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Pictures from Laos: Holiday in Germany and many other things (Februar 2012)

- ຮູບກ່ຽວກັບເວລາທີ່ເມື່່ອບ້ານ ແລະ ຫຼາຍສິ່ງອື່ນ (ເດືອນ2ປີ2012)

Furlough (15.02.2012)

In December and Janaury I went for my first furlough back to Germany. 7 weeks of rain - not really the best season for holidays, but still I really enjoyed the time. Most of all I enjoyed to get to know my little niece in reality and not only on pictures and Skype as before. On this picture you can us with my parents watching some videocips about animals. She is so cute!!


House entrance (15.02.2012)

This is the entrance to my home here in Attapeu. This beautiul plant grows like weeds. Nearly every week i need to cut it because otherwise I am not able to pass under it with the car. But everyone who comes to visit me, is astonished about the beauty of creation! :-)


Mice (15.02.2012)

When I reached back home in Attapeu, a bad surprise expected me at home: the mice in my house had obviously used the time of my absence to make a party! The ate more or less everything they could find: not only food but also electricity cables, clothes and bed sheets. This was my washing maschine. Seems they wanted to make their nest inside. It was full of toiletpaper and pieces of plastic bags and clothes but no cables left! Luckily there are people here in Laos that can repair nearly everything.



Hydraulic waterpump (15.02.2012)

One aim of our project is, to provide all project villages with water. Sometimes this is easy, but sometimes it is also very difficult. In this village e.g. the water source is situated around 50 m below the village and at a distance of 500 m. And of course, there is no electricity to pump the water up, therefore we have to find another solution to bring the water up. And we found one: we are using a hydraulic water pump (so-called Rampump). This pump is using the power of falling water to pump it up. For the water to flow 1 m down, it can pump up to 10 m high, unfortunately most of the water is lost in this process, but it works!


Watersource (15.02.2012)

This is the watersource. The villagers cleaned it up, then we put some cement near to the watercolleciton tank and filled the place up with these stones in order to keep the water clean. Unfortunatly the water is not enough in the dryseason to run the pump 24h a day. During these months the villagers need to organise and go 3-4 times a day to the pump to switch it on and off. But the rest of the year the pump is working fine and pumping up to 20.000 liters a day!

Watertank (15.02.2012)

And this is the watertank in the village. The pump is bringing the water up to this place. Only the roofing is still lacking. Unfortunately the water is still scarce. Therefore the village chief decided that this water is only used as clean water, such as drinking, cooking and washing. For other activities like watering the gardens, people have to fetch the water from a nearby (dirty) pond. It’s a good solution, I think. And as soon as the rain starts, the water will be enough again.


Crickets 2 (15.02.2012)

Some people may ask why we try to do cricket farming? The answer is easy: the people here like to eat insects a lot. And crickets are relatively easy and cheap to raise. 1 kg of crickets costs around 70.000 KIP, around 7 Euro at the market. This is a lot of money for people here. And at the same time it is a very nutritious and protein rich meal for the kids in the villages.


Walls (15.02.2012)

Why do you need bricks for building a house?! Here veryoften the walls of houses are just made out of bamboo. The bamboo is cut into half, flattend with a stick and then weaved into a big sheet like you can see on the picture. These kind of walls last without problems 4-5 years. Also for our toilet construction, very often these kind of walls are used, because good timber is more and more difficult to find in the forest.


Crickets 1 (15.02.2012)

Recently we started our first trial of cricket farming. At my home it worked really well (except for some few hundred insects that I downed and some few hundred more that got killed by ants…).

On this picture we are giving for the first time cricket eggs to a poor family in a village. Sadly, all of them died because of ants. But never mind, we will soon start a second try. It takes some time for the villagers to understand the way of keeping the insects safe.




Coconut 1 (15.02.2012)

A coconut palmtree can easily grow up to 20 m height. It is not so easy to harvest the fruit from a tree like this. Of course, you could wait for them to get ripe and fall down - this would be the dark brown fruit we know in Europe - but people here prefer to eat it as long as they are still green. Then there is much more water inside and the fruit flesh is much more juicy and fresh.


Coconut 2 (15.02.2012)

And this is how it is done… „extrememly dangerous“ you might say, but here it is kind of normal. Nevertheless, the owner of the palmtree has to be sure that he can sell enough enough of it, otherwise it is not worth climbing the tree. But no problem for us, then we buy 4 coconuts at once for altogether 2 Euro and we hope that the guy who climbs up will come back down safely!


Malnutrition (15.02.2012)

In the rural areas of Laos around half of the children under 5 are chronically malnourished and consequently too small for their age. Nevertheless, severe malnutrition as we know it from Africa, is rather rare. But from time to time it appears. We brought this little girl from one of our project villages with us into the hospital. She weighed just 6.5 kg, a critical weight for a 2.5 year old. The first few days she was so weak that we were not sure if she would make it, but then her condition stabilized and step by step she is now growing stronger.


Education session (15.02.2012)

When we go into the villages we always do a big education session for the whole population in the evenings. We take everything with us: generator, projector, microphones and a laptop. At around 6 pm, when it becomes dark outside, we start playing a music DVD. Usually it takes just around 15-30 minutes until the majority of the population has gathered. At around 7 pm we start with our education lesson. Around 1 hour with PowerPoint and a lot of interaction and games and then again music until around 9 pm.

Patients (15.02.2012)

Again and again we see patients in the villages that are so seriously ill that they need to be brought immediatley to the hospital. For the villagers it is difficult, because it is too far and usually they go on foot, only few have a motorbike. Therefore we are sometimes taking patients with us in our car. But the car is usually anyway completely overloaded. Most of the time we are 7 people plus equipment and food for a whole week. But if it is urgent, we move up again a bit closer and somehow it always works in the end.


Vegetable gardens (15.02.2012)

In 2011 we started teaching more intensely about agriculture. We then distributed gardening materials like hoes, rakes, watering cans and seeds to families that started doing vegetable gardens. This activity becomes more and more effective. Nearly all families want to participate now and the gardens are becoming bigger and nicer. Unfortunately it is difficult for the villagers to sell the harvest, because the villages are to far away from the markets, but it will for sure improve the nutritional situation of the people!

Porcupine (15.02.2012)

There are still lots of wild animals in the forest. Nearly every day someone comes home from a succesfull hunt. And the people eat everything they find: wild pig, dear, birds, lizards, turtles and even skunk, monkey or snakes. Here it was a porcupine. The more rare, the better. I have tried already quite a lot of different things and most of it is really eatable. But protection of animals or the environment is still something completely unknown - until now it’s only the own survival that counts.