A promise for a forest village

The newly constructed school stood silent. It had been a month since a student had stepped foot inside the white walls.

Classes were cancelled after the teacher had left. He couldn’t handle it, the villagers say.

Determined to make a difference in his community in the future, an 11-year-old boy has made a vow.

In the meantime, the villagers wait for another teacher to arrive.

Remote
Nataphoy village is isolated. It’s hidden along a bumpy red dirt road, in central Laos. It takes a two and a half hour drive in a four wheel drive truck to get here, and that’s only in the dry season. In the rainy season, it’s completely cut off.

The 100 or so families are subsistence farmers. Learning to plant and harvest rice is a right of passage. Homes are carefully constructed of bamboo stilts, complete with bamboo woven walls.

In a way, it’s a place time forgot.

Until two years ago, the villagers threw a pail down a hand-dug well and cranked it up. They relied solely on their rice crops and the food they foraged from the forest.

Medicine was a dream. Child birth was still performed by the one woman who had learned to do it from her grandmother.

And yet, it’s no place to pity. It’s a place where children play in each other’s homes, without telling their parents. It’s a spot where chickens still scrape through the dirt, and one is caught and fed for visitors. And it’s a place that highlights the importance of a community that works together.

Growth
Two years ago, the community decided they wanted more for their children. They wanted what every parent wants for their kids – good health, a decent education and a bright future.

And so, with the support of World Vision, they began to make it happen.

Almost immediately, the water issue was addressed. World Vision helped the community construct a borehole and provided water filters for every family, to ensure people were drinking clean water to protect children’s health.

The organisation also trained volunteers in health care and safe traditional birth practices. A medicine cabinet was built, so that people could get relief from common ailments such as a fever or stomach ache.

To assist the family’s livelihoods, agricultural programmes – community gardens, banana plantations, chickens and pigs – were provided.

And the junior primary school, where Grades 1 to 3 are taught, was completely rebuilt. Before classes were conducted under a haphazard pavillion, with students sitting on the ground and no protection from the weather.

“During that time, school attendance was low,” Phatsaphone says.

But after World Vision arrived, the community of farmers decided to build a new school. World Vision provided building materials and the villagers cobbled together a beautiful three room school house.

Things started rolling. Children received uniforms and school materials. Regular school attendance increased and people started to get really excited and when the new teacher arrived last year.

A bump in the road
Still, challenges remain.

Inside a room stocked with bags of harvested rice, an 11-year-old boy lays in a hammock. He’s wearing his school uniform, even though classes have been cancelled for a month.

Khounma is in Grade 3. He too was excited about the new teacher who arrived last year.

But the promising new teacher was in for more than he could handle in Nataphoy village. Maybe it was the remoteness of the community, or the fact that most people are related here. The official version is that he couldn’t deal with the workload.

The primary school, where Grades 1 to 3 are taught, only has one teacher. He arrived fresh from teacher’s college. He wasn’t used to teaching three grades at once, the villagers say.

And so after six months of classes, he left.

Until further notice, classes were cancelled.

“I am happy when I go to school,” Khounma says.

Khounma is a World Vision registered child and in school because World Vision helped provide him a school uniform and school materials. If it wasn’t for the organisation, his parents wouldn’t be able to afford to send him.

His mother, Lae, is grateful.

“I would like to thank you World Vision and sponsors who have supported my son and the other children in the village,” Lae says.

A total of 56 children are sponsored in this village.

Still, the cancellation of classes has Khounma worried.

He misses seeing his friends every day. And he wonders what lessons he’s missing.

“In the future, I would like to become a teacher,” Khounma says. “I want to teach the children in my village because we don’t have a teacher.”

Note: After this interview was completed, I learned a new teacher had been hired and would move to the community in December 2012.