Last week I had the opportunity to travel into “real Laos” once again. Far off the beaten track in rural villages in Sangthong District, MCC encourages some of the poorest children to go to school by providing them with school uniforms and other essential school supplies. I tagged along with the project’s manager in order to take pictures and write stories for a newsletter, which is sent twice annually to the project’s supporters back in North America. We visited the schools and talked to many children, but for me, the most meaningful part of the trip was the time spent visiting the homes of some of the students. We sat in their homes (or more often underneath their homes) and talked about their current living situation, their families and their histories. Many of the poorest families had recently moved to the area in hopes of fertile rice paddies and a better life. They are still waiting for both these things.On the way back from one of the villages, our vehicle got a flat tire. As we waited for it to be changed, I met a little boy making a kite. I followed him down a little path into a dry rice paddy, where he joined four other boys, all flying their kites in the late afternoon sun. It was a beautiful site.
1 comment:
we are students at F E B M, university of Laos, wrote about this district, very interested, most people they have capital from Bank and they still can not stand by their legs to long years, no clean watter yet even closes with Mekong river. Households need workers more than support their child belong with school and so on.
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