Traveling Again.

Wednesday is D-day, when we finally say goodbye to Vientiane and all the great friends we have made here. We are not looking forward to the goodbyes with the staff, as they will be really gutted we are leaving. Especially Khamsone. We do plan to come back if we can, but that will not be until after Austrailia, some time in mid-April.

Many of the people we have spoke to think we have a bloody good chance of being sponsered to come back and work as funded advisors to the CDEA. That would be great if it did happen. We have literally made history here, and I'm not being over-the-top when I make that statement. Civil society is new to Laos, this is still a Communist country afterall. They are still very wary of outsiders coming in and telling them what to do. Most of the NGOs walk on eggshells when it comes to this situation.

We however have broken new ground. We are the first ever volunteers to work for the first ever civil organisation in Laos. It has hit us recently how big that is, and what a position of privledge we stumbled into. Plus it gives us a unique position to be able to come back. Khampha for example is just Khampha to us, a lovely man who we get on with really well. To the NGOs and within Laos he is a respected and influential man. He said that he would do whatever he could to help us to come back officially.

We have had a really roller-coaster ride in the last 2 months, some major ups and downs. But at the end of it all we have an experience that no-one else in the world could have. We have done something that no-one else could ever do again. We will always be the first.

It's strange how when you come to leave a place you realise the impact your presence has had. Not only on the people around you, but on the people beyond. On Saturday we met a lady who turned round and said she was finally glad to put faces to the names. She had heard of us, in fact she had the information sheet we had done for the CDEA pinned up on the notice-board at work. Others too know who we are, and that feels somewhat odd. We're just a couple of mad Yorkshire folk who were brash enough to think we could make a difference. We never really expected that we actually would.