Day trip to a "remote" village in Laos

Off the beaten path!  Where is everybody?

 I spent last week in Laos learning about rural electrification.   I spent one day in a rural village to better understand some of the issues on the ground.  The village’s name was Pakhao, in Vang Vieng, home to 78 households and roughly 600 people.

Typically it does not rain from October to May, but the day we went it rained relentlessly.  The dirt road that wound up to the village was slick, and our pudgy van could not quite get the traction to get up the hill.  It was a good reminder of what it means to live in a hard-to-reach area—communication is not something taken for granted.  I hopped in an SUV for the last leg; some of the others in my group had to settle for the back of a pickup truck and umbrellas to block the rain.

Some of the villagers check us out as we take a look around.

After lunch, I sat with the all-male Village Council of Elders for a focus group discussion.  Their role in the community is to disseminate government messages, mediate conflicts, and pass on important wisdom to village youth.

My group members and I surveyed the eight respondents on a number of various issues, and the responses were interesting (and totally non-scientific):

	Percentage of my respondents	National average for Laos
Own a mobile phone	100%	80%
Own a radio	85%	60%
Own a motorcycle	75%	60%
Own a television	35%	55%

(In addition to just being interesting and a good way to engage a group, I find surveying a helpful way to try to get a quick sense of the relative wealth of our respondents.  I would typically assume that the members of a village council would be wealthier than the village average.  The low rate of TV ownership could reflect the electricity situation as well; this village had a solar panel that only provided a few hour of electricity per day.)

We also asked how many had completed primary school, and all of them had.  Most had been to Vang Vieng town, which would be about 5 hours by road, and two of them had actually left Laos to work in Vietnam a few years ago.

What they had to say:

What were the major benefits of electrification?

The villagers said that life had improved significantly with the introduction of electricity.  The ability to use cell phones and radios were two of the biggest benefits that they named.  In addition, children could study at night, and women could weave baskets at night.  We tried to ask the women if they saw the extra work as a good thing, but could not seem to get an answer that was not fed to them by the men.  The children present were too shy to give us their opinion.

If they had more electricity and money, what would they do?

They would like to invest in new types of businesses, which would both generate more income and reduce the need to travel to other places (the closest town was 17 km away).  Their ideas included motorbike repair shop, cell phone repair, a rice mill, food processing (for example, making banana chips), and veterinary services (especially vaccinations, which required cold storage).  They had access to all of these things already, but had to take the time and expenses of traveling to other villages to get them.

These solar panels supply all the households in the village
with about 5 hours of electricity per day--most get just
enough for one light bulb or charging a mobile phone.

 If they wanted to buy capital, how would they finance it?

The most common answer was that they’d finance it themselves, potentially with the support of their families.  A few mentioned the possibility of loans from a state-owned commercial bank.  These were given to a group of villagers at an annual interest rate of 7% with a quarterly repayment schedule.

What were their hopes and fears for the future?

They said frankly that they had more fears than hopes. Young people were leaving to take jobs elsewhere and not showing interest in carrying on traditions.

After our formal session ended, I asked the gentleman who was translating for us to ask some of the younger people if they had heard of facebook.  He approached a woman in her mid-twenties and inquired if she knew about it.  She laughed.  "Of course!  I even have my own account."

The information highway arrived before the paved one.