Vientiane province

I am back in Vientiane province for another seminar my organisation is running on educating government officials about human rights. I helped organise it, so I thought I’d come to implement it and do some work with the project team so they’re not too bored while they’re here. Before I came to the first of these sessions, I was concerned it would be a bit challenging to be with 20 government officials and 6 people from work for 3 whole days due to the language barrier. Also, I thought the government officials would be mostly older men. I forgot the age profile is different here Laos so some people were actually young so it’s good to see some young people learning about human rights.

We had dinner with some people with disabilities who are members of our organisation. They served us barbequed fish freshly caught from the river, a chicken soup with a pretty good chilli, ginger, and coriander sauce. They have a mushroom farm and one of them makes furniture for work. Before he had his furniture business, he had to catch fish until midnight to make a living. An NGO donated some rice to our organisation which we distributed to our members. It was funny that this food aid ended up in my stomach! I could tell the quality was low, but it wasn’t bad- just a bit more crumbly and less fragrant than usual.