Edward Allen

Dear All,
I’m now formally based in Vientiane, I met my Swedish project bosses last Sunday and taking in to account the problems with my arthritis and necessary regular trips to hospital we decided that I should stop work up country and leave the Phongsaly project. I’ll go back up in a few weeks or so and pack up everything, have a leaving party, and take a last long happy look at the villages.

I’m looking now for a house, a job, and looking to make the transition in to Phase 2 of my life in Laos. Being up-country has been a huge success; the villages now have roughly twice as many pigs in them as they did before I came up there, we have fought off major serious animal disease outbreaks too. And there is now a Lao staff member on the project well able to do the vast bulk of my job. I’ll stay friends with the project and will visit the project as they need me, it has been a spectacular experience for me.

Obviously I’m very sad about it all, but after going through a flood, many diseases and even a small earthquake, the toll it has taken on my body is too great to ignore. The priority for this coming week is to find a nice little house in Vientiane, and talk to people in our community about finding a good role for me to further help and assist the poor in Laos. Both obviously are big prayer requests.

Getting up country was a long and wonderful dream I had, to live amongst the tribal people and bless them, and yet all too quickly I’m back in the capital city and back looking for whatever is next in Laos, to replicate the success on a wider bigger scale. And wherever I go and whatever I do, to leave behind local people able to take the work on beyond anything I could do. The bouts of arthritis have simply brought in to clarity what was already there, that I don’t have to be up there doing what I was doing. Success has brought me to this new place, and it is a great place to be.

My health is a concern at the moment. I’m seeing my doctor tomorrow (Saturday) in neighbouring Thailand and hopefully we can work out a better pain management strategy, as the pain levels are a little bit out of their normal range. I’m usually in some kind of pain every waking hour, at night I take muscle relaxing medication that allows me to sleep but that is about the only time I’m not in any pain. It is as if my pain medication has stopped working, but it might just be the inflamation is hitting a high phase again, but whatever way it is thoroughly manageable.

Despite it all I am getting a lot done, I am loving life back in Laos. I’m even managing to get in shape again, go swimming, and get out and about. I don’t think there has ever been a time in my life when I’ve been feeling so happy, so calm and level-headed, emotionally and mentally and even spiritually I’m doing really wonderfully well. The weather is just glorious too, it is sunny and about 34 C, it lifts my spirit so.

Laos is a dear and deep love of mine still, I love how strangely chaotic yet calm it is. The local English language newspaper carried the story a few days ago of a Chinese Market area burning down. Fires are actually surprisingly rare in Vientiane, but the Chinese were upset that they couldn’t get through to the fire brigade. The fire chief admitted rather humbly that the fire emergency number isn’t really working at the moment, but he gave another number out and said that they did send fire engines to the blaze once they heard about it from someone else. The Laos love to gossip and it is actually about as fast as using the telephone; the fire chief heard of the blaze just 30 minutes after it started and then sent fire engines but alas it was too late to control the blaze.

It appears too that now I am completely cat-less, with Theodora having rehomed herself, so for the first time in a while I am no longer a “cat batchelor”.

yours with hilariously vast quantities of surplus kitty litter,

love Ned