-governmental organizations, the district level departments charged with carrying out the plans and allocation simply did not have the training, qualifications, finances or resources necessary to perform the required tasks. As a result the planning process was conducted in a haphazard, perfunctory, top down manner.

In many areas, village residents received insufficient and poor quality land or were utterly confused about the process altogether. This has lead to some families or individuals finding themselves in the compromising position of having insufficient to land to grow rice for personal consumption or for sale on the open market. As a result many families are forced to rely on wage labour, borrowing money to purchase rice, or engaging in pioneering cultivationÂpracticectise of slashing and burning relatively untouched areas of forest in steeply sloped areas accompanied by short fallow periods that lead to higher levels of soil erosion, loss of soil fertility, and higher incidences of weeds and pests. In short, an environmentally destructive and unsustainable form of agriculture not to be mistaken with shifting cultivation. (The definitions of “Shifting cultivation”, “slash & burn”, and “pioneering cultivation” and the accompanying government programs to deal with them are rather complex and will be dealt with in a future essay.)

Higher Mortality Rates

Research has shown that resettled villages experience increases in mortality by up to 20 to 40% due to a number of interrelated factors, including: higher infection rates from disease (villages experience higher exposure to fatal diseases such and dengue and malaria in lowland areas then they would in upland areas); malnutrition due to greater food insecurity; lack of access to traditional medicine and remedies; lack of access to modern medical treatments and facilities, etc. The bottom line is that when communities are disrupted and moved into a new area where they are unfamiliar with the local ecology, and the promised infrastructure of clean water, hospitals, and pharmacies that are unavailable due to a lack of funding, village communities often experience alarming and serious increases in mortality.

Devaluation or loss of traditional knopracticesd practises

One important lesson that has been learned in recent decades is that ethnic and indigenous communities have had, or still possess, vast stores of in-depth, highly localized ecological knowledge with regard to their environment. There are many who now believe that this knowledge is not only important to the cultural identity of indigenous communities, but a crucial aspect in the drive towards achieving global social and envsustainabletainability.

Currently, there are extensive efforts underway by numerous international and local organizations within developing and developed countries alike to revitalize and regain the knowledge that has either been lost or is at risk of being lost. There are a number of reasons why local ecological and traditional knowledge may become threatened or even lost, including, but not limited to, loss of traditional lifestyles, disruptions to social cohesion and the ability of communities to store and pass knowledge on to younger generations, or through its rejection by contemporary society, wherein traditional knowledge is viewed as being inherently backward or antiquated. Many ethnic groups, including the Khmu are facing these challenges, which are, in my opinion, prompted and/or exacerbated by the rationalization and continuation of resettlement activities.

When communities are resettled for whatever reason, and are moved into new areas with differing climates and geographic features, the community must adapt and learn to survive in the new area. Despite the fact that many ethnic communities have always thrived in harsh climates and environments and integrated innovative strategies and means for survival, such moves can result in extreme pressures on the community with respect to their ability to develop and articulate their traditional ecological knowledge.

A central justification for resettlement is, in my opinion, motivated by the ideal that sedentary agriculture and its associated cultural manifestation of the Lao Leum (the dominate ethnic group in Lao PDR) and that of life in the lowlands of Lao generally is considered by many to be inherently more civilized and modern than that of the traditional livelihoods found in the upland areas. Although upland areas are often quoted as being extremely rich in environmental services and resources (i.e. high biodiversity), living in the upland areas is often associated with poverty without consideration given to what it means precisely to be impoverished.

Resettled communities, cut off from their traditional lifestyles and environs, are hindered in their ability to save their ecological knowledge and to pass it on to younger generations, resulting in its loss. Considering how much of our contemporary scientific knowledge of botany and pharmaceuticals have come from indigenous communities (i.e. the chemical compounds for aspirin were discovered by botanists who observed tribal communities boiling down the bark of a certain tree species to treat headaches and minor maladies). The loss of indigenous knowledge is not only potentially devastating culturally, economically and environmentally for ethnic communities, but a serious loss of resources and scientific and economic opportunities for Laos and the world community as well.

Greater Environmental Impacts and Degradation

In my limited perspective and understanding, the large majority of unsustainable human interactions with the environment and the resulting impacts are instigated when communities are thrown out of balance with the dynamic relationship they have with their environment. Resettlement of upland communities into the lowlands, and the drive by the government of Lao and international organizations to bring them greater development and economic opportunities has resulted in precisely this kind of disruption to the Khmu people and their environment. There are a number of environmental impacts that occur as a result. These include:
1. Unsustainable and environmentally destructivpracticese practises such as pioneering cultivation (again I will get further into this issue in a future essay),

2. The introduction of cash crop agriculture with large scale monocrop production of economically viable tree species (i.e. rubber, teak and eucalyptus),

3. Increased industrial and illegal logging,

4. Road construction (poor road construction, which is a major problem throughout Laos, resulting in the deposit of sedimentation into creeks and rivers, as well as the opening up of new areas of forest that were previously inaccessible leading to heightened levels of hunting and poaching of endangered wildlife,

5. More waste and poor waste management. Communities are often resettled into larger central settlements resulting in greater amounts of waste with little infrastructure or capacity to deal with management issues, and

6. Higher levels of pollution stemming from increased industrial and economic activities.

Loss of Social Cohesion and Increasing Social Problems
Despite their incredible resilience and fortitude, the above list of impacts and problems are more than many indigenous communities can handle. There has been an abundance of research that shows that such economic and environmental insecurities has forced many communities to change and establish new means of surviving that have placed incredible pressures on their ability to care for each other, and as a result many individuals, families, and communities are facing growing social problems such as poverty, disease, alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution, human trafficking, loss of youth and skilled labour due to migration, and increasing levels of crime.

The Snowball Affect and Wishful Thoughts of Spring
A common line from government officials and leaders is that these disruptions and difficulties are temporary, that eventually the benefits of resettlement and the opportunities it represents will overcome these difficulties resulting in greater prosperity and stability for all. There are many others, however—I personally feel myself leaning more towards this group—that feel that if these issues are not addressed the resulting social and environmental problems could continue to grow and eventually overwhelm any positive benefits that could come from such a program.

(When thinking of such things I can’t help but turn my thoughts to the First Nations of Canada and how much they have suffered with respect to the loss of their lands, cultural identity, disempowerment, and traditional lifestyles. Yes, of course there are significant differences, but the disruptions and impacts are similar and as we have seen through the media, the resulting social difficulties (Davis Inlet anyone?) have been devastating and long lasting. A serious issue that I believe the First Nations will be dealing with for decades and generations to come.)

Future Instalments: Romanticizing Tribal Life, Definition of Epistomology & Politics, the Development Ethical Dilemma, and Addressing Resettlement: where to go from here?

A Learning Experience Part 5

Resettlement

In my opinion one of the key stumbling blocks for a successful volunteer placement is twofold: 1. a lack of knowledge and familiarity with the socio-political situations of the people for whom we are supposed to be assisting; and 2. the relatively short length of time we will be living in the community and the high degree of turnover for volunteers.

For the first point, I can say without a doubt, I was, and still am to a large degree, ignorant about all things Lao. Sure, I did as much research as I could before coming here. I was aware of some of the larger issues like the limited access to potable water, or the degree of deforestation and illegal logging that was apparently taking place, among other things, but these are merely the surface, a reflection of those issues that are allowed to filter up to the general media and the public outside of Lao.

Upon my arrival and the start of my placement, I quickly learned just how little I knew and how wrong the little I thought I knew turned out to be. Unfortunately, CUSO was going through a fair amount of instability and turmoil when I first arrived (although they still did a great job of making us feel welcome and comfortable and that we had everything we needed), but nevertheless it’s not like they were able to sit us down and give us a full briefing on the issues we might have to deal with. As a result, I have mostly stumbled along at my own pace discovering certain realities and issues, mostly by mistake. The most perfect, and quite possibly one of the most important issues of this nature is resettlement.

Since the 1970’s the national government of Lao has had a policy of moving isolated upland villages down into focal areas closer to roads and larger centres. The government has given five official reasons for the policy. These include:

1. Provision of services and infrastructure
The government has insisted that by moving villages down into the valley bottoms and into larger villages, these communities will be easier to provide essential infrastructure such as roads, hospitals, schools, etc. Also, by being closer to roads villages will have access to greater markets and thus will become part of the market economy. The rational being something like “if we can’t bring development to the people, we might as well bring the people to development.”

2. Eradication of Opium production
Under pressure from the international community, particularly the United States, the Lao government had, until quite recently, the stated policy of eradicating opium production in Lao by 2005. Last year, they announced the successful completion of this goal, claiming Lao to be completely opium free. (I’m sure the drug dealers on every street corner in almost any sizable town in Lao had a good chuckle over that one!). As a part of resettlement the rational was that by moving seemingly impoverished communities out of the highlands and providing them land and new economic opportunities, the people would naturally move away from growing and selling opium.

3. Eradication/stabilization of shifting cultivation
Shifting cultivation, most commonly referred to as “Slash & Burn” denoting the practise of people in upland areas to clear land by falling and cutting bush and then burning it, is a very common feature of the landscape in Lao, and more often than not an essential livelihood strategy for nearly 80% of the population; a group that is typically the poorest and most marginalized throughout the country. Associated with poverty and environmental degradation, and with the support and pressure from international funding and development organization such as the United Nations Development Program and the World Bank, the government has a policy with the goal of eradicating the practise of shifting cultivation and encouraging and fostering the development of more low land sedentary agriculture. With respect to resettlement, the rational was that by moving shifting cultivators out of the uplands and supplying them land for agriculture and alternative forms of income generation, people would naturally move away from slash and burn.

4. Security
Over the last several decades since the Indochinese/American war, Lao has had a series of ongoing internal and external conflicts. Internally, there are still factions operating in Lao to this day that are still loyal to the monarchy or have other grievances. In the not so distant past there have been shootings, bombings as well as other insurgent activities. As a result the government has endeavoured to move groups that are deemed a security risk and put them in areas where they can be watched or where they perhaps will lose their interest or motivation for certain “inappropriate” behaviours


5. Nation Building
By moving isolated communities out of the highlands and down into larger communities, they will naturally integrate into the larger, more civilized, Lao Leum culture and become more attached to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Does this sound familiar to anyone?).

*Although there are a number of reports and articles that discuss and describe the offical policy reasons for resettlement, the particular format I've just employed was taken from a research report recently published by a Canadian Research Institute. Should anyone want greater detail as to citations please email me and I would be more than happy to pass on all references and copies of this paper.

So there you have it, this is the official policy statements—as best I could find out about them anyways. Next blog I will discuss some of the issues and consequences I have learned of over the last 16 months. Stay tuned.

Khmu Mythology & the BioSand Filter

Had a very interesting day out in Ban Tangnuey today. I went out with some of my colleagues from the Science Technology & Environment Agency, a friend and volunteer from the German Devlopment Service (DED), Joachim Kobold, and a friend from Luang Phabang, Joanne (can't remember her last name just now). Our visit had three objectives:

1. The villagers have built an additional 10 biosand water filters and I wanted to check on them to see that they had been built and were functioning properly. From what I could tell the villagers had done a fairly good job. All ten filters were finished and installed in homes through out the village. There were some problems however. For quite a few the water flow rate was far too high. It should flow through the filter at 1 litre per minute. At this rate you know the water is moving through the sand and gravel slow enough for the bacteria, viruses and parasites to be removed. any faster than this and the filter is not safe. I suspect the villagers were not putting in the proper amounts of sand to gravel for the different layers, so it looks like I will have to return and do some additional training. no big deal. There were a few filters that were working perfectly so the villagers weren't feeling too discouraged.

2. Joachim, who works as a tourism advisor for the Provincial Tourism Authority, came out to the village with me as he is interested in paying Ban Tangnuey to build some BSFs for the villages where he currently has some project activities around eco-toursim and homestays. There is no firm commitment yet but he is discussing the possibility of having the villagers build and install up to 12 additional filters. This could be a good source of income for the villagers and would possibly pay for the additional 15 filters they have planned for their own village. This project is really beginning to take on a life of its own.

3. My friend Jo, a brilliant english women who has been living in Luang phabang for the last six years, is the co -owner of two stores, Orkpoptok--or East meets west--that feature traditional ethnic textiles from around the north of Lao. I have been telling her for awhile about the amazing traditional textiles the villagers in Ban Tangneuy make using wood fibres. so she finally gave in and came out for a visit. I think she really like the bags but was not ready to commit to any kind of business relationship. There are some logistical and quality control issues, as well as dying problems with the bags right now, so we'll have to wait and see.

One very interesting aspect of the visit is what Jo was able to learn from the village chief. She managed to get him to tell us the Khmu creation myth. According to the village chief there are three types of Khmu people: the Khmu roc (that's how the village chief said it), the Kmu Leu, and the Khmu Ou. Ban Tangnuey is Khmu Ou. From what I understood the creation myth went something like this: Once there was many people in the world all watched over by a father god and a mother god. At one point, for one reason or another, the father god and mother god became very angry with the people and destroyed them all. After this, they discovered that a cow had eaten something (what it might have been was not made clear to me) and had become pregnant with a god child, who inturn was filled with many new people. Seeing this the mother god and father god decided they needed to help the cow out by taking a red hot poker and poking the cow with three holes so that the god child and its many people could get out. The first out of the cow were the Khmu Roc. As a result of being first they had the darkest skin. don't ask me why but they were first and have darker skin. Next came the Khmu Leu with a middle tan coloured skin, and then the Khmu Ou who have the lightest skin. and that's it. There's probably more to it but that's all I was able to get this time. Will try and learn more the next time I head out there.

I have to say that it is days like this that really make development all worthwhile. Can't wait to head back out again.

A silly poem about being a development worker in Lao

Asasamak (The Volunteer)

The sun is a broken embryonic egg yoke
Dripping through a dirty coffee sock filter sky
Dust and smoke combine to form nuclear halitosis and hellenic BO
choking & blinding like a closet full of second hand smoke from cheap third world cigarettes
Lao PDR (Post unDergraduate Reality)
An ashtray lined with palm trees
Funny that I feel so comfortable here
Or perhaps not
I am a volunteer after all

Turtles carrying birds & boys w/ stinky armpits
Tigers w/ dirty asses heckled by smart-ass monkeys
Laoation mythology
Larium dreams
Avoiding foreigners while seeking foreign familiarity
Shields, guards, & blinkers worn down to the point I can loose myself in senseless moments
& not be concerned with what might happen next

But something will happen next:
A bloated ear sniffing gasoline
Getting lost & loosing myself at the market
Beerlao & ladyboys on the banks of the Namkong
Endless packs of diseased dogs snapping at my heals
Unexpected, unsolicited homoerotic encounters on the backs of motor scooters
Or allowing myself to feel smitten, highschoolish
& kissing like it’s 3:30pm on a Friday & the ‘rents aren’t due home for another 30 minutes
Cow tail, bile dip, tripe laced beer snacks & Lao Lao drunken tuk tuk drivers
Puking my guts out from dehydration & heat stroke
Putting out grass fires
& watching your expectations go up in the smoke of moments so embarrassing you feel like a balloon deflating on the business end of drunken insensitivity
a bursting of the bubble
a flatulent disaster
a whoopee cushion cultural holocaust
& every flick of movement in the corner of my eye is a spider, a cockroach, a snake, or mosquito w/ malicious intent
I give up
take a cold shower
Lie on the bed naked under the fan
a heap of crumpled cooperant

Later, I will get up, get dressed
& reapply a carcinogelicious blend of deet & sun block like I’m basting a turkey
But for now, Lao can have me anyway she wants
I submit
I volunteer myself

-For Stephanie, Kim, Chad and volunteers everywhere