I. Prologue:
Almost all non-military people I know who worked in Laos during the war years were, and probably still are, paranoid to one degree or another. Laos in the war years was more isolated than Tibet has been for the past few centuries. You had to have a job in Laos or pull a lot of strings. Nobody, especially media people, made casual visits.
A friend of mine, really upset at what was happening in the carpet bombing zones, wrote an anguished letter to his Senator. The Senator's chief of staff and the usual gaggle of reporters arrived. As a result, a tiny bit of what I call "The Stink of War" began to escape the hermetically sealed box that was Laos. For months we received memos and letters from officials of the American Mission along the lines of "loose lips sink ships," and the necessity to see that none of the facts escaped the information wall that was around the country. Some people, even "neutral" IVS volunteers, were suddenly sent home or reassigned.
A lot of the non-Lao people who were there were, and still are, in positions to really hurt you if they want to. Some of the Lao we lived and worked with are still there; in fact, most of the best people I worked with stayed, determined to make the best of what was then an uncertain situation. The people I was closest to are the ones most likely to be injured by having their names thrown around loosely. I hope some of them are in government and education and are making their patriotic contribution to the Laos of the future. In my classes I always emphasized that whether it was right or wrong, the government was still OUR government.
That is why, as they say in some prefaces "the names have been changed to protect the innocent...
"...and the guilty."
Luang Prabang in the morning mist.
The gilded stupa at the top of the sacred mountain centers the town.
The white walls of the former King's Palace (Now the National Museum)
gleam through the coconut palm trees on the far shore.
Partly because my own life has been complicated (mostly by critical medical problems) and partly because I didn't want to put innocent people in harm's way, I have lost touch with almost everybody I was directly associated with while I was there. One of my dreams is, if my health permits, to make a nostalgic trip to Southeast Asia. The first stop will be in Rach Gia, on the southernmost tip of Vietnam to meet the half of my life-partner's family that chose to remain in Vietnam after the war. It would also be wonderful to go back to Laos, especially if I could make contact with any of my old friends there. Maybe this "blog" can help me make contact anew with colleagues or even with some of my foster sons, who should be celebrating the births of grandchildren by now.
Looking at current tourist maps of Luang Prabang, it seems that almost half the houses have been turned into tourist facilities: hotels, guest houses, restaurants --even a swimming pool or two! (The buildings in all that existed of Luang Prabang in the early 1970s are a part of the United Nations "World Heritage" zone and cannot be altered externally or torn down.) Where do all those people from the houses live now?
LUANG PRABANG TOURIST MAP: The "Pond House," the first place we lived, is across "Bounkhong Road" from #67 on the map. Our second house, where we moved to escape the virulent malaria at the "Pond House," is next to Wat Xieng Thong, The [former] King's Wat, #2 near the top edge of the map. So who ever knew that "Bounkhong Road" had a name!
When I was there, there was one restaurant, one soup shop, and three 24 hour-a-day Ovaltine cafes. Yes, Ovaltine! There was one place for transients to stay called locally the "bunk-ka-low"("bungalow"), and until the Phou Vao Hotel was built just before my departure, there was no swimming pool closer than the American suburb outside Vientiane, hundreds of miles away. But who needed swimming pools with three magnificent waterfalls with crystal-clear water to relax in? One of my traditions while I was there was an annual Christmas Day skinny-dipping party at the most spectacular of the falls, the 150-foot-high-three tiered Kouang Sy falls just south of town with its three basins, each in a more enchanting tropical glade than the one before. This trip could have been dangerous as "the other side" in the war pretty much controlled that territory. (Americans called the Pathet Lao -- "State of Laos" -- army "the other side." Lao called them "our brothers and sisters." Slight difference in point-of-view.)
Fun at a tiny waterfall within easy walking distance
from town. The scrawny white guy in the middle is me.
Before I found myself in Laos, I had graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a Summa Cum Laude degree in English literature, with a specialization in renaissance literature and somewhat of a gift for languages. My original choice for a career, the calling for which my really first-class education prepared me -- things like classical and New Testament Greek, a smattering of self-taught Hebrew, sundry theological courses -- was blocked mostly because of my family's deserved reputation for public scandal (the South could be like that, 'way back then).
Old East at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
A friend of mine, really upset at what was happening in the carpet bombing zones, wrote an anguished letter to his Senator. The Senator's chief of staff and the usual gaggle of reporters arrived. As a result, a tiny bit of what I call "The Stink of War" began to escape the hermetically sealed box that was Laos. For months we received memos and letters from officials of the American Mission along the lines of "loose lips sink ships," and the necessity to see that none of the facts escaped the information wall that was around the country. Some people, even "neutral" IVS volunteers, were suddenly sent home or reassigned.
A lot of the non-Lao people who were there were, and still are, in positions to really hurt you if they want to. Some of the Lao we lived and worked with are still there; in fact, most of the best people I worked with stayed, determined to make the best of what was then an uncertain situation. The people I was closest to are the ones most likely to be injured by having their names thrown around loosely. I hope some of them are in government and education and are making their patriotic contribution to the Laos of the future. In my classes I always emphasized that whether it was right or wrong, the government was still OUR government.
That is why, as they say in some prefaces "the names have been changed to protect the innocent...
"...and the guilty."
Luang Prabang in the morning mist.
The gilded stupa at the top of the sacred mountain centers the town.
The white walls of the former King's Palace (Now the National Museum)
gleam through the coconut palm trees on the far shore.
Partly because my own life has been complicated (mostly by critical medical problems) and partly because I didn't want to put innocent people in harm's way, I have lost touch with almost everybody I was directly associated with while I was there. One of my dreams is, if my health permits, to make a nostalgic trip to Southeast Asia. The first stop will be in Rach Gia, on the southernmost tip of Vietnam to meet the half of my life-partner's family that chose to remain in Vietnam after the war. It would also be wonderful to go back to Laos, especially if I could make contact with any of my old friends there. Maybe this "blog" can help me make contact anew with colleagues or even with some of my foster sons, who should be celebrating the births of grandchildren by now.
Looking at current tourist maps of Luang Prabang, it seems that almost half the houses have been turned into tourist facilities: hotels, guest houses, restaurants --even a swimming pool or two! (The buildings in all that existed of Luang Prabang in the early 1970s are a part of the United Nations "World Heritage" zone and cannot be altered externally or torn down.) Where do all those people from the houses live now?
LUANG PRABANG TOURIST MAP: The "Pond House," the first place we lived, is across "Bounkhong Road" from #67 on the map. Our second house, where we moved to escape the virulent malaria at the "Pond House," is next to Wat Xieng Thong, The [former] King's Wat, #2 near the top edge of the map. So who ever knew that "Bounkhong Road" had a name!
When I was there, there was one restaurant, one soup shop, and three 24 hour-a-day Ovaltine cafes. Yes, Ovaltine! There was one place for transients to stay called locally the "bunk-ka-low"("bungalow"), and until the Phou Vao Hotel was built just before my departure, there was no swimming pool closer than the American suburb outside Vientiane, hundreds of miles away. But who needed swimming pools with three magnificent waterfalls with crystal-clear water to relax in? One of my traditions while I was there was an annual Christmas Day skinny-dipping party at the most spectacular of the falls, the 150-foot-high-three tiered Kouang Sy falls just south of town with its three basins, each in a more enchanting tropical glade than the one before. This trip could have been dangerous as "the other side" in the war pretty much controlled that territory. (Americans called the Pathet Lao -- "State of Laos" -- army "the other side." Lao called them "our brothers and sisters." Slight difference in point-of-view.)
Fun at a tiny waterfall within easy walking distance
from town. The scrawny white guy in the middle is me.
Khamsouk and Thongdy, my first adoptees, are to my right.
The guy furthest toward the left in the picture is Bounthanh. He got swept up
in one of the regular dragnet sweeps and shanghaied into one or another
of the armies the day after this picnic at the falls. He came to show us his
gun, which was as tall as he was, and probably weighed more. His family
told us he died three days later. We never saw him again.
His sad, short life - 14 years - is probably a whole other story.
The guy furthest toward the left in the picture is Bounthanh. He got swept up
in one of the regular dragnet sweeps and shanghaied into one or another
of the armies the day after this picnic at the falls. He came to show us his
gun, which was as tall as he was, and probably weighed more. His family
told us he died three days later. We never saw him again.
His sad, short life - 14 years - is probably a whole other story.
Before I found myself in Laos, I had graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a Summa Cum Laude degree in English literature, with a specialization in renaissance literature and somewhat of a gift for languages. My original choice for a career, the calling for which my really first-class education prepared me -- things like classical and New Testament Greek, a smattering of self-taught Hebrew, sundry theological courses -- was blocked mostly because of my family's deserved reputation for public scandal (the South could be like that, 'way back then).
Old East at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
built in 1792, was my dorm.
Nowadays, it has been gutted, rebuilt, and turned into an office building.
The only thing left of my Old East is the brick skin.
Alas, the little rooms for the students' personal slaves
are long since gone too, the victim of even earlier makeovers.
In France, or even in Britain, black sheep sons from disreputable families used to be sent overseas with the Foreign Legion or with Colonial Armies. In the U.S. the Peace Corps sometimes served the same function. Completely demolished emotionally and totally confused as to what meaning the rest of my life might have, I joined the Peace Corps on graduation and was assigned to teach in Turkey. For some reason, I felt (and still feel) that I have to prove myself "tough enough." History is full of men who because of physical weakness or emotional turmoil pit themselves against the toughest odds they can find. In recent history Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind. I maneuvered myself in to one of the more challenging assignments available, teaching at Ataturk University in Erzurum, a frigid place on the lower slopes of Mount Ararat. It was a wild place where people were either tough or dead. One crisp winter morning, a wolf was killed on my doorstep. From October through mid-May there were snow accumulations of several feet with drifts of several yards and nighttime low temperatures hovered between 40 and 50 degrees below zero. (At minus 44 degrees, Fahrenheit and Celsium temperatures are the same.) We rode one-horse sleighs to work at the university campus just outside town. Motorized vehicles couldn't make it. The only times I got really warm was Saturday afternoons, when I went for my weekly bath at a local hammam (Turkish bath), some of which were built in the early 1200s. A whole afternoon of luxury for less than 5 cents! Then a leisurely dinner of schnitzel, the local specialty, and plentiful, cheap Turkish beer. It would be worth a trip back to Erzurum just to repeat one of those delightful Saturdays, probably minus the beer.
After returning to the U.S. with admission to graduate school at Cornell University, it seemed that my future as a professor was made. Yet I knew that the tameness of American college life was not what I really wanted. The only other choice in the mid-1960s was to sit and wait to be drafted for cannon fodder in Vietnam. I didn't want that either. A friend had had experience with an outfit called International Voluntary Services (IVS) which had a colorful history dating back to World War I as a haven for young men from the traditional "peace churches" to serve honorably, usually as ambulance drivers or attendants where their survival rate was often lower than that of soldiers in the trenches.
After returning to the U.S. with admission to graduate school at Cornell University, it seemed that my future as a professor was made. Yet I knew that the tameness of American college life was not what I really wanted. The only other choice in the mid-1960s was to sit and wait to be drafted for cannon fodder in Vietnam. I didn't want that either. A friend had had experience with an outfit called International Voluntary Services (IVS) which had a colorful history dating back to World War I as a haven for young men from the traditional "peace churches" to serve honorably, usually as ambulance drivers or attendants where their survival rate was often lower than that of soldiers in the trenches.
posted by Frank | 5:30 PM
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