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Pictures from Laos: Holiday in Germany and many other things (Februar 2012)
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Furlough (15.02.2012)
In December and Janaury I went for my first furlough back to Germany. 7 weeks of
rain -
House entrance (15.02.2012)
This is the entrance to my home here in Attapeu. This beautiul plant grows like weeds.
Nearly every week i need to cut it because otherwise I am not able to pass under
it with the car. But everyone who comes to visit me, is astonished about the beauty
of creation! :-
Mice (15.02.2012)
When I reached back home in Attapeu, a bad surprise expected me at home: the mice in my house had obviously used the time of my absence to make a party! The ate more or less everything they could find: not only food but also electricity cables, clothes and bed sheets. This was my washing maschine. Seems they wanted to make their nest inside. It was full of toiletpaper and pieces of plastic bags and clothes but no cables left! Luckily there are people here in Laos that can repair nearly everything.
Hydraulic waterpump (15.02.2012)
One aim of our project is, to provide all project villages with water. Sometimes
this is easy, but sometimes it is also very difficult. In this village e.g. the water
source is situated around 50 m below the village and at a distance of 500 m. And
of course, there is no electricity to pump the water up, therefore we have to find
another solution to bring the water up. And we found one: we are using a hydraulic
water pump (so-
Watersource (15.02.2012)
This is the watersource. The villagers cleaned it up, then we put some cement near
to the watercolleciton tank and filled the place up with these stones in order to
keep the water clean. Unfortunatly the water is not enough in the dryseason to run
the pump 24h a day. During these months the villagers need to organise and go 3-
Watertank (15.02.2012)
And this is the watertank in the village. The pump is bringing the water up to this place. Only the roofing is still lacking. Unfortunately the water is still scarce. Therefore the village chief decided that this water is only used as clean water, such as drinking, cooking and washing. For other activities like watering the gardens, people have to fetch the water from a nearby (dirty) pond. It’s a good solution, I think. And as soon as the rain starts, the water will be enough again.
Crickets 2 (15.02.2012)
Some people may ask why we try to do cricket farming? The answer is easy: the people here like to eat insects a lot. And crickets are relatively easy and cheap to raise. 1 kg of crickets costs around 70.000 KIP, around 7 Euro at the market. This is a lot of money for people here. And at the same time it is a very nutritious and protein rich meal for the kids in the villages.
Walls (15.02.2012)
Why do you need bricks for building a house?! Here veryoften the walls of houses
are just made out of bamboo. The bamboo is cut into half, flattend with a stick and
then weaved into a big sheet like you can see on the picture. These kind of walls
last without problems 4-
Crickets 1 (15.02.2012)
Recently we started our first trial of cricket farming. At my home it worked really well (except for some few hundred insects that I downed and some few hundred more that got killed by ants…).
On this picture we are giving for the first time cricket eggs to a poor family in a village. Sadly, all of them died because of ants. But never mind, we will soon start a second try. It takes some time for the villagers to understand the way of keeping the insects safe.
Coconut 1 (15.02.2012)
A coconut palmtree can easily grow up to 20 m height. It is not so easy to harvest
the fruit from a tree like this. Of course, you could wait for them to get ripe and
fall down -
Coconut 2 (15.02.2012)
And this is how it is done… „extrememly dangerous“ you might say, but here it is kind of normal. Nevertheless, the owner of the palmtree has to be sure that he can sell enough enough of it, otherwise it is not worth climbing the tree. But no problem for us, then we buy 4 coconuts at once for altogether 2 Euro and we hope that the guy who climbs up will come back down safely!
Malnutrition (15.02.2012)
In the rural areas of Laos around half of the children under 5 are chronically malnourished and consequently too small for their age. Nevertheless, severe malnutrition as we know it from Africa, is rather rare. But from time to time it appears. We brought this little girl from one of our project villages with us into the hospital. She weighed just 6.5 kg, a critical weight for a 2.5 year old. The first few days she was so weak that we were not sure if she would make it, but then her condition stabilized and step by step she is now growing stronger.
Education session (15.02.2012)
When we go into the villages we always do a big education session for the whole population
in the evenings. We take everything with us: generator, projector, microphones and
a laptop. At around 6 pm, when it becomes dark outside, we start playing a music
DVD. Usually it takes just around 15-
Patients (15.02.2012)
Again and again we see patients in the villages that are so seriously ill that they need to be brought immediatley to the hospital. For the villagers it is difficult, because it is too far and usually they go on foot, only few have a motorbike. Therefore we are sometimes taking patients with us in our car. But the car is usually anyway completely overloaded. Most of the time we are 7 people plus equipment and food for a whole week. But if it is urgent, we move up again a bit closer and somehow it always works in the end.
Vegetable gardens (15.02.2012)
In 2011 we started teaching more intensely about agriculture. We then distributed gardening materials like hoes, rakes, watering cans and seeds to families that started doing vegetable gardens. This activity becomes more and more effective. Nearly all families want to participate now and the gardens are becoming bigger and nicer. Unfortunately it is difficult for the villagers to sell the harvest, because the villages are to far away from the markets, but it will for sure improve the nutritional situation of the people!
Porcupine (15.02.2012)
There are still lots of wild animals in the forest. Nearly every day someone comes
home from a succesfull hunt. And the people eat everything they find: wild pig, dear,
birds, lizards, turtles and even skunk, monkey or snakes. Here it was a porcupine.
The more rare, the better. I have tried already quite a lot of different things and
most of it is really eatable. But protection of animals or the environment is still
something completely unknown -
