Vignettes

A bouquet of vignettes.

         Life is a necklace of vignettes. Those little gems which are discrete but connected in the line of life. Everyday life in Thindung Village;  many of the same people act similarly at a set time of the day.  At dawn after a monk has hammered the large temple bell setting the time for the monks do their rounds, villagers take up their posts along the lanes. They chat among themselves and offer food to appreciative monks. The same dogs sit nonchalantly in the same spots, they growl or wag their tails the same ways festooning the lanes with their homely reassuring solos, duets and choruses.

 Cheers.

         Much the same could be said of the high school days. Except that it would not be accurate. On Wednesday my lift giver, music teacher
K. Thom, told me that the top classes would be going to the Phonpissai High School of several thousand students, to cheer for the team from our school, literally Beautiful Mouth High School, a reference to a nearby tributary to the Mekong.
I arrived at school and was told the same, my first two classes would be away cheering and I was urged to go along as well.  "But I have 4/1 at 11.10 am, I need to stay for them." That statement of intent worked for about twenty minutes and then a delegation or press-gang approached me to to accompany them to the match. There seemed to be a fair bit of nodding and winking and I could not be certain that the 4/1 group was not told to "be good and sit under that tree" for the duration.
          On arrival we were ushered to the  best seats on the ground. Oh yes the ground, looking like brown concrete with lonely grass tufts as sparse as a teenage Asian beard. They had the numbers and won 3 to 0. The content and volume of cheering matched the score. But they were many, and "every so often the better team has to come out on top", as an American Fulbright student told me at  Newman College football debacle  in Melbourne.

4/1

Gem.

          On Thursday morning the students took their flat concrete seats on the school courtyard in their class rank and file as always. Ranged around on the fringes were teachers, one had her little daughter with her.  She would have been three years or at most  four. Her short hair was tied in two tufts with simplicity and balance. She wore a floral shirt and navy skirt with shoulder straps. On her back was a backpack about the size of a rectangular cigar box. Her tiny legs were encased in long white socks and black shoes. When teachers admired her she was tutored by her mother as to how to respond with joined hands and  bow. Then she disappeared from sight. The assembly continued with the chess piece students planted on the concrete harangued from the front.

Assembly daunting for anyone: but a 4 year old?

Someone near me said "Brother" and the delicious little mite emerged in the middle of a row of senior boys. She stood the same height as a sitting student.  She targeted a lad of abut 17 and ran up behind his row, threw her arms around his neck and hung on his shoulder. His classmates noticed and smiled, my eyes welled up with tears as they always will when I recall this most precious of moments.
Nong Khai
        Friday was a day off for me so I went with Jack and Patricia the managers to Nong Khai while they did immigration and travel business.
I wandered around the Indo China market and visited the Wat Pho Chai temple. This latter houses the most famous Buddha in Nong Khai, reputed to be one of three from Laos with much golden content and many precious stones. The trio were on their way to Bangkok  where one arrived, another fell into the Mekong and the cart carrying the  third had its axle break so it was decided that it should stay in Nong Khai as is today.

Dog Day.

        After a tiring long day,  discomforting tiredness encased me like a glove in the car on the return journey. Back at the house, I went to get a drink. "Don't step there" Natasha, one of the volunteers, warned "The dog puked everywhere." I stood clear. Then during dinner the three dogs were upstairs beyond their assigned limits. "They should not be here". "They have been here since about four o'clock. That is when Fun puked." "Maybe they are sick". "Anything unusual?" asked Jack.

"Fun" (Rain in Thai)

"A strange man with fishing poles came around about four this afternoon" Natasha contributed. Jack twigged to it. "Maybe (a disguised affirmative) that man eat dog and dogs very sensitive to man who eats dogs." A vignette in italics and inverted commas.