Flashback: "The day I was a tree and a toilet". Chapter 2.

8 o’clock in the morning we were set to meet at the Children’s Library. It was a foggy morning in Luang Prabang. The temperature was pleasant, yet a bit chilly in the early hours. Close to our hotel we found a little eatery for a bit of breakfast.
Laos has very good bread and coffee. That might be some reminiscence from the French influence in the country, and so a typical Laotian breakfast, is a baguette like sandwich with some kind of pork meat pate. None of us had that though at this morning, I had a sandwich with bacon, eggs, horseradish, some shredded carrots and a nice dressing, and Catriona had an omelette as I recall.
We were the first to arrive at the Library, where Chantha, the manager showed us around while waiting for the rest of the party. As they had arrived the box with the books and we were loaded onto the back of a tuk tuk.. 10 minutes later the tuk tuk arrived at the Mekong riverbank.
A huge number of different sized boats were anchored side by side. At the improvised bamboo pier a little boat was lying waiting for us to embark. That was the Library Boat and the captain and a smiling female teacher was welcoming us onboard.
Along the walls of the boat -if you can say that- there were books placed in holders, so when the Library boat came to one of the small villages along the river, the children and their teachers could get on board and read.
Apart from us, Chantha the manager, the female teacher –which name I cannot remember- and then a young volunteer called “Gow”, were onboard and our captain sat the course up the river towards the little village school, somewhere up there, which was going to receive the box of books.
A stunning ride lay ahead of us up the mighty Mekong river, and we had a pleasant time either watching the wilderness along the banks of the river or to chat or read in the books for the Laotian pupils, the ones that was in English, that is. The young man joining us, tried in his best English to explain where we were going, and tried to teach us some simple phrases in Lao. The fog was still hanging over the trees at the banks, and made the view to the hills and mountains further back, like a dreamy opening of a adventure movie. After some time the fog just disappeared, like when you snap with your finger and then the sun was shining from a clear blue sky.

After about one and a half hour we were approaching the village on the left riverbank. Gow was on the phone, I guess to tell that we were approaching and to ask where the boat could anchor up. Suddenly we saw this little army of children running through the bushes in the dense jungle, and down to the sandbanks at the river, where they lined up to have a look at the visitors.
As we stood in front of them, they were all lined up in perfect rows yelling a Laotian greeting simultaneously.
Then the funniest thing happened when we introduced our self, all of them repeated exactly what we’d said, like: “Hello, my name is Jørgen, or Bob or Catriona, Yvonne or Larissa”, and again all in chorus from thirty something small voices.
The female teacher –which name I still can’t remember and the young man told some stories and told why we were there and what we’d brought for them, and all of this happened on the riverbank. The sun had meanwhile gained in strength, or to say it in another way; it had become pretty hot, and out there on the river bank, with no real shade, we could feel it, so the children was told to walk into the shade of some bushes, and while they were sitting there, Gow, the young volunteer and the female –what was her name again- started to tell a story, using some hand puppets and some props like a cardboard tree and a cardboard toilet building, both placed on sticks. I then volunteered to hold them as the backdrop of the story, which presumably had something to do with normal hygiene using the toilet, and something I guess they need to bring to the children in the most remote and rural parts of Laos, embedded in a funny little puppet theater story.
So that was why a had to act like a tree and a toilet at the riverbanks of the Mekong River on Christmas evenings day 2010.