by Brett Dakin
But I imagined that there was more to Joe’s tortured love affair with Laos than that. Despite all the difficulties of living in Vientiane, the power outages and water shortages, it remained a far more attractive prospect for many expats than returning home. Leaving aside the house, cars, servants, and high standard of living, there was also the question of expectations. The very inefficiency and laziness that these foreigners lamented was a central part of Laos’ attraction. Expectations were low. You could do very little work and still get by; no one questioned your productivity, as they would at home. Most long-term expats knew that the moment they stepped back on home turf, they would again be judged by Western standards. They would have to perform, or they would sink. And no one would jump in to save them.
In Vientiane, Joe was something special. “You’re a kind of hero to the Lao, you know,” Lath told me. “Even me; I like your white skin.” A fetish for whiteness shaped the Lao world-view: from the color of your skin to the exterior of your house, the whiter the better.
In Laos, skin color was a class issue as well. Dark skin implied poverty, the need to spend the whole day working in a rice field under the hot sun. Thus dark skin was to be avoided at all cost. On sunny days in Vientiane, women and men alike would steer their motorbikes through the streets using only one hand. The other they used to shield their faces from the sun. If the roads also happened to be wet, many would lift their legs up above the motorbike’s brake pedal in order to protect their clothes from the puddles. The result was quite an acrobatic feat: “Look, Ma, no hands—or feet!” My colleagues at the NTA almost always wore long sleeves, even in the most brutally hot weather. They frowned upon any leisure activity that involved sustained exposure to the sun. On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, rather than go out for a picnic, most of my friends preferred to stay inside and watch TV. It was less risky.
Despite a legacy of colonialism and unwanted foreign influence in their domestic affairs, the Lao still granted Westerners a measure of respect simply for being white. But back in America, Joe would no longer be a shining white face in a sea of brown. No longer a “foreign expert” with an ID card to prove it. In fact, he wouldn’t be an expert on much of anything—except living in Laos.
As soon as Joe had left for the airport, his staff had taken over. The atmosphere brightened markedly upon his departure, even as the lamps remained unlit. After I finished talking with Lath, Sai showed me to the door. Her appearance had changed completely since lunch. Her hair fell freely around her shoulders, her shirt was untucked, and she wore a simple sarong and sandals. While only a few hours before she had been quiet, almost painfully demure, now she was talkative and playful. Who knows, perhaps she was surprised to find that an expat like me, white skin and all, could actually converse with her—albeit not very well—in her own language.
And without even ringing a bell first.
Vive la France
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One of my favorite haunts in Vientiane was the Centre de Langue Française, a language and culture center funded by the French government and located on Lan Xang Avenue opposite my office. Set back from the street behind a wall, the modern white buildings of the Centre were surrounded by lush grass and palm trees. The interior was a far cry from what I was used to over at the NTA; the air-conditioned facility featured a high-tech screening room and performance space. The tile floors were cleaned and polished each night. The bathrooms even had spot lighting—and plenty of soft, white toilet paper. The reading area in the Centre library was filled with newspapers like Le Monde and Figaro, and magazines like Paris Match, and the shelves were stacked with copies of classics by Dumas, Verne, and Sartre. In the afternoons, the place would be filled with French expats reading the latest news and pining for la vie en rose back home.
Every Thursday evening at 7:15, I would head to the Centre for my Advanced French class. My fellow students, who always showed up right on time, were mostly Lao men and women in their forties. They spoke French well, and rarely slipped into their native language, even during our breaks. Their passion for grammatical minutiae surpassed even that of my middle school French teacher, Madame Jouas, whom even today I can remember reciting irregular verb conjugations while my classmates snickered at the outdated fashions in the photographs of our obsolete 1970s textbook. Unlike my classmates back then, the students at the Centre adored French, and it seemed to me they came to class in part to keep the language alive—and perhaps to re-live, if only for an hour or two a week, the glory of French colonial power.
Our teacher in the niveau avancé was my good friend, Michel. A Parisian in his late twenties, Michel had come to Vientiane to complete the service militaire that France still requires of all its young men. Fortunately, he had been lucky enough to fulfill his obligation to his homeland without engaging in anything remotely militaristic, as the government permits its citizens to work for French companies or government agencies abroad in lieu of serving in the armed forces. In addition to teaching us every week, Michel was in charge of planning all cultural events at the Centre, including a regular film series and an annual singing contest. The job was perfect for Michel, who had studied contemporary jazz at the New Sorbonne in Paris and was passionate about the role of music and culture in people’s lives—whatever their ethnic or national background.
It was impossible not to like Michel. Everyone who came within his orbit, Lao and falang alike, seemed unable to resist his charm. While he was thin and athletic, his uneven features and thick, dark curly hair didn’t add up to any great physical attraction. But he had a powerful ability to make people feel comfortable, and a tolerance for different approaches to life that counted for much more than looks. Whenever I’d run into him by chance, perhaps careening around town on his third- or fourth-hand motorbike, a woebegone piece of machinery that made my Honda Dream look like a Harley Davidson, I knew I’d be in for a treat. I would inevitably catch his contagious enthusiasm for whichever topic was on his mind, even if I had no idea what he was talking about. Whether it was the completion of his latest cultural project at the Centre or the discovery of the perfect rice field in Vientiane from which to gaze at the stars at night, Michel always had something to be excited about.
One night, hosting dinner at his house in Sapangmore village, I remember Michel being very excited about food. He had just received an entire confis de canard from home, and couldn’t wait to serve this traditional French delicacy to his friends. The fatty duck dish was so unhealthy that I was surprised the wily inspectors at the post office in Vientiane had even allowed it to enter the country. But it tasted good with the red wine flowing that night, and it provided the perfect accompaniment to a rather intense discussion we had begun. Michel had begun the conversation with the sort of statement he preferred: dramatic, controversial, and not entirely clear. “Si on ne s’interesse pas a l’art,” he said, “on ne s’interesse pas aux autres.” If you’re not interested in art, you’re not interested in others.
For Michel, art was everything. I could have done without the musicians he preferred—the American jazz artist Carla Bley, for example, who assiduously avoided harmony in her compositions—but I appreciated his emphasis on the power and importance of culture. But what was “culture” in a place like Laos? In a country where there was no film industry and very few writers of note, the traditional markers to which the French and others in the West looked for signs of a vibrant popular culture simply did not exist.
At first glance, Lao people didn’t really seem to be interested in “art” as conceived in the West. Did that mean they weren’t interested in their fellow man? The answer, of course, was certainly not. Michel and I agreed that if one expanded the definition of “art” to include the continuing dynamism of Laos’ religious ceremonies and traditional customs, the people of Laos were certainly engaged in an attempt to understand the world around them through artistic expression. I tried my best to express these sentiments around the dinner table, fighting the impulse to speak in
English. My conversations with Michel were always marked by a struggle between two languages: while I preferred to use French, he could be very insistent about practicing his English. Often, I’d speak in French, and he’d respond in English, each of us determined not to revert to our respective native languages. But discussions like these were a challenge, as I’d forgotten many of the basics of French that Madame Jouas had taught me.
If a refresher course in French grammar was what I needed, I certainly wasn’t going to get it in Michel’s advanced class. We didn’t really study French under the tutelage of our professeur, who rarely prepared for more than a few minutes before each class. This was fine with my classmates, many of whom had busy lives. While they loved the language, they had no interest in homework. The only foreigner in the class other than me was the Polish ambassador, Henrich. In fact, Henrich was Poland’s ambassador, charge d’affaires, and consular officer all at once. Times had changed since the glory days of the Cold War, when the Polish Embassy in Vientiane had been quite large. Now, after the inevitable downsizing that had accompanied the transition from communism to democracy, Henrich was the only Polish diplomat left. “Hey, it’s a good way to save some money,” he liked to say.
Another student was a Lao diplomat in charge of the Western Europe and Americas Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I’ll not soon forget the class discussion on Francophone countries during which this student demonstrated his geographical prowess by insisting that Haiti was in Africa, and Egypt in Latin America. When we considered the question of why the French colonies in Africa had had so much trouble developing in the wake of independence, he exclaimed, “Mais c’est parce qu’ils sont trop loin de la civilisation, bien sûr!” Here was the considered analysis of a Lao diplomat: Africans just weren’t civilized enough.
Most of my classmates had either studied in France or had been educated in French schools in Laos before the revolution. Some continued to incorporate elements of the savoir vivre—or at least the savoir manger—they had learned from French into their lives. One woman, as rotund as she was cheerful, owned a popular gourmet food shop and fromagerie near the center of town, Les Boutiques Scoubidou. Each week she would promise to bring to class a selection of her finest Camembert and Brie for us to sample along with a fresh baguette or two she’d purchased at the Morning Market. I sometimes felt as if, inside our classroom, the traditional narrative of colonial oppression and victimization had been turned on its head. Here, the “natives” were so eager to consume a foreign culture they considered more elegant than their own that they were willing to pay for the chance to do it.
I spent many an hour at the Centre, shooting the breeze with middle-aged Lao men and women who liked to reminisce about the days of French influence in Laos, long before the Americans showed up. They pined not for colonial rule, of course, but for a time when the idea of a powerful international community of Francophone nations still seemed feasible. I learned from these folks that there really had been something ennobling about the aesthetic values and cultural vocabulary that France had exported to its colonies as part of its mission civilisatrice. The French had never treated the Lao as equals, but their approach to colonization had lifted many in Laos—albeit those already at the very top of Lao society—up and out of the confines of their small country. Through the French, the Lao elite had been connected not only to a great power, but also to a network of countries with a common cultural heritage.
These days, the children of the elite were all learning English and desperately hoping to study in Australia or the US. French was the last thing on these young people’s minds. America had so thoroughly triumphed in the global struggle for cultural pre-eminence—without much effort on the part of the US government—that France’s attempts to promote La Francophonie in Africa and Southeast Asia seemed almost pathetic, a last gasp effort to stem the tidal wave of American pop culture that was flooding the developing world.
The language classes promoted French language and culture in an entirely artificial context, divorced from the demands of the world outside. During the day, the Centre provided French lessons to bureaucrats free of charge, a component of the French government’s aid program. It was nice gesture, and the Lao government wasn’t about to refuse the complimentary instruction, but these employees had no use for the language at the office. If they were going to use any foreign language at all, it would be English. At the École Nationale d’Administration et Gestion, a French government-funded school of administration and management, students who aspired to study abroad were required to understand lectures about international economics and accounting in French. The top students were awarded scholarships to study in Thailand. What use for French would they ever have? This was an effective way to ensure that students learned the difference between ceci and cela, but as a means of advancing the power of French culture, it was hopeless. As Michel would say, “C’est inutile!”
On Thursday evenings after class, I would often linger at the Centre until the evening’s film presentation. The French film series included screenings of everything from classics like Marcel Carné’s Les Tricheurs to tremendously bad contemporary vehicles for Catherine Deneuve. You couldn’t blame Michel for the unevenness of his selections: he was constrained by whatever happened to have been sent by the Foreign Ministry back in Paris. The projectionist at the Centre was an elderly Lao man who didn’t speak much French—just enough to take people’s tickets (a mere 500 kip per person)—and had yet to master the technology of the modern screening room he’d been hired to run. The Centre could easily have hired a technologically savvy young teenager to do the job, and paid him far less money, but this man was well worth keeping employed. He had a connection to film that extended far beyond his role as projectionist.
Our projectionist had once been a well-known actor, appearing in a number of important communist propaganda pieces in the 1960s and 70s. One Thursday, after a series of intense negotiations with government officials, Michel managed to retrieve such a film from the vaults of the Ministry of Information and Culture. In the comfortable cool of the Centre screening room, we watched Somouk Southipoune’s Boa Deng, a pro-communist film that took place during the war. In the role of a dashing young Pathet Lao soldier, the handsome star on screen seemed a different person altogether from the old man with weathered skin and stooped posture that sat near the back of the room. Now that the Lao film industry had collapsed, he was out of luck. Forgotten by the Party, the only employment he could find was with the French.
Here was the French government in Laos at its best: using its resources to showcase the country’s cultural heritage. For me, this further complicated the legacy of French colonial rule. While the French had mistreated the Lao, stunting the nation’s political and economic growth, they had also bestowed important contributions that remain vital today. At the NTA, we knew that much of the country’s tourism potential and its appeal to foreigners lay in the traces of French architecture, cuisine, and language that could still be found. And these days, it was the French government more than any other foreign donor that paid attention to culture. Even if the Lao were going to let a former film star languish in unemployment, the French, at least, were not.
Protest
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Early one weekday morning in March, I was lying in bed, grateful for those few moments of silence before the neighborhood came to life. I relished this ephemeral quiet before the quotidian chorus of roosters, children, dogs, and motorbikes erupted. The calm before the storm, before the sun and the dust began to rise. It was the height of the dry season, and a thick haze of smoke—the result of slash-and burn farming practiced on the outskirts of town—contributed to a heavy sense of foreboding in the air. As I considered the day ahead, I knew that well before noon, the heat would have become almost unbearable, even in the shade, and most activity in town would have slowed to a halt. At the end of the day, I would scrape the dust from under my eyes and out of my nostrils before going to bed. As
I tried to get to sleep with the help of my creaky ceiling fan, I would find myself pining for the wet relief of the rainy season.
The prospect of getting out of bed this morning, then, was hardly attractive. I lingered, enjoying the relative cool and listening for the hum of the day to begin. Suddenly, my reverie was cut short when the phone rang. I struggled out of bed to answer the call, which turned out to be from my energetic and easily excitable friend, Ying. She was already fully awake—and, well, very excited.
“Do you know what’s happening?” she asked.
Other than the fact that I was being forced out of bed far earlier than could possibly have been just, even in an authoritarian one-party state, I had no idea.
“No,” I replied.
“We are protesting this morning!”
“What?” A protest here in Laos? Impossible. “Who’s protesting?”
“All the Chinese people in Vientiane.”
“Where?”
“The American Embassy.”
“Why?”
“Your government just dropped a bomb on the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia. Some Chinese people were killed.”
This was news to me. Living in Vientiane, it was easy enough to slip out of touch with the world, and I hadn’t so much as glanced at an international headline in weeks. Why would the US have dropped a bomb on the Chinese? I thanked Ying for the tip, slammed down the phone, threw on some clothes, and revved up the Honda Dream. Paying no mind to the maelstrom of dust, potholes, and open sewers, I arrived in record time at the embassy.
The US Embassy in Vientiane was housed in a sprawling compound near the center of town, a memorial to the excesses of an age when America had fancied itself in charge of the country. Like most of the buildings that had resulted from US influence in Laos, the architecture was uninspired, functional, and bereft of any of the charm of the remnants of the French colonial presence that here and there graced the Vientiane landscape. Built in the 1960s, the embassy sat behind a thick cement wall that was always covered with a fresh coat of blinding white paint.