living inside, outside, upside down
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Originally uploaded by James Zwier.
It’s difficult to get good pictures of kids… this one took three tries to get right. These boys followed me around for a while after watching me take pictures. I showed them how the camera worked and they weren’t afraid of it after that.
When I was in Namthoum for a village planning meeting recently, I saw two Hmong girls playing a game of pickup stones. Click on the post to see the video, or watch it directly on youtube.
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After a long hiatus due to a heavy workload and frequent travel, I’ve decided to revive this blog. Thanks to all those who encouraged me to post more often – your comments are eagerly appreciated. I hope to post weekly on here, and I already have lots of ideas for things to write. I will be posting photos and video more often because my Macbook makes that really easy.
Life these days, briefly: we’re back in Laos for the long run and are settling into our home in Xiengkhuang. I am now a full-time CRWRC staff person – a Program Advisor for our Xiengkhuang office. This year I’ll be focusing on improving community health, particularly nutrition and mother/child health, and on strengthening community leadership.
Grandfather (that is what I must call older men in Laos) told me that the last time he met a white person was in 1954, when he was 18 years old. He remembers meeting a French soldier who came from Dien Bien Phou in Vietnam (historical note: this is the same year that the Vietnamese defeated the French in Dien Bien Phou).
I did not expect to be visiting villages so remote that most people hadn’t seen a white person. Of course, every village had a few TVs and satellite dishes, so I’m sure they had seen pictures and movies of white people. Mostly I didn’t have a crowd of observers, except one village where I think at least fifty people were watching me bathe in the river. Needless to say, I felt a bit shy, but what could I do about it?
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