News from Laos By JOHN DUGDALE
Saigon I
' F I were going to commit suicide,' said the Chaomuong, 'the means 1 should choose as the most comfortable and the most certain, although rather expensive, would be to fly round Laos.' We were sitting in the fort at Muong Sing, two hours' march from the Chinese frontier, and I had described my flight to Nam Tha. We had passed at a height of one hundred feet over an aircraft wrecked on the mountain side and owing to some local magnetic distortion had wandered for half an hour over Southern China until the pilot had found a landmark and returned to Laotian territory. At this a visit- ing French archeologist produced photographs of the wrecked aircraft and the burnt disfigured bodies, one of which belonged to Henri Daydier, the white hope of French oriental studies and a former colleague. I drank another Pernod. We were suddenly called upon to drink the health of Adjutant Boudet and we complied with all the ceremony of a Lao Mayor's banquet. 'Go and fetch the Adjutant,' said the Laotian. corn- mundant, and one of his officers returned with a zip bag which he placed on the chair beside him. My curiosity was too strong and I walked round the table and opened the bag. The Adjutant Boudet had been killed a year ago and his bones were now being repatriated.
With this farewell to civilisation, my companion and I set off on foot into the mountains. The tribes grow rice by burning the forest and planting the seeds in the ashes: when the surrounding ground has thus been cleared and rendered sterile to everything but coarse rushes, the village moves on. They practise the communism of the early Christians, bolding all things in common. And the village, under the direction of the headman, is responsible for the welfare of its members. The women do most of the labour in the forest and work the large wooden hammer to husk the rice. They gather the firewood and stems of the banana plants to feed the pigs, and weave the coarse cotton for their garments. The men pass the day smoking and talking and occasionally go hunting with a crossbow. Inside the village there is no need of money and should there be any surplus of rice it is taken to market and sold for the common account. At Muong Sing commerce is conducted not in the Laotian paper money, but in the now valueless metal coins of Chiang Kai-shek. and Chinese soap and cigarettes—I particularly recommend the latter—are freely available. But a journey to market is a rare event and as a rule the village has no knowledge of the world beypnd Its own boundaries and we were sometimes told that we were the first Europeans to pass that way. the boy later told me that he had fallen into a trance and had seen the spirit who had promised good things to the village. The stranger is usually greeted with offerings of eggs and flowers. Sometimes the elders of the village, with a ceremonial towel over the left shoulder, kneel in front of him, muttering an invocation, and bind a piece of cotton about his wrists. This places the stranger under the protection of the spirit and while he wears it no harm can befall him. For the most part, the spirits seem to be benevolent and easily pro- pitiated, but the customs vary among the tribes, and at Luang Prabang, in comparative civilisation, the Lu tribe annually stone to death an old woman at the festival of the Crescent Moon. Buddhism is not to be found among the hill tribes.
Sometimes we gave a party in a headman's hut, usually a long low structure of bamboo, raised several feet off the _ground, and lit only by the fire and a tallow dip. First of all schourn, the overproof rice spirit, the hors-d'auvre of warm raw eggs and sour-tasting vegetables. Then bowls of boiled chicken, entrails and all, duck and smoked pork, all highly seasoned and all eaten with the fingers. You eat the cold sticky rice from round boxes, dipping each lump into pimento. More and more schount. While my French companion and I were never allowed heel-taps, the locals often poured half their glass through the floor to be lapped up by the dogs waiting below. Hubble-bubbles of bamboo were passed round.
A large earthenware jar appeared, filled with fermenting schourn, from which sprouted long bamboo 'straws.' Leaving the remains of the food to be finished off by the women and children, we squatted in a circle and sucked away, exchang- ing straws and inciting each other to drink yet more. Not till the party was well under way did the girls enter. Their long black hair was arranged in elaborate chignons, their breasts were compressed beneath tight-fitting tunics with silver fastenings, and their silver-threaded skirts reached nearly to their ankles. They carried themselves like duchesses and gurgled with laughter. While it is important to touch them, as not to do so is regarded as an insult, they rebuffed any but the most limited advances. Soon we were all dancing to the drum and cymbals. Bang, two, three, four, and we jigged up and down on the springy bamboo floor, usually in couples but occasionally with much high-kicking in a ring. On one occa- sion, the headman thought it a pity to confine so excellent a party to his village and some of us set off to recruit some more girls from a village a couple of miles off. So we walked through the midnight forest with the girls bearing torches of flaming bamboo in their hands and the men singing to ward off any evil spirits. Such parties rarely broke up before the dawn.
After these junketings in the hills, the capital, Vientiane, seemed even duller than before and entirely out of touch with the rest of the country. Driving from the air strip, the new arrival must not ask when he will reach the town; the chances are that he has already passed through it. Some European villas, a cluster of Chinese shops and bamboo houses, a handful of public offices and a pagoda or two constitute the capital of Laos. On one side the Mekong carries the waters of Tibet to the South China Sea, and across the river lies Siam. In this already overcrowded village, the International Armistice Commission has set up its headquarters and the ensuing shortage of atcommodation has had curious results. The ministerial changes of last autumn were complicated and almost stoppe0 altogether by the refusal of the retiring ministers to hand over to their successors their houses, one of the fruits of office. For a long time Parliament remained in recess since the Crown Prince was unable to come up from Luang Prabang to open it, owing to the fact that there was nowhere for him to sleep in his capital. For the first month after his arrival, the British Minister stayed with the Premier, a visit which surprisingly enough did much for British prestige, until a four-roomed bungalow was provided for the legation. The Americans have attempted to cut the Gordian knot by actually building a house, but even they have flinched at the final cost.
Before the war Laos was the Cinderella of the various states which made up Indo-China, and the journey from Saigon to Vientiane, partly by road and partly by river, took well over a month. It had no exports and the revenue was insufficient to provide the most basic services, so the French eontented them- selves with building metalled streets and running primary schools in the larger towns. The main roads were annually destroyed by the rains and sometimes repaired. This virtual absence of a central authority did not help the mixture of races, each with its own language, who slopped untidily over the artificial frontiers, to acquire a national consciousness. As a country Laos was little more than an idea in the mind of France.
After the war, Laos received some measure of independence and the government devolved on such members of the royal family, and such magnates, as chose to undertake the task. They have adopted the laissez-faire policy and the less attrac- tive habit of their predecessors. The roneoed sheet, published by the Ministry of Information, which serves as the only news- paper, is hard pressed to find one daily item of Laotian news. Indeed, for a country which has virtually lost two provinces and is in danger of complete extinction, the Government take things very easily. American attempts at economic aid are frustrated not so much by ingratitude as incompetence and, were it not for the few French officials still in the Ministries, the administration would long ago have come to a stop.
The complete political ignorance of the peasants has proved a safeguard against the usual Communist line which enjoyed such a success in Northern Viet Nam, and since the general armistice the Chinese appear to have given up their efforts at direct political conversion by infiltration and leaflets. It would appear, however, that the Thai Lu, a considerable tribe to be found on both sides of the frontier, have recently begun to feel the stirrings of nationalism, and while this may not have gone very far as yet, it provides a situation which would be easy to exploit and spread to other tribes. The Laotian Government ignores this threat and beyond the pro- vision of a few posters, which are handy for stopping a hole in the wall of a hut, make no attempt to make themselves popular or even recognised. I made a point of asking the various headmen I met what they thought of the Government and nine times out of ten they did not know what I was talk- ing about. An idyllic state of affairs; but not long for this world.
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