In which I get sidetracked…

(Written at 4:30 PM March 6th, 2007 at the Kop Chai Deu Restaurant, Vientiane)

Overfed and a wee bit bored, this afternoon I toddled through the supremely lackluster Lao National Museum, a sun-bleached and inconceivably dusty monolithic shrine to Laos’ past sufferings (admittedly plentiful) and great victories (rather more scarce). I dutifully paid my 10,000 kip (about one US dollar) and retreated from the lethal tropical sun for an hour, hoping to get a glimpse of Lao politics, of which I know very little. I certainly accomplished that, but only by reading between the lines…

Apparently attempting to broaden the museum’s appeal beyond diehard communists (a devout but notably dwindling demographic), the Ministry of Information and Culture has added new (i.e. slightly less dusty) exhibits celebrating prehistoric Laos.

Yay! Larb! Larb is a delightfully pungent and simple Lao stirfry made from bean sprouts, fresh dill and basil, nominal quantities of veggies and peppers, and a generous mound of ground beef. It’s served with a cup of sticky rice so structurally sound that I’m meant to tear it apart by hand rather than use a utensil. Yummy! You may have inferred that I tend to write while I wait for my food to arrive. It’s a good system.

Where was I? Oh yes, the Lao National Museum. Anyhow, there was a large room, complete with cheesy dinosaur diorama, dedicated to prehistoric Laos. Apparently this country has been inhabited for a *very* long time, and is an archeologist’s paradise. I even got to see one of the massive urns – millennia old, a metre wide and half again as high, weighing 300 kilos and carved directly out of a single block of stone – that I won’t get to see on the Plain of Jars. It was a welcome tidbit. Unfortunately, most of the exhibit was clearly intended for people with a passion for rocks (which I don’t have) or for amateur archaeologists (which I’m not), or at least for people who can read Lao (do you even have to ask?).

Fortunately, the rest of the museum focused on two of my abiding passions, politics and human foolishness, with a healthy dose of ideological self-worship.

Interruption.

2 women in their 20s, ragged with hard poverty and each with a swaddled infant at her hip, appeared beside my patio table to beg me briefly for money. I told them no and turned back to my food, rather less comfortably than before.

I don’t give money to beggars – ever. Hell, neither does Muhammad Yunus. I’ve long since acknowledged that even if beggars were to spend the money carefully and wisely (hardly assured), giving to them is about the least efficient way to help the poor. It doesn’t benefit from the foresight and economies of scale that larger, well-focused charities do. It does nothing to reward local creativity and entrepreneurship (and probably works to crowd them out, in fact). Besides, I usually tell myself that the work I do more than balances the karmic scales.

So why the hell do I still feel so guilty? In part, it’s because the decision not to give to beggars is *much* harder in the developing world than back home, where panhandlers receive some government support and the charity they receive most often goes straight into their veins. Here there’s no government support of any kind, for anyone. No welfare payments, no health care, no soup kitchens. The poor and hungry and sick stay that way, and for too many of them begging is the only thing that sustains them. All the reasons I listed above still stand, but they’re a lot harder to rationalize in Laos then they are on Vancouver’s East Side. Hell, I probably feel guilty mainly because I’m hungrily chowing down on my larb, while in full view of four people who are right now hungrier than I’ve ever been.

The Australian couple at the next table simply turned their heads when the begging women arrived, and refused to speak to them or otherwise acknowledge their existence. For all my reasoning, is there really any difference between me and that consciously oblivious couple? The two women and their hungry children surely don’t think so.

Bloody hell. I’ve lost all desire to write about the museum right now, surreal though it was. Sorry for a downer post. I’ll try to write something funny tomorrow.