The Laos chapter

Well, I worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society and was meant to go to live at the tiger reserve in a village called Viengthong but when we had a visit 'seeking feedback' from the new director of the VIDA program I was part of, I suggested they could put the people being placed in a country at the same time in touch so they could send their stuff together to keep costs down. I also let them know that I had a quote for off-grid power for $12,000. The director had a hissy fit and said he was going to do a 'risk assessment' of my placement. I asked if I could be part of it and he said I could.

Next I knew my placement was cancelled, with no consultation. So I was replaced by another volunteer who was good at keeping her mouth shut but then went on to suffer from the problems I had identified and left her placement early.

The reason power was needed is because fruit and vegetables are not available locally and have to be sent up 8 hours by road. So you need a fridge to be able to keep them and there are no gas or kerosene fridges available. There is also no water 3 months of the year so you need to power a pump or carry water all day.

So a word of warning to potential VIDAs: you have to sign a consent form saying you have no rights and no say in anything and they can cancel your placement with no reason at any time. They are not kidding - they will do this. Volunteers give 2 or 3 years of their life for this and give up the salaries they would get in Australia and are not valued at all by the program. What I would say to someone considering going is that if you're the sort of person who is happy no matter how you are treated and to have no say in your life and can just smile and say everything's fine no matter what and don't mind if after spending a year and a half to get somewhere they just cancel it, then you'll probably be fine with it. Most 30+ people who have a lot of experience with better organisations would probably think it's a better deal to pay for it all themselves and retain some say in their lives.

Anyway, I got to do some pretty cool stuff before I left. One of the things was that WCS had a huge collection of amazing camera trap photos from surveys of the protected areas that they had carried out over the years and they asked me to do an exhibition. So I went through over 8000 negatives and we picked the best 50, scanned printed and framed them and put on an exhibition at a local art gallery. It also had another room of other exhibits such as guns, snares, maps, bones, horns, skulls, camera traps that went off as you went through and explanatory materials. There was also a slide show running showing some of the most interesting sequences of animals and forest fires coming through, and a sound track of recorded forest sounds and gibbon song. It was aimed at raising awareness about wildlife trade. After the exhibition came down it was packed up to go on tour to Luang Prabang, Paksane and Viengthong.

Someone from Lux Development turned up at the opening and said that something permanent should come out of it and they'd fund it if we could do it in 2 weeks - a schools kit and a web site. Actually, several people left comments that it should be a permanent exhibition in Vientiane, and that could happen. So I did the schools kit as a kamishibai which went to 400 schools in Bolikhamxai and the web site. There were also two versions of the exhibition on vinyl banners, one for use in Vientiane and the other for town meetings up in Vienthong. We did a couple of exhibits before I left including one in the national exhibition centre.

Before we left we had a trip round Laos to see a bit of the country, partly for my partner's research into the secret war. We bought a tuktuk and did it up as a dormobile and blogged the trip.