Overriding memory of Laos, sat in mountain mist in Nong Khiaw, shivering and fevering my way through food poisoning, after spending thirteen hours on a boat the day before
(context: a boat that was meant to take eight hours. A boat that kept sinking. A boat that sank three times.
In the river Ou. The beautiful river ou, prettier than the mekhong. The river we were conscripted to fish for two legged chairs from whenever another local dug out longboat hit a rock and lost all its furniture)
I was more than a little tired and shaky. I sat and shook and tried to keep things down on a plank by the sawngthaew (ie open truck) station, watching a noodle stall seller amuse herself by trying to murder flies on the dead meat in front of her, by hitting them with an elastic band. Occasionally I squirted some toothpaste into my mouth, then spat heavily beneath the noodles (hey, if it's alright for them...) to eradicate the taste of puke from my mouth. Feeling grateful at least I hadn't had chicken noodles the day before.
As I watched a crack in the floorboards and clutched my spasming gut, a small murky face grinned up at me. A little girl, maybe three years old. Carrying bags of rubbish. Was she the noodle woman's kid? No, her feet had clearly never seen shoes, and noodle woman for all her basic understanding of food hygiene, wore the plastic flip flops common to most of the Mekhong delta countries.
Was she playing? After a few grins and darts, she waved at me, and toddled slightly uphill out from under the boards of the noodle shack. My instinctive response, accompanied by an involuntary stomach lurch was to hope she didn't touch me with the creamy sticky dirt laden hand that waved at me.
No worries. The little girl settled back to the task she'd been crawling beneath the mud shack stall to accomplish - sifting rubbish, and placing good finds into her two plastic bags.
Not playing then. Working.
Street kid. At three years old.
I thought about the kids at KOTO, in Ha Noi, and felt glad they weren't living like this little girl.
She picked her way across the filth and ordure, and found a bamboo pole. I watched to see if she'd play with it, if the instinct to play is stronger than the instinct to survive in a little kid too young to form words properly yet.
I thought so, till I realised she was fashioning a shoulder hoist - one of those poles I still haven't learnt the name of - to lift her two plastic bags more effectively.
I played the traveller game of 'thank god I'm not ...'/ 'thank god I don't ...' and wondered if any european kid would have identified a function like that, identified the pole as a device, rather than a toy. Then resumed my groaning spasms.
Looking up a moment later, I saw real delight on her face; the look of absorption you see in kids who've found something they know is worth something.
It was a machete.
Three year old kid, playing in the gutter with a machete. Delighted by its shiny blade.
Name me one place in Europe, where even a complete stranger would have failed to
run to a three year old and take a blade like that from her.
I glanced around. She was invisible. The noodle lady pinged at flies. The sawngthaew driver lazed in hammock shade. The passengers waited boredly for the truck to fill up, knowing it wouldn't leave till it was stuffed with human cargo.
Nothing.
The little girl, funning with a few swiping movements, sniffed, and put the machete into her bags. Picked her way back down towards the river.
Man, the things you see are unreal. Fucking unreal.
