It has been a very Lao week. After 3 years here I still am amazed at how strange the Lao people are, and still amazed how perfect they are too. I adore Laos and adore Lao people, usually.

On Tuesday we had a goodbye meal for one of the lead staff on one of the LIRE teams, Lao people love eating together love finding excuses to go out for lunch especially if the boss is paying. So I set off from the office with the simple instructions, the restaurant is near the airport. How could I screw up? When driving along the Spanish intern with me got the more accurate driving instructions that the restaurant is on the T-2 road near the Northern Bus Station. So I drove along the airport road and turned onto the substantial T-2 road and we looked for the Northern bus station and found it.

And then we got the accurate instructions to take the second right by the big Pepsi sign, all seems simple. Pepsi is the second most consumed drink in Laos, after beer (water is in a distant 3rd place), yet despite this and perhaps because their bosses are Lao, Pepsi still feels the need to market itself and still puts up massive signs everywhere here. Anyway we didn’t find the restaurant and phoned again and got the same instructions. Basically we went around in circles for half and hour until the person on the telephone finally chose to understand that I was coming from a different direction than they expected and half an hour late we arrived at the restaurant.

Unfornately Lao culture was not finished with me yet, as Lao people love these types of funny stories. With Lao culture you can say the same story over and over again and Lao people find it just as funny. I think Lao comedians must only have 6 jokes, for their entire career. So every 5 minutes when I was eating I had to tell everyone the story about how we went around in circles for 30 minutes and everytime they laughed so much, and kept asking me to tell them the story again.

So that sorted out on Wednesday I went to buy a new mattress for my bed, as the one my landlord had given me was just awful and I have bad back pain. So I legally plundered a cash machine (ATM) and went off with my Meiban to the especially cheap shop she knew near That Luang and bought their most expensive mattress. When I got home that night I collapsed on my bed, only to hear a strange plasticky sound. The new mattress is perfect, but my Meiban had made my bed without taking the plastic wrapping off my mattress. It is a lao culture thing, they do it to their car seats and anything else they can get hold of.

A few weeks ago I asked a Lao friend of mine to paint a few paintings from the good book to go with my Lao Moses. On Tuesday night I expected he was coming along with one painting but arrived with 3 and culturally I had to buy the lot. They are kind of ok, the stone being rolled away has strangely nice looking hand-holds built into it and the cross is a little Lao. He painted the cross with it made out of plank wood, rather Lao planks at that: they are uneven in thickness and not straight. And everyone in the paintings looks like dwarf munchkins with seriously good (non-fake) tans. I love the set dearly already…

I’ve found these past few weeks a little strange, this recent arthritis flare-up has been rough obviously. There is a kind of deep sorrow I’m finding attached to having this ghastly sub-type of Ankylosing Spondylitis. The disease won’t kill me, but it is killing some of my dreams. And I’m physically declining faster than I expected, though my back is in superb shape. The problems with my ankles are discouraging, as they clearly threaten my mobility going forward.

It is a hard thing to explain, but the intensity of the battles with the flare-ups is wearying.  I came to help the poor in Laos, and I’m still doing that. I came to see this nation transformed, and I’m a tiny part of that, for the curse of extreme poverty to be lifted from these fragrant valleys. I’m doing lovely, innovative, creative, work; I have a great boss at LIRE and a good working environment. It is some of the best and happiest work I’ve ever done. I’m able to take time off when I need to, as much time as I need.

And yet what bugs me at the moment is that I’ve lost something. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’ve lost something. The loveliness of my life at the moment is amazing, my house is beautiful inside, stability abounds and I have a comfortable, safe, enjoyable, effective and efficient life.  But something is missing…

lots of love,

Ned

I’ve now been in Laos exactly 3 years, and to celebrate (I’m clearly such a party animal) I thought I’d share with you my 3 year statistics:

-I’m now onto my 4th house
-2 of which have flooded
-my 5th Meiban (housekeeper)
-4th mobile phone
-3rd laptop computer
-3rd camera

-I’ve been stopped by the Lao police or army 27 times
-though 3 of those were only to disinfect my truck because of a local bird-flu outbreak
-and only 5 times did the people who stopped me have machine guns (I didn’t obviously check to see if they had any bullets in their machine guns…)

-I’ve spent 6 months off sick
-though mercifully had amoebic dysentry only once
-I have been to hospital 19 times
-and every day I take 17 pills

-I’ve been to the locally famous JOMA coffee house approximately 300 times (but the real figure might be closer to 500: good coffee…)

-I’ve got through 3 cats (2 died, 1 self-rehomed)
-10 tires (costing over $1000 USD)
-Used the electric winch on the front of my truck 12 times
-and once got 14 really small people into my truck.

-I’ve lost control of my truck 3 times, but each time been unhurt

-I’ve been to all but 3 provinces of Laos
-and lived in 1 (Phongsali) where only 7% of people there had electricity from the grid

-I’ve flown Lao Airlines only twice (:seeing the “Made in China” sticker in the inside of their aircraft is a little disconcerting)

-And for some bizarre reason, I’ve had 2 pairs of swim shorts stolen…

I love Laos…

love Ned

I’m just back up to Vientiane from the mulberry fields of Sekong, from the silk farm down there. It is interesting work, though getting villagers to produce high quality silk thread is somewhat difficult, there are just so many different steps needed to turn a worm egg into consistent quality silk thread and any one of those steps going wrong messes up the quality. Silk is basically far too cheap, raising sheep for wool is so so much easier (and that really is saying something); silkworms appear to have a “death-wish” even greater than Suffolk sheep…

The drive down there is long, over 500 miles each way, but my lovely truck is amazing at these long trips and in over 1000 miles of driving no-one dared overtake me (:I had durians again in the back). Today I found myself behind 5 trucks all being driven in the middle of the road and with some enthusiasm; moments later I realised it was a Lao government convoy, the lead vehicle was a Lao Military Police 4×4 with its lights flashing. So in the spirit of the old phrase “if you can’t beat them, join them”, I tagged along. It was really a lovely way to travel, cars and lorries were veering off the road to let the convoy pass and at the very least stopping, indeed I was most disappointed when they chose to take an early lunch at 11.50am but grateful for their assistance in clearing the way for me.

The arthritis has survived this week just about ok. My ankles are awful, just horrible at the moment, but my back was good. I’m using my walking stick much more than I expected, but it is because it makes me look like Dr House (I’m working in vain at the designer stubble, the accent will come later, but I already have the crusty mood sorted out). And of course, a walking stick makes walking so so much easier for me, taking weight off my ankles as every step is painful. My boss at LIRE is very understanding and I’ll take some days off in the coming couple of weeks and a whole load of work from home days too. The arthritis I have is very episodic, with the bad episodes really rather deflating, but the medical care I get is world-class and the drug mix I’m on genuinely innovative which is very heartening: everything possible is being done and done well.

And so back to the difficult issue for me of what adjustments I need to make to my life to keep functioning as well as I can for as long as I can. The next step will have to be to get some ramps into my house, make getting around my house step free. I hope I can hold off changing my truck for another year or two to one with an automatic gearbox, but having a pick-up truck is really really great for my work still. I’ll keep reviewing everything, it is a little like getting old early, but so far the adjustments I’ve made are really working.

I’m still dearly grateful for the amazing support I’m getting from everyone, I’m deeply touched,

lots of love,

Ned

I bought a walking stick, for the 5% of the time I now need one. I rushed into the shop, quickly paid the money ($5 USD) and walked out realising that perhaps it was the most expensive $5 USD item I’d ever bought. But if I need it 5% of the time, and don’t have one when I need one, how intelligent would that be? I’m far too much of a coward to be a hero, and too much of a realist to be making a stand on something as petty as this.

The last 2 weeks have been hard, I’ve had to come to terms with the arthritis and not pretend it is all so under-control I can hide it. It is there, it is a big part of my life, and I can still live but I’m disabled to some degree. I’m not greatly disabled, but some things are difficult now that were not difficult a year ago. But moving back down to Vientiane has opened doors for me, not closed them, and I am far happier in Vientiane than I ever was up-country.  And professionally I continue to flourish, I’m doing some of my best work at the moment.

I was just over in Thailand for a hospital trip; all the tests were wonderfully good. My consultant has caught my arthritis very early, treated it extremely aggressively, and her approach is working. The pain in my heels and ankles they can’t do much about, neither the nausea (a side-effect of my drugs). I have the best possible treatment, and the newest drugs, but there are limits. The prognosis is horrible, and the pain I’m in is hauntingly because my body is not working properly and damage is happening to it. The key thing for me going forward will be to live somewhere warm, as cold weather is so bad for my body.

Thailand is a massively richer place than Laos, with 10x the population and 4x the GDP per capita, but the people are ethnically very similar to the Lao and the languages 85% the same. On the X-ray table this morning, I had a very chatty radiologist who found it really fun hearing me speak Lao as I stared up at the Shimatzu X-ray machine while I contorted myself for my pelvic X-ray. It was all going fine, until she asked me: “Why are you here?, have you had an accident?”. I replied: “No, I have arthritis, I work with biofuels”.

I increasingly enjoy my trips to Thailand, I buy the same things pretty much every time I go but it is a nice break from Laos. At the international supermarket I buy Alpen Muesli for myself and “Sleeky Biscuit for Dog Lamb Flavour” for my fan club. I buy nice things there, and things I can’t buy in Laos like tyre pressure gauges and classic car magazines (basically all the batchelor life essentials).

Next week I go back down to Sekong Province, the NGO I’m helping is really responding well to suggestions I have been giving them and I need to learn how to be a consultant to projects. And it is important for me to keep following up things there from my last trip, though after this trip I’ll probably only go down one more time this year.

love Ned

It has been a steady, if rather difficult week. My arthritis flared up on Sunday again, and has left me feeling weak and nauseated all week, it has proven to be an unusually uncomfortable flare-up and so rather discouraging. I’m still able to swim mercifully, which is essential for my health as it stretches out my tendons. But life is still beautiful, and living in Laos the right thing to do.

A few days ago I presented an introduction to Biofuels to a Lao and Western audience; with the help of some of the Lao office staff I translated the slides into Lao and spoke for about an hour or so in both languages; these are happy milestones. It is nice to be reaching real and effective functionality in both languages, though my English clearly needs a lot of work.

It is sometimes a deep and vibrant love of Laos that keeps me here. Having had a Lao Moses, I’ve now commissioned a painting from the same artist of the Boss’ son meeting the Centurion. Gradually I’ll get the guy to paint more of my favourite scenes as a kind of personal tribute to the good book and this beautiful nation and my love for both.

When I walk in my garden and sneeze, a toad moves. When I open a cupboard, a gecko moves. When I want a lie-in, my Meiban arrives at 7am. This is Laos…

But I wasn’t so happy with my Landlord this morning when two of my rooms kind of flooded, it tends to cause a mild sense of humour failure with me; and it is my 2nd house in Laos to flood. I haven’t lost anything, but it is tedious and dirty. It is a house with a great location for me, but if the Landlord can’t prevent the flooding then I’ll have to find somewhere else to live. You have to take these frustrations in Laos with efficiency and buckets of coffee or won’t survive here many days.

The driving here is always a challenge. Lao people don’t usually like to do things alone, and this even includes dying as you can tell by their driving. Most people ride motorbikes here, and people don’t really like wearing helmets as it wrecks their hairstyles. I’ve learnt that the mirrors on Lao motorbikes are there purely for cosmetic reasons, to help the girls to put their make-up on with and they have 2 mirrors as there are often 2 girls on a motorbike and each girl needs their own mirror: they really have nothing whatsoever to do with seeing other traffic. It is all very simple when you see it from a Lao perspective.

My work at LIRE continues to go very well, it is making a big difference having a good boss, and it is strategic work too. I was due to go off for some training in early September, but the organisation sending me there has discovered that getting a Zambian a visa for Honduras isn’t really very easy, and so has postponed the training until perhaps later in the year (some things one might think would be obvious?). I am finding it a strange experience managing people at LIRE. The risk I’ve found is that you can spend all your day planning other people’s work rather than actually getting any done yourself, it can kind of suck you in if you are not careful. And it seems to get the best out of people, everyone needs to be managed in a completely different way. I’ve got a lot to learn clearly, but now the biofuels team office has the best coffee, most chocolate, and heaviest used air-con in the LIRE building, so there is some tangible progress being made. And we are making some solid process with Lao contextualised biofuels work too, which is nice.

This coming week brings another hospital trip over to Thailand and an all important round of X-rays and blood tests. At the moment I’m worse than I was a month ago, but maybe that is because of the reduced steroids. I need a couple of days off too, and staff at the Khonkaen Ram hospital are lovely towards me, so I’m looking forward to it. I really am getting the finest and most sensible medical care I could possibly get.

Lots of love, Ned

The rainy season has finally arrived here, actually it seems to have arrived with its entire extended family, as the last few days have been somewhat moist. The heavy rains are desperately needed for the rice, with so much of the country having had to replant after such a dry start to the rainy season, and large areas of some of the southern provinces sadly have not being able to even plant rice at all this year.

I’ve been in the office all this week at LIRE in Vientiane. I work basically the same hours there as I used to work in London (8am to 5 or more usually 6pm); it is good if rather intense work. I seemed to have kind of got promoted too, I’m doing much more work with the various funding partners we have whilst I oversee the biofuels program and work hard to keep all our work very pro-poor focussed and relevant. Originally I came to LIRE to manage a single study, but now oversee two studies, and a lot more else besides and we’ll get someone to take on the routine management of the study I came to manage.

Next to my desk in the office in LIRE, I have a little post-it note on the wall proclaiming that “coffee is a biofuel”, it is a nice little joke. But unfortunately a Spanish intern at LIRE saw my sign and proclaimed “you can’t use it for that, coffee is far too valuable to use as a fuel…”.

Anyway I thought that was the end of it, until on Monday morning she marched into my office and said: “I have 9,847kg of coffee waste, what can I do?” so I told her: “Don’t buy things with your credit card when you are drunk?”. (Please, like you could have thought of a more appropriate response?). Her response was so feline, it made me miss my cats.

Actually it turned out that she had 9,847kg of coffee husks to deal with per day, logically enough, and I swiftly found the email address of “someone who knows more than I do” about biogas digesters, and so forth and managed to pass her on to another “expert”.

But it is good to be working at LIRE, I am able to be very selective about what I take on here and am able to take some workload off my boss which is obviously popular with her. The intense schedule and office work is proving very good indeed for my arthritis though I’m still in constant and sometimes intense pain with it. I work in an office with 3 other people and am basically their boss which is a slightly strange feeling for me, but we are making a lot of progress quickly. I like working with such talented people, though it is a little daunting managing them effectively.

Next week in the office again all week, but then I have 5 successive weeks in which I’m doing some travelling in each week; but it is simply because things are going so well that I have so much travelling coming up. I refuse to live any less just because I have arthritis, and while I am still able to I intend on living every week abundantly. It is an extraordinary life that I’m living, and a life that is only made possible because of the support that I get from all of you.

lots of love,

Ned

After very almost 3 years here in Laos I’m learning pungently that one’s ability to succeed encouragingly is greater than ever before here, but one’s ability to screw up considerably also seems to be growing too. In this past week I’ve been down on a farm in Sekong province, in the very far south of Laos. I came back to the farm again because it seemed a good idea at the time to promise a very nice NGO I’d train some of their staff on how to better teach the villagers they work with. When the time actually came, it really didn’t seem such a good idea; on the 9hr drive down to the farm from Vientiane I found myself endlessly asking myself: why?

And after some hours of giving the training, I was still left asking myself why? Indeed I found myself so out of my depth, I couldn’t see the coast. I had mercifully some good materials, and my Lao was holding up as I gave the training in Lao, but it just wasn’t coming together. I was trying to get the project staff to train the villagers in a better more effective way, explaining that there is a difference between listening and actually doing what the lesson suggests. It is hard getting Lao people to really think properly for themselves sometimes, the education system here is very much that the teacher tells the students and the students don’t ask questions. So it is actually harder to teach educated Lao people how to help the villagers find their own solutions than villagers themselves.

After 2 days of giving training, my training time was up as was evidenced by a small but weighty mound of empty Red Bull bottles. And I was a free man once again, sort of. Well I had another day at the farm and was even permitted to come in the next day late. Instead of arriving at the farm at around 7am, I arrived at about 8.30am because I am such a rebel. As was my custom I went to the local market beforehand and managed to redefine my personally impressive definition of “screwing-up”; I bought 3 durians…

The local durians are famed for their fine taste and even finer low price, and it seemed a shame not to bring back a few to Vientiane; it is ordinarily assumed (by people who obviously don’t buy durians) that buying fresh local produce is always a good thing to do when visiting country areas. I put my 3 durians in the back of my truck, protected from their sweet sickly scent of rotten honey-roast meat by 2 layers of glass and the laws of physics which suggested that smells go with wind and when you are in front of them you are fine. So upon driving to the farm I felt smug, and poor as even cheap durians are financially toxic. And after 10 minutes of feeling unusually smug, it hit me; Lao durians do not follow the laws of physics as the smell of rotten flesh came into the cab of my truck.

Gasping for air, I opened the windows, only to find the durians had got there too. So when I got the farm, I found a plastic crate and loaded the evil trio into the crate and tightly closed the lid and replaced them in the back of my truck. Only to find after a couple of hours that my sinister threesome had decided to ignore that law of physics too as wafts of sweet death were pouring from the back of my truck.

So I put the durians under the coffee table and hoped no-one would notice.

And the next morning drove my very loaded-up truck, with a sweet young Lao-French couple who were moving back to Vientiane. They obviously, but conveniently, lacked a sense of smell as they allowed me to put the durian crate in the back of the truck next to their possessions. I got stopped a couple of times by the police on the way back, I guess they smelt me coming, but sadly for them my documents were in order so they couldn’t find a reason to fine me. But strangely in over 500 miles of driving back to Vientiane, only 1 car overtook me…

Durians are deeply and insanely addictive, a heavenly sweet creamy taste that improbably overcomes their toxic price and deathly smell.

I love my life here in Laos, really really like living in Vientiane, and deeply appreciate the amazing medical care I get in Khon Kaen in neighbouring Thailand which allows me to stay on the field. I struggle with the arthritis, and haven’t really got the pain management side of the disease fully sorted out, but it doesn’t stop me living. Every day I wake excited by the possibilities of the day ahead, I like going to bed early because it brings the morning sooner. I would never wish spinal arthritis on anyone, it will be a happy and joyous day when this wretched disease is finally defeated and exists only in medical history textbooks, but just because it is not defeated doesn’t mean I need to be.

But my house now really smells of the fruit of death, maybe it will keep away the toads?

lots of love,

Ned

It has been a mercifully steady calm week, with unusually few traumas. After almost 3 years in Laos I’m more surprised when a week doesn’t have trauma, than when it does. You can’t be neutral about living here, you either love it or hate it; it is a nation that divides the finest people into two very distinct camps, those who over time love living here and those who over time don’t. And those who don’t, leave. But I love the Lao people, the Lao ways, and every week is so funny here.

I am without a passport at the moment, as my current one is full so I’ve necessarily had to send it to the regional passport processing centre in Hong Kong for renewal. The new photo regulations require me not to smile on my photos, I guess because I routinely fly economy class, and so I went along to a popular photo shop to get them done. Unfortunately this photo shop had discovered the rarely used “Lao” mode on their Nikon, so I now have a double chin and look like I’ve eaten so much sticky rice I’m not going to the bathroom for at least another 10 days.

Once I’d got together all the documents I went over to DHL to send my passport and forms off to Hong Kong, only for the woman at the Lao DHL office to reject my letter as it didn’t have a postcode; despite the fact that the letter was going to the relatively unknown location of “1 Supreme Court Road, Hong Kong”. I negotiated obviously in vain, even telling her that Britain used to own Hong Kong and that I do really think that DHL Hong Kong does know where the British Consulate General is there, not least because it has a deal with them to return renewed passports to all over Asia. But this was still Laos, eventually I managed to find an internet connection, discover the telephone number of the British Consulate General and placate Madame DHL Laos.

Meanwhile when I arrived back into my house from my last hospital visit, I was vaguely suprised to find a painting of Moses parting the Red Sea propped up in my living room. It was a very Lao Moses it must be said, he was very very short, but rather than being my Landlord’s latest plan to prevent my house from flooding it turned out to have been left for my approval/purchase. So now I have a very short Moses parting a very blue Red Sea hanging up in my living room; sometimes in Laos it is good not to think too much…

The weather has mercifully turned to being properly wet, which is so desperately needed here. It should be solidly wet now, but really hasn’t been and the rice harvest in the autumn is predicted to be very poor.

Next week I head back down to Sekong again, I’ll drive down on Monday and come back on Friday. It is a long trip, about 550 miles each way, but quite easy to drive and my truck handles these long trips beautifully. I’ll be giving 2 days of training when I’m down there, and then another day of general agronomy and management assistance for the NGO SFE. It will be good to get out into the rural areas again, get out of the city. The arthritis remains relentlessly frustrating, but I’m well enough to work and I’m doing really good work at the moment. I’m still in constant pain, with the pain especially severe around 4am, but somehow I’m getting used to it.

lots of love,

Ned

Last weekend I was in Sainyabouli Province meeting goverment officials, it was a fairly normal trip up country: saw 2 elephants, 2 machine guns and a mongoose. Fortunately none of the machine guns were pointed at me. It was a good trip, we put in about 28hrs travelling over 2 1/2 days but mercifully I wasn’t driving. The province was so beautiful, the meetings were productive, and I would love to go back to Sainyabouli province. And best of all my arthritis didn’t get too badly affected by the trip.

On the trip with me as a Lao agriculture teacher and a great French intern called Paul. The Lao guy before we left declared that he had to sit in the front passenger seat as he gets car sick, and that was non-negotiable and no he wasn’t going to take car sickness pills. He wasn’t going to wear a seatbelt either, because it affected his stomach too much. Sometimes one has to just smile and remember who writes the report at the end of the trip.

Fortunately our meetings went very well indeed, but one of the biggest problems we had was Sunday lunch. The issue was that our Lao agriculture teacher friend, upon arriving into Sainyabouli province, showed an impressive ability to chose the worst restarant in town. We were told there was meat, I selected some dark brownish thing and soon enough a plate of this arrived at our table, unfortunately for Paul and myself the barbequed water buffalo liver cookers of Sainyabouli town were having an off day. After one piece our French friend retreated, leaving me with this big plate of bad buffalo liver to deal with. The 2 Lao people we had with us solidly munched away on their barbequed pig intestines, and so I could hardly swap plates with them. Fortunately, cometh the time, cometh the cat, actually 2 cats appeared. And I learnt that saving face and disposing of bad liver is somewhat difficult, especially when the cats in question start growling as the liver pieces were quietly dropped under the table to them. Eventually, after about 30 minutes there were just 2 pieces of liver left (which is a face-saving amount to leave in this culture) and the cats had doubled their body weight.

But the work at LIRE continues to go well, staggeringly well, though the hours are long I have a great boss who listens and appreciates my input. I needed an office based job, given my health constraints, and this is job is extremely academically intense and very enjoyable. I’ve kind of found my way back to academia. It is also giving me a lot less time to worry about things like my arthritis, and focus on just delivering a complex biofuels program that will potentially help a huge number of the rural poor in Laos.

This past week I got my truck back from the body shop, after about 10 days of repairs the body work now looks ok again. I bought an Chinese electric scooter so I could get around while the truck was being fixed. I bought a Lifan Supra-X Princess because of its name, obviously. The scooter has been a surprising success, costing almost nothing to run, not much to buy ($400 US) and going about 35mph and about 40 miles on a charge.

I’ve been over in Thailand on another hospital visit, after working last weekend I really have needed this break. Checking into my hotel I faced a strange east-meets-west experience. I didn’t have a reservation, but they asked me if I was going to the big academic conference being held at the hotel (I was wearing a jacket and was having a very bad hair day, so I looked like an academic). I paused with giving a negative answer just long enough for them to give me the 50% discount associated with the conference, and walked away feeling smug that I’d played the saving face deal so delicately. Until that was I looked at my credit card receipt and realised I’d been charged a little more than usual at that hotel; just the staff had been trained to tell all the conference people they were getting a 50% discount (which makes academics and Lao biofuels experts feel very very smug). Not for the first time in history, east beats west…

But with every hospital visit comes a strange and often disconcerting mix of both good and bad news. The good news is that my current drugs are working beautifully against my arthritis but the bad news is that the strain they are putting on my body is very substantial;  my blood pressure is still far too high. My kind of arthritis is a systemic disease, affecting a lot of different parts of my body, but my health has genuinely stabilised and my recovery after bad arthritis episodes and bad buffalo liver is faster than ever.

lots of love,

Ned

It has been a rough week; a physcially extremely painful week as my arthritis flared aggressively up again Sunday night and has remained high since then. But otherwise life is good, and despite the pain I’m in I do so adore Laos, lao people and living; it will surely take more than pain to get me out of here. It is a special, deep and wonderful joy to be living and working in Laos with Lao people.

Every few weeks sadly I get an arthritis crisis, and every few months a really bad one like the one on Sunday night. First the pain kicks hard into my body, then a few hours later my emotions get traumatically affected and then the pain roars up like a jet-engine on take-off. My arthritis crises are not caused by emotional trauma, which is good at least, but it is an emotionally traumatic disease sometimes. Getting to grips with my medical prognosis of the arthritis being incurable, progressive and degenerative, is unsurprisingly hard for me. I need a miracle obviously, but only at the end of the game do you know the final score. (Unless England is playing Germany at football)

I didn’t get more than a single hour of sleep on Sunday night, despite taking a sleeping pill; as the pain overwhelmed the drug.

And then first thing in the morning I had a difficult situation to deal with, with my meiban. She had blocked a toilet up on last Friday and left it for me to discover on Sunday, there was no note or anything at all and the stench was awful. I spent a hour on Sunday unblocking it and then on Sunday night found she had been eating my food again.

So I got angry with her, which even when you are in the right here is an awful situation to put yourself in no matter how justified you are. There was some septic tank problem I wasn’t aware of that wasn’t there on Saturday and Sunday but was there aparently on the Friday. And in a culture built around saving face, sometimes the truth can get a bit flushed away.

And then finally coming into the office on Monday morning I found an urgent proposal needed writing, and pressure was on to get that completed. But fortunately that night I managed to persuade my meiban not to quit, I was basically asleep by the time I got home but evidently my sleep-talking was unusually coherrent for me. In all honesty I speak Lao more clearly than I speak English, which ALL my American friends here would wholeheartedly testify under oath to.

But working at LIRE is proving a joy, I’m flourishing. The people at LIRE are talented and they listen and take on board things in a very agreable way. It is truly a place where A-grade people have hired other A-grade people and are intent on getting the best out of them. And I’m able to help so many Lao people this way, steering projects to be more pro-poor and putting the needs of the least fortunate people at the centre of what we are doing.

Personally I’m doing ok, the work is intense and the days long, so I’m quite tired.

I don’t write much about my private life in these bulletins as there simply is nothing to write about. I’m single neither by calling or nor by choice, but it is an area of my life that just hasn’t come together as I imagined. I’ve been deeply in love twice in my life, to two of the most exceptional women I’ve ever met and women whose character shone like diamonds upon the desert floor, but both fairly decided on another path for their life. Every setback is merely that, and through the mountains we reach the sea.

This weekend I’m off to Sainyabouli province to meet government officials, leaving on Saturday and returning on Monday night. And then on Thursday I’ll head over to Thailand for a few days to have another hospital appointment and improve Starbucks’ Thai profits.

The arthritis is merely a big mountain I have to climb, another challenge for my life, and just another thing to overcome. Though it is the biggest mountain I’ve had to climb, it isn’t the only mountain I’ve ever climbed. I see it as a kind of grand adventure,

And meanwhile I live this miracle, the miracle of being able to be here in Laos helping the poor,

through the mountains we reach the sea…

lots of love,

Ned