Three days in the mountains- are we losing our focus here in BanHo village? What are we doing here?The bureaucratic papers have not arrived from Hanoi which would allow us to teach, or even enter schools. We have heard conflicting tales of the two tribal young women from the mountain village who we are meant to be discussing a training co-operative with and there is no sight of them. Mountain hawkers in scarlet and black trail us to sell us items we do not want. Both Phuong and myself are unwell. It is very cold. On the second night Phuong hikes up to a neighbouring mountain village 5 km. away to bring us back a live chicken for the evening meal. The homestay, the highest wooden stilthouse on the hillside, belongs to the secretary of the People’s Party. There is no hot water, but ½ mile away on the mountainside there is a natural warm mountain pool where we bathe. The mother of the house serves us, then eats squatting on the floor in the dark mud floored kitchen. We, uncomfortably, sit on chairs in the communal area with the father and uncle next to the weaving loom and brightly coloured hanging cloths and large green fridge. I am intrigued that the toilet, some way down the garden, is a hole underneath which flows a mountain stream, diverted by home made split bamboo pipes, from one pond into another pond, then on down. Is this not a bad example to the village? To defecate into a stream which flows down to the people lower down? Apparently not, because the fish in the second pond eat everything which passes their way.
I am cold. I cannot sleep. The split bamboo windowless walls of our bedroom are wallpapered with out of date Vietnamese calendar pages and newspapers which crack gently as mice patter upwards. Our muesli wrapped in plasticized foil is being invaded, more noisily. I need the toilet. Shoeless, I pass mosquito netted shrouded sleepers and the altar to the ancestors to descend the stairs of our stilt house. Dark dyed lengths of woven flax suspended between the trees billow gently in the moonlight and giant bamboo clumps surrounding the opaline green pools creak quietly. Have my dreams lightly leapfrogged my wakeful night? Scribbled layer upon layer of pointed no coloured mountains are high, high above and all around me. The giant fish await below, their mouths open.