Data Collection in Laos: Ban Vang Yang

Our research team started at 8am with a quick research discussion and plan over breakfast.  The plan for today is to meet with Chief of Vilabouly district and introduce our project to him and his community, discuss our data collection plan at Ban Vang Yang and research summary with him. Everyone was ready for the first big day.

It took us only 10 minutes to drive from the guesthouse to the Office of the Governor. It is quite a grand building but it gives you an impression that this is the place where the Governance team operate.  I learnt that the governance power includes different departments such as Youth (Sao Noom) and Women (Mae Ying). To me, this is a good reflection of Laos Governance system.

We met with the Chief of Vilabouly District, Mr. Bouasone Mahavong, who warmly greeted us in his office. Dr, Soonthorn from NUOL shared a short summary of our project to the Governor. The key message is the academic collaboration among Australian and Laos Universities and the strong support from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for this project. The Chief of Vilabouly is a charming and very charismatic person. He addressed that Vilabouly needs more developmental studies aiming at sustainable development. He is aware of social and ecological changes in his area and heneeds to see some ideas and suggestions from our project. He is also very keen to receive the final outcomes of the project and will support this project while we are in Vilabouly.

Our morning session was well set up by Thalalin, Christi and Sriampa from Burnet Institute. Thalalin is the key co-ordinator for the fieldwork  who organized five villagers and the deputy head of the village to meet with us. In our team, we share similar interests on gender and equity so we decided to take different roles in the interview process.

Dr. Kab and Ajarn Noi interviewed two female workers from MMG, while Ajarn Ou interviewed a man who is currently working for MMG. Dr. Soonthon, Tim and I had a great opportunity to interview the deputy head of the village who has been living within Ban Vang Yang community for his entire life (40 years!). A number of amazing stories such as the way community struggled with the lack of water, schooling and education in the village, how the villagers have been moved by the mine, and economy around the village. We finished at 11am and returned to the guesthouse to work on data management.

Although it was pouring rain in Vilabouly, I managed to observe the main area of the village. This area is different from the village area. I saw mobile phone shops, a number of restaurants, guesthouses and motorcycle shops. It was clear that the major customers of these business are the mine workers and visitors.

At 5PM, we started our second round of the interview. We had six villagers from Ban Vang Yang to be interviewed. It was very interesting to me to interview a Laos-Pa Gog (an ethnic group) woman who works in the mining company. She is illiterate and does not speak central Laos dialect. This is a challenge for me when it comes to listening and talking to her since my (broken) Laos many not be very clear. I asked her girlfriend to sit next to me and help me with some words. It was very awkward at the beginning since she seemed not to understand me but when we started to discuss her work and issues regarding her routine life, we connected. For ethical reason, I will not reveal her identity but let’s call her ‘Sao’. Sao is the breadwinner of her family since the husband has no proper skills and they have four kids to look after. With her current situation, she felt uncertainty in life and work. She would like to be able to work in different departments and roles. However, she kept saying that she is poor and there is really no choice in her life. I asked her what her ultimate dream is. “To see my kids happy and go to school” she humbly replied.

We ended the interview with meeting with Nai Ban (head of the village) who also joined us and shared his view on various impacts of mining industry on his community. He hopes for better quality of life among the members of Ban Vang Yang.