We wrote our last blog at the beginning of this year from Vientiane, the capital of Laos, and this one also comes from there! A lot has happened in the meantime, so read on…
We are now the new managers of CAMACrafts, a Fairtrade handcraft company. We started working on this in the beginning of October 2021 till the end of February this year. From March to June we were back in the Netherlands meeting with the founders of the company and making plans to take over full-time leadership from the current General Manager
From the moment we entered the company we loved it. CAMACrafts employs 150 mostly Hmong women living in remote villages. Hmong is one of the larger ethnic groups in Laos. These women make beautiful, exceptionally high quality handwork products. Next to the traditional Hmong patterns, batik techniques and artistic embroideries are used. Everything is handmade and the women receive a fair salary!
We love running a Fair Trade company! With the money the women earn, they are able to support their family, allow their children to go to school, pay for medical care and save some money for later.
Due to Covid19, the company has had a big hit in revenue and there has not been sufficient work for all women for a long time. But we do hope and expect times are getting better again and we hope to be able to provide more work then ever to even more women and allow them to produce honest products at a fair salary.
Long story short… we came back to Laos in June and after a short period of knowledge transfer we are in charge of the company since August 1st.
CAMACrafts has a shop in downtown Vientiane and a number of larger customers in Asia and Australia. The company could use some new customers in Europe and US. The office in Vientiane has several staff for the administration as well as a team of 6 women doing new designs and specialties. These women also supervise the work done in the villages.
The previous General Manager had expressed the desire to support an initiative starting a new vocational training institute where underprivileged young people can get an education. It helps them to find meaningful work on the labor market. She is a teacher by profession and desires to get this institute off the ground and be able to practice her profession again.
With all the conversations, negotiations and preparations related to the take over of CAMACrafts, we were in The Netherlands longer than expected. But that was certainly not a punishment! We were introduced to our three beautiful adoptive granddaughters, adopted recently by our eldest daughter and her husband, and in March we welcomed a fourth grandson, a wonderful boy with our second daughter!
During this period we also celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary and we spent a day at an amusement park with the whole family for a day. Everybody had a lot of fun and it was a wonderful day for the grandkids!
Off to Laos
On June 20 we left for Laos. After many, many hours at Schiphol Airport and two long transfers we arrived in Vientiane on Wednesday June 22. Much to our surprise, we were met at the airport by a large part of the team. What a warm welcome!
27 : 9 = ??
Of course we brought some treats from the Netherlands. A bag with 27 Minis (Mars, Snickers, Bounty, Twix and Milky Way), something very special in Laos and impossible to obtain here. The contents were spread out on a table, all eyes sparkled. Tong saidhe doesn't like chocolate much, and decides to pass. Fine! The rest of the team is happy as they will have more.. Quickly a calculator is brought in and 27 : 9 is calculated by the device!
The outcome creates even more sparkles as they now understand everybody gets three pieces and quickly the chocolate loot is divided among those around the table. Awesome! We decided to save the Stroopwafels for a next event.
Transfer of the business
Before the handover, we had conversations about everything it takes to run a company in Laos. It is very different in many ways compared to Western countries. We also learnd a few things about the culture. Something that is very important that we learn more and more is that patience is a virtue in this country!'
There is much less work with the computer, so a lot of things are still in writing. The company's accounting is done with a mandatory Lao accounting program, with an English accounting program and also in written form in an 'old-school’ cash book (yes, that is mandatory). The written forms and many invoices are in only Lao script so it is still a search, as we cannot determine ourselves (yet) what a specific invoice is for. But with the great help of the accountant Yuu, who understands three words of English and speaks even fewer, we manage to figure it out! She clearly takes pleasure in working this out with us, without the help of the English speakers of the team.
Great value is also attached to the use of stamps on letters and invoices. Several stamps, including those with the word "paid," are even available in supermarkets. Always useful! But the company stamps are specially made and we take great pride in using them.
Language study
Because it is useful to learn to speak Lao, we started on August 1 with a language and culture study. Four afternoons a week we have lessons for an hour and a half at a language school and now after six weeks we realize that it is not easy. Lao is a tonal language, which means that words can have different meanings if you don't pronounce them in the right pitch.
The difference is sometimes barely audible to us, but there is a difference! The alphabet consists of 27 consonants and 28 vowels and the language consists of 6 pitches. We get a lot of compliments from the two teachers and from our team, who also quizzes us and have great fun with our pronunciation.
Patience is a virtue, but then you also have some…
To open a private bank account we have to fill out a pile of forms at the Bank. After 3 hours of waiting and going through different counters, we hear from the desk employee that everything is ok . We can come back in 6 days to pick up our bank card and passbook (bank book). So we even get a real passbook! Two even, because we have one for a USD and one for the Laos KIP account. In our minds we go back to our elementary school days when we brought our passbook to the Bank to proudly deposit our pocket money and have it registered in the book. So once again we have one and it will slowly fill up with beautiful stamps from the Bank. Wow!
KIP worth less
It is sad to see the Laos' economy is not doing well at all and for a variety of reasons. The Laotian KIP (the local currency) has already lost 36% of its value against the dollar this year. Many Laotians struggle with the high prices of food, clothing and fuel, among other things. Everyone feels it in their wallet.
This also makes it difficult for companies to survive and CAMACrafts is no exception. . Tourism has been down the last two years. Thus there have been less sales. Even we can now see this in the bookkeeping accounts.
In that respect, this is not a good beginning for us. This means that there is lots for us to do to get this company back on track. Fortunately, we have seen more and more backpackers in recent weeks, and we see that the number of tour busses is increasing daily. It seems that tourism, here too, is slowly starting up again! More and more shops and restaurants are opening . Every evening the water organ in the city center puts on a truly magnificent show! It is therefore important that the store in the city center remains well stocked.
Scary and special scenes in traffic
Every day we hold our breath in traffic when we see scooters with whole families on them, often without helmets, crisscrosing through traffic. As we said before, 'traffic rules should be seen here as traffic suggestions'.
The police are at every major intersection, but if you drive through a red light, that's no problem and also wrong-way driving with your scooter…. No point! Everyone is used to it and usually it goes well, although we do see an accident between a car and a scooter every week. The ambulance has plenty to do here.
And with that scooter everything is transported, including your whole household, animals and even your new born baby! But what else could the population do…. If there is no money for a car, then the scooter is the only alternative. And most families have only one scooter. So, whole families share the same scooter. Scary and hilarious at the same time.
In need of a sturdy car
Participating in traffic is an experience here, but so is using the roads! In Vientiane only the main roads are neatly paved. Neat, yes. But if you take an exit off the main road, the asphalt is no longer clean and there are large deep holes in the road due to the rainfall. Big holes. Holes of more than 6 inches deep. And when you take an exit off those roads, the backroads are no longer paved at all but made of red sand and lots of potholes. And those holes get deeper and deeper after every rain shower (and there is a lot of rain in the rainy season, unbelievable…).
These holes are especially scary because you often see them very late (or not at all due to the water on the road after a shower). Everyone tries to avoids them so cars and motorbikes go from left to right and that from both directions.
In recent months we have been able to use CAMA's pick-up truck, but now we need to buy a car ourselves. A reliable used car that can take a beating. We want to use this car to go to the remote villages around Vientiane where we will give the women in those villages the opportunity to work for CAMACrafts. This enables them support their families, have their kids in school, pay medical bills, and so on.
At the same time, we want to encourage the many children and teenagers in these villages by doing games and various activities with them. We hope to be able to get to know them and guide them over time, so that they are motivated to study and find a meaningful job for the longer term. This prevents them from ending up in the factories where they are being exploited (or worse, going abroad where they end up in modern day slavery). So we are looking for a robust car that can handle the potholes and dirt roads of Laos and with which we can reach the people in the remote villages.
HELP NEEDED!!!
A strong second-hand car with which we can go to the villages costs about 10,000-15,000 euros here in Laos. We are urgently looking for sponsors for this car with which we can continue to go to these remote villages. Your donation is needed to give people a future here. Send us a message if you want to help and we'll help get your donation to the right place.
Entrepreneurs are also invited to make a donation from their company and to support the work in Laos.
Send an email to: albertenjudy.hessels@gmail.com
Special snacks
In addition to all the vegetables that we see and are served here on the market, there is also a lot of tropical fruit that we do not know in the Netherlands. Lots of sweet fruit, but also bitter and very sour fruit. Everyone likes the sweet fruit and so do we, but the bitter and sour ones only seem good with a very spicy pepper dipping sauce. A special combination that we like to skip.
Most people have a small vegetable garden or have family with a plot of land where they grow vegetables. The stroopwafel with our coffee has made way for corn on the cob, a piece of bamboo stick filled with sweet sticky rice, or bananas or other snacks wrapped in banana leaves. If we're served it long enough, we'll probably forget what a stroopwafel tastes like. Most of the days we can laugh about all the things that are presented to us but on some days we miss the stroopwafels and other Dutch food a lot!
Avocado harvest
In the spacious garden behind the office are a large number of large mango trees and avocado trees. Mid-July is the time to harvest the avocados. The whole team helps and everyone goes home with bags full of avocados. It is nice to experience as we don't see that in the Netherlands. You let it ripen for a while and then eat it. People do not know that they are very healthy. When Judy tells them that, they look happily surprised. They eat more for the food but don't know if it's good or bad for them, and they seem to have never heard of vitamins.
Haircut
Albert is willing to pay the full price of $3.20 for a haircut in a neat hairdresser's salon, but if you really want a cheap haircut, you can also do that on the street. So don't be surprised if you see an 'open-air hairdresser' along the road.
Dengue Fever
Four weeks ago Albert woke up with a terrible headache followed by a high fever and five days of terrible pains throughout his whole body. Then followed five days of nausea, dizziness and extreme tiredness. It was easy to see this was Dengue Fever. Since June, there have been many cases of the dengue virus throughout Laos .Hospitals are overcrowded with patients. Dengue (dengue fever) is a really nasty disease spread by the Aedes species mosquito. If you are bitten by an infected mosquito, there is a good chance you get sick. If patients do not receive proper care, due to lack of knowledge, it can be fatal. Fortunately Albert did not have to go to the hospital and after 10 days he felt well again.
So, we have caught you up a bit! We hope you enjoy reading about Laos as much as we do like being in Laos. Would you like to contribute to the car to visit the people in the remote villages, please send an email to albertenjudy.hessels@gmail.com. We will be posting another blog post soon with an update and new pictures of all we have done with your donation. Thank you so much for your help!!
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