The Meeting of the Elders of Ban Thaio

By the time everyone came back from the rice fields and got cleaned and the food was prepared, it was about 9pm. We are not allowed to help with the preparation of the food, serving it, or cleaning it up. I assume that is because they believe that a good host takes care of these things, but for Disty and me, it feels wrong. We are not sure how we can be good guests, but the Ajahn tells us that our hosts are sorry that they cannot spend more time with us. We are blessed to be spending time here with this family, and their kindness is overwhelmingly one-sided. We hope they can someday come and visit us and we can return the favor. But that is impossible. Besides the barrier of the money, the acquisition of a tourist visa for a Lao citizen is next to impossible.

We walked with Ajahn Bounxay, the Abbot, and another monk, Ajahn's cousin from Thailand towards the Wat, making the left turn on the dirt road towards the bridge.
We had brought our flashlights, but I was not prepared to walk across the bridge in the dark. Fortunately, we made a left turn before the bridge into a little grouping of houses. Our hosts house was the second on the left, and the monks slid a bamboo rail to the right which revealed a secret entry to the house. By the time we arrived for the meeting it was close to 9:30, but we were not the last to arrive. It was a very lovely home: simple and well-appointed. Our host was a member of the Education Department, and was a high-ranking official. We all set around a table on chairs that are very typical for a upscale Lao household. They are made of wood and intricately carved with no padding and they seem perhaps a bit lower than the standard American variety. We were served water. A second elder appeared, and he took a seat to my left. Ajahn started the meeting, and told the story of why we were there and what we hoped to do. The discussion was centered on our building a library at the Wat in Ban Thaio on the other side of the river.

Once Ajahn finished telling the story, a third elder appeared, and Ajahn asked what the group thought about the library project at the Wat. There was no recap, but everyone, including the third elder seemed to already know and have an opinion about the subject.

They spoke quickly and emphatically about the subject. It was different from the quality of the conversations we'd had already during the day. There was no sense of support, only bit of strident anger. About which neither Disty and I understood.

Ajahn reviewed what they said: 1) we would need to go through a proper permitting process for the library through governmental authorities 2) we would need to provide complete funding 3) that the wetlands in front of the proposed site would need to be filled and 4) we would need to first build a new bridge which would cost $20,000.

We politely told them through Ajahn that we understood the tremendous need to build a bridge, but that we had come to build a library.

Their faces changed and they became a bit less strident. The monks suggested that if the building was built on Wat property, they could do the permitting and filling in of the wetlands. This seemed acceptable to the elders. Disty and I added, through Ajahn, that perhaps we could find funding for the bridge after we built the library, whether or not we chose this spot, because we had experienced first hand the need for a reliable, strong bridge from the village to the Wat. It would be a great gift for this wonderful community.

But as romantic as it seems to build a bridge in a small rice-farming community, there are other factors at work. There is a plan to build a bus station at the edge of Ban Thaio. Real estate prices are expected to rise, and inaccessible land made accessible will become more valuable. Building a bridge as they were suggesting that would carry vehicles across could be the very thing that would imperil the Wat and make the land around it prime for development. This is not a static economy. And, sadly, there are expectations that every landowner could become rich.

Disty and I left thinking that it would be far better to buy the land around the Wat first and donate it to the Wat, then build a sturdy bridge for people to go back and forth.

It was an interesting night that opened our eyes to the hazards of development and our little library project.