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Laos Essential Artistry Archive Page
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Well, we’ve been slacking off on blogging and communicating about what we’re doing at Laos Essential Artistry, and since we’ll be in Laos from June 5 – July 9, we’re still going to be somewhat out of touch, though I always have high hopes of blogging, or even tweeting while in Laos.
It hasn’t been an easy time for us lately. Actually, before we even went to the Asian Heritage Street Celebration in San Francisco on May 16, Bai found out that her father had fallen very ill and was in a hospital in Vientiane. He got worse and so Bai decided she needed to go and luckily we were able to change her ticket to fly out on May 18. Bai’s family is not rich, and monetarily the ywould be “classified” as typical Lao subsistence farmers. But when it appeared he was near death relatives from all of Laos came to Vientiane to be there at the hospital. All though only two people could be in the emergency room at once I guess there was an average of ten people or more outside the room 24/7, sleeping on the cement floor. It was quite moving to me, and being Buddhist with strong rural animist traditions, appeals were made to monks and village spirits and actually when a shirt he had worn was given to several monks to foretell if he would live or die, they said he would live, but it would be a slow recovery. Medicine in developing countries is very, very different from what we know here in the USA, and if the doctors know what is wrong, they rarely communicate it to the patient’s family and relatives and since there is no health care system per sé in Laos, it’s all pay as you go. If medicine or a shot is needed, you have to pay first before it is administered. And for almost two weeks none of the medicine seemed to be helping him and Bai’s father remained unconscious, often flailing his arms and head as if he was in a lot of pain. Finally after they had told Bai’s mom she could take him home to their village to die or let him remain in the hospital, she said she wanted him to remain in the hospital and for them to keep trying. And so they got some medicine from Thailand they didn’t have in Vientiane, and when they gave him a shot, several hours later he began regaining consciousness and ever since then he’s slowly been getting better. The doctors say they think it is a “miracle” as they fully expected him to die. And in fact, while he was in the emergency room for ten days, I guess there are maybe three other beds, they saw numerous patients placed in beds and die, so that in itself was very depressing. When he began getting better they needed to move him out of the emergency room (Bai had arrived a day earlier) and they decided to move him to a small house we rent for Bai’s sister while she attended the Universit,y and so a nurse has been visiting him once a day to give him medicine and he’s slowly regain his strength and has regained full consciousness. Whew! But it’s strange that a doctor hasn’t seen him in the week he’s been at Bouasai’s and they say they’re waiting until two or three more days. So, all this was going on and then when we went to San Francisco they placed our two booths right next to a huge sound stage that blasted music so loud that people were walking with their fingers in their ears. I’m glad to report the program director was responsive to my unhappiness and quickly refunded the money we paid for our booth rentals. It’s been a slow time this spring, but we’ve gotten enough orders for textiles other than sinhs, that we remain hopeful and when we’re in Laos, while we will be picking up some nice textiles, our goal is to take photos, video and interview a wide variety of people to create more posts for our blogs. Plus, the good news is that we will be tweeting from Laos so if you want to experience Laos as we’re experiencing Laos, follow us at twitter.com/gotlaos by: Laos Essential Artistry 0 Comments 
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