Anchro-Pop Closes Out Diversity Celebration In Anchorage Today

Henna painting at the Somali table.

















The Hmong table had embroidered history lessons, as well as a book on the role of Laos and the Hmong in the Vietnam War. 








The Norwegian table.

The politicians who worked with the community to set the festival up.  Elvi Gray-Jackson (black dress), Assembly member Anchorage, Geran Tarr, state representative from this district, and Ethan Berkowitz, mayor elect.  The pastor was presiding over a vigil in memory of the Charleston church shooting victims.  The recent Supreme Court decisions had also been lauded.

Yu'pik (I think) dancers. 






















And this young man got his face painted with what looks like an old Yu'pik mask design. 












And the title of this post?  Well, it's what I thought of as I listened to Gambian born Anchorage singer, Ousman Jarju (OJ), and the Rebel Clef.   It's Afro-pop with an Anchorage flavor. He transformed a mall parking lot on a gray day into the place to be.



The Rebel Clef  FB page lists the band members.

"Johnnie wright III-Keyboardist /Music director Elivis Crenshaw- Base player Kiah Ward- Drums Ousman Jarju- lead singer Benjamin Blunt- Percussionist Freddie Stokes- saxophone player Angel Wright- Manager ."

 I've posted before about Anchorage having the most diverse census tracts and high school in the nation.  Chad Farrel, the sociologist who's written about this, explains this part of Anchorage, unlike more racially segregated cities, Anchorage has districts with whites as well as a full flavor of ethnic origins.  A follow-up post covers Professor Farrel's presentation at the Alaska Press Club 2014.  I've only highlighted a few that were out this afternoon.  

So, it seems to me, this music is something we can start calling Anchro-pop.  Enjoy the video - I decided to leave the footage as I got it, giving you a sense of being there, and getting it up today. 

Pho Jula - Decent Lunch Option

J got me out of the house early Monday to see an 11am movie (more on that in another post) then to get a toilet tank flapper and a new ice chopper (the old one broke after a month) and check on garage door blankets.  So, it was home or out for lunch.  It was still officially a holiday and we weren't sure who was open.  Spaghetti got into my head so I drove over to Arctic and International Airport Road to see if Villa Nova were open.  They weren't.

But next door was a Thai-Lao place with Phos.  (Most, if not all, Thai restaurants in Anchorage have Lao connections.  People know Thai food, as Refugee Nation pointed out here a couple of years ago, but they don't know Lao food, or even Laos, so Laos in the US often hide behind a Thai facade.  I just realized the potential confusion there - Laos - La-os - two syllables, the country, and Laos - laoz - one syllable, the people.)

It had that bleak Anchorage strip mall in winter look (not a lot better in the summer)  outside, that we've learned is not necessarily a good indicator of what's inside.

I'd assumed Thai Kitchen would be closed for the New Year holiday since the University is still closed.  But here we were and I didn't want to drive around looking for something else, and we should always be ready to break our routines, so we went in. 

It was a pleasant surprise.  Lunch specials looked like the best deal.  While I think $9.99 is a lot for lunch - I can make a pretty good lunch at home for significantly less - there was a lot of food.  This was going to be a dinner. 

Tom Kha soup, green curry had green beans in it, spring rolls (I ate one already), salad, rice. 

I liked the green curry and soup, though neither had much of a spicy kick.  A good deal, though too much food really.  J took her pad thai leftover home. 




Our waiter, Phas, told us they'd been open about seven months.  That it took a long time and a lot of work to clean the place before they could open.  Phas came to the US at age 5 and has lived a number of places around the US, including living through Katrina near New Orleans. 

Thirty Three Teeth by Colin Cotterill

JL suggested I read the Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill. It was checked out from Loussac library so J brought Thirty-Three Teeth. (When I told JL, he said I had to read them in order, but I was already half way through Teeth.) These books have an M in their library call letters - they are murder mysteries, but they take place in Laos and the main characters are all Laotian.

One of the best ways to get a sense of another culture is to read good fiction by someone in that culture. With google it's easy to find fiction about the place you are going. Even at the library you can search the name of the city or country and 'fiction' and come up with some good options available in the library. While they don't give you the well organized tips a travel book gives, they give you a sense of the place that travel guides can't convey.

These books don't quite fit this category because they are written by a foreigner living in the culture. So in that sense it's a little filtered, but that can give the advantage of having a guide explain what's happening.

I think the key aspect that will be strange to Western readers is the role of spirits in this book. For people who read science fiction or vampire stories, a little suspension of the normal rules of physics shouldn't be a problem. And people who believe in things like creationism, immaculate birth, and resurrection, should also feel comfortable with the idea of people believing in things that can't be explained by science.

When I tried to find some quotes to give you a sense of the book, I realized that the writing was a little heavy. The real draw of this book is the easy-to-digest peek into life in Laos and a sense of a place that most people know nothing about.

At the beginning you meet two of the main characters - Siri, the coroner, and one of his assistants, Dtui.

Siri walked into the office to find Dtui at her desk poring over the pictures in one of Siri's old French pathology textbooks. As she studied the black-and-white photo of a man who'd been sliced in half by a locomotive, she chewed on a rice snack wrapped in pig intestine. (pp. 36-37)

This sounds - and was probably intended to sound - a little gross, but really a lot of these foods look and taste delicious and you wouldn't know what they were made of if you didn't ask.

Siri is a widow who spent most of his life as a doctor with the communist rebels in the jungles of Laos and only recently (this book starts out in March 1977) has moved into the city when the communists finally overthrew the King of Laos after the US left Vietnam.

Boua, his wife, had been the middle child of nine and the only rebel. While her family was in the royal capital working under the king's patronage, Boua was in France training to overthrow the royal family and rescue her country for communism.

She had returned to Laos after eight years with ideals and a rather baffled doctor husband called Siri. (p. 65)

As we read, the existence of spirits becomes increasingly important. Siri has recently been buried alive when a stupa in a temple in the old royal capital of Luang Prabang fell on him. Later he meets a shaman named Tik.

Tik sat cross-legged on the floor and stared at this guest. He was a man who didn't waste time creeping up on the point. "I feel you should be dead."

Siri joined him on the ground. "How could you know?"

"How could I not? How could I miss the incredible force you drag behind you? A powerful shaman and a wild pack of angry spirits could hardly arrive in Luang Prabang without my knowing. Tell me. Begin with this morning."

Siri related the events leading up to his death: the sound, the stupa closing around him, and the feeling of being dragged below the earth. He told him how he knew beyond a whisper of a doubt that he was dead. Tik gave him an admiring chuckle.

"Ahh. They're devious, the Phibob. Those from the south especially so. Yeh Ming has obviously made some powerful enemies over the past thousand years." (p. 126)

This isn't a great book, but it lets you travel to Laos and it's pretty short - 238 small pages. Now I have to get the first volume of the series.

Border Runs and Printing

Next Wednesday we'll have been in Thailand 30 days. That means we have to make a border run to get another 30 days. But they've changed the law, effective last December, and now if you come into Thailand overland, you only get 15 days. You have to fly in to get 30 days. You can also get a 60 day visa if you are outside Thailand. So we're looking at trips out of Thailand. Our ideal is Vietnam which is close by and we've never been there. But next week the office is headed for Bangkok. Several leaders of organizations such as ours have a meeting with the new Prime Minister to talk about how the new land reform policy will be written. The meetings in Petchabun and at Wat Pa Dara Phirom focused on those issues. (I haven't written about the content of those meetings because I'm still a little iffy about what all was decided.) In any case, they expect not to get all they want and so a demonstration is planned for next Tuesday and Wednesday. Plus J has begun her Thai classes - three hours a day for three weeks, so we don't want her to miss a lot of class. I'm looking to see if we can go this weekend (since Monday is a holiday) and then she won't miss class.

To add to all this, JB, who worked in the MPA program at UAA for years and still works in the College of Business and Public Affairs, is coming to Thailand for her son's wedding on Feb. 14 in Ubon. We'd love to join them, but it's a 15 hour bus ride each way. On top of the trip to Bangkok and getting 30 more days, I just don't think we or I are going to make it.


If we fly to Vietnam, we have to go to Bangkok first. The only place out of Thailand that I've been able to find that we can fly to from here is Luang Prabang, Laos. We've been there and like it, but wanted some place we haven't been. So, we'll see.

And today I finally figured out how to print from my computer thru the wifi. Much easier than using a flashdrive to print. Thank you to the University of Baltimore Law Library which got us most of the way with their instructions on how to hook up in their library from Leopard.

Refugee Nation out of Hibernation and KyiMayMaung Too

Burmese exile Kyi May Maung put links to my Border Run posts on her blog this week. She's also got two poems in a new anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, & Beyond. She has glowing praise for the book from the likes of Nobel Laureate, Nadine Gordimer, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Howard Zinn, People's History of the United States. Also lots of links to sites about Burma.

And Refugee Nation, the Laotian American theater group out of LA that wowed the audience at Out North last fall, has started writing on their blog again and will be performing in April in Berkeley.

April 25th Benefit Tickets:
Center for Lao Studies / Legacies of War

April 26th Tickets
La Pena Cultural Center

So this is a warning to my Berkeley/Oakland readers (both of you that I know of) to check it out. They offered a great view into what it means to be Laotian-American today. Their blog seems to have started in Alaska last November at the end of their national tour and petered out after they got back to LA.

Just consider for a moment all that traveling: planes, trains and automobiles from June to December in and out of town from New York, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Alaska, the miles, the people, the energy and effort, the changes in time and weather...it's exhausting! It's work!! So we felt we needed to take a breather. Calm ourselves. Be with ourselves. Be down with ourselves and during that time we took time to evaluate 2007 and all it's struggles and successes and take that knowledge to plan out the 2008 series of Refugee Nation events to come. We hope you follow us again because our batteries are fully charged and we look forward to making impact with people, places and things...promise. So come along for the ride or better yet come see us in person when we are in town. It's a lot nicer face to face, smile to smile.

Where The Hell Are We?

Given the level of geographic illiteracy in the world, I should have done this long ago. I'm still pushing it, I know, by using Alaska as the reference point for the US, but it and Hawaii are the only states that show up on the same map as Thailand.





And here's Thailand and its immediate neighbors. We are in Chiang Mai. I was thinking on this trip that Mae Sai is closer to China than it is to Bangkok. But looking at the map, so is Chiang Mai.

Kotee's Back from Iraq

It was a very pleasant surprise to see Kotee helping out at the Thai Kitchen the other night. He's part of the Thai Kitchen 'family' who have finished school and worked at the restaurant under the guidance of Sommai and Orathai and Ben. This is a traditional Thai/Lao 'social service' model that gets no funds from government. Over the years, Sommai and Ben's four sons have worked in the family restaurant, learning lots of skills - running the cash register, good social skills dealing with lots of different customers, gaining lots of 'uncles' and 'aunts' among the customers of a wide range of professions and political persuasions. In addition to their own four sons, there have always been 'cousins' - sometimes kids who were having trouble at home or at school - who were brought into the family to finish school, have a job, and be with a family that set high standards of good behavior. And in return Anchorage has had a great Thai restaurant for over 20 years, plus the positive spillover effect for their landlord, their suppliers, and the school system. And don't worry Paul, they are all here legally.

Among these family members is Kotee. When he finished high school he joined the army and worked it out so he got stationed at Fort Rich. He's been in Iraq for the last 14 months. His main job was electronics support - communications, radios, night vision, optics... His stories were full of jargon and I had to ask him to stop and explain often. He was in a FOB (Forward Operating Base) in Iskandiriayh most of the time. They had a huge power plant right nearby that supplied power for much of Iraq. The pollution was awful and people downwind seemed to have an unusual number of physical ailments. But they could use the smoke as their windsock. He said the area is also known as the triangle of death.

He said his laptop kept him sane. He could go into his shared room (when he described it it sounded like one of those tiny Japanese hotel rooms, but it was air conditioned) and watch dvd's etc. But sometimes internet was closed down, when they were on "Rivercity." He explained that meant someone had died and all communication out was shut down until the family was officially notified. He showed us a video he made of his life in Iraq. He was in the thick of things, saw vehicles, buildings, and people blown up, but seems to have come home physically and mentally ok. He's back in Anchorage til early next summer when he goes to Fort Lewis where he's been assigned after reenlisting for five years.

He's a great guy and we were very happy to see him back and healthy.

Refugee Nation

Wow - another story telling show. This time three main story tellers presenting some of the stories of Lao Refugees to the US. They aren't always easy as we hear about the difficulties of adjusting to a new land after surviving war and refugee camps in Thailand. Although the two main actors are from LA, this is not a slick Hollywood production. Rather it is a well acted, genuine performance by people who want to entertain and educate about their people - the Lao refugees in the US. This is still a work in progress and I expect that the transitions from scene to scene will get a little tighter and the film will be better integrated into the rest of the performance. But these are my picky points and they really don't detract from the power of the show. This is a chance to see behind the news images people might have (or as the show points out, not have) of Lao and Hmong people.

The ADN did a great job of covering this show on the front page this morning. Below is a brief video of the question and answer period after the performance with Leilani Chan, Ova Saopeng, and May Lee-Yang.




And according to their blog, they've been having a busy but great time in Anchorage. They've been to various schools, to the Senior Center, met with Alaska Native kids, and tried out several of the Thai/Lao restaurants. Here's what they say about their welcome in Anchorage.

It's been two days in Anchorage and already we feel like part of the family. We've been welcome with warm smiles, hugs and hospitality unmatched beyond any expectation. In these two days so far, we have met more people, been filled with excitement and enthusiasm and gone to several happenin' events in Anchorage that it's like we never left home.

Also check out the website.

I know that Mike Huelsman, the Executive Director or Out North Theater, is responsible for much of the hospitality.

Anchorage is blessed to have such cultural riches and if you don't already have tickets to something Sunday, you should go to see Jack Dalton at Cyrano's and then Refugee Nation at Out North. You can get your tickets online there.

Refugee Nation has a 7pm performance Sunday and 4pm on Monday afternoon.
Dalton's My Heart Runs in Two Directions at Once has a Sunday 3pm show, then Monday - Thursday at 7pm. Cyrano's is on D Street between 4th and 5th Avenues downtown.

Yes, this is less a review and more a shameless plug. But I wouldn't be pushing this if I didn't think it was really worthwhile.

Mekong Cruise Part 2

Dinner in Pak Bang after the first day of boating with the Tosas and Nellie, the French nurse.











The main street of Pak Bang the next morning early before getting on the second boat for the rest of the trip to Huey Xai, on the Lao side of the Mekong.











In the Pak Bang market before getting on the boat.











A boat along the river.












We stopped several times at villages to unload cargo. Here we just stopped at the rocks. People came down from the village and carried things up to the village. Most of the stuff was from China, everything from rings to put pots over a fire to huge bags of noodles.






On the left side of the boat is Laos, on the right side is Thailand, since the border is in the middle of the Mekong.






Sunset before reaching Huey Xai.

Mekong

Our boat, #77, from Luang Prabang to Pak Bang.


The slow boat up the Mekong was a great way to slow down and relax. We went into another world. We'd been warned we have that there were backless wooden benches on the boat. We went early and got seats. Actually all the seats had backs, and the wooden ones had cushions. We were early enough to get regular tour bus type upholstered seats. Very comfortable. The dominant feature of the trip - as has been most of the time in Thailand, but particularly in Laos - has been the
smoke from the slash and burn agriculture of the hill tribes. The river was shrouded in thick smoke as you can see in the pictures. But we were in sparsely populated areas and just slowly went up the river. There were people here and there on the shore fishing, panning for gold, in boats, with their water buffalo, in villages. There were lots of interesting rock formations. And time just slowed down as we spent two ten hour days - with a break overnight in a small
village full of guest houses to accommodate the boat passengers.

Some People We've Met In Laos

Here are some folks we met in Laos.

Jamie and Patrick are two Canadians from Vancouver who claim that some friends left before we came and that was why there were so many empty beer bottles at their table.



This is Enrica, one of the Italians we met at the Vientiane Airport who works in Guangzhou, China. We stayed at the Sayo Guest House in Luang Prabang and learned a lot about the textile industry in China, about Turin and Italy. There's a darker picture of Enrica and Cristina on Phousi Hill at sunset. Cristina is also an Italian working in China - Frank, you should contact her. Her Chinese is very good. She's in Beijing. I don't seem to have another picture of her.




We met Thong Souk on our bike ride in Luang Prabang. When we were about to give up on finding the grave of the French explorer, we stopped at a little shop (See the mother and son in a previous post). Thong spoke pretty good English for a guy in a small village outside of LP. He took me over to see the school and then to see his house.






Phonesvan is the Laotion educator I wrote about in a previous post. We taped some of our conversation with her about her work to help kids in the LP area get better education. She's the U of Hawaii graduate.




Here are two more Vancouver guys. These two are law students at University of British Columbia on a semester exchange at Hong Kong University. We met them at the vegie buffet table in Luang Prabang






Tetsugi and Machiko Tosa are two young Japanese we met at the airport in Vientiane and did things with them until yesterday - including the two days in the slow boat up the Mekong. He's a plumber and she was a cell phone salesperson. They quit their jobs and have finished their first month of traveling. After SE Asia and India and Nepal, they want to go to Peru! We hope they'll find their way to Alaska.







This woman was weaving in shop at the weaving village of Ban Panom when we were on our bike ride in Luang Prabang. There was something about her - we connected and bought several scarves she had woven.







Edwin and Yvonne are biking. They've been thru Cambodia and Laos. We were on the slow boat up the Mekong with them. They work in Rotterdam for a social service agency that builds and maintains housing for the poor.


This monk is training at the Wat across the street from our Guest House in Luang Prabang. The Wat has money from UNESCO and New Zealand to train monks in the various skills - wood carving, sculpting, painting, etc. necessary to maintain the temples in the area. At the work table there was also a farang monk. He had gone to Luang Prabang when he was 16 and studying at the international school in Bangkok - about the same time I was teaching in Kamphaengphet. His kids have all grown up and now he's become a monk here in Luang Prabang. My monk friend was delighted to be able to talk to a foreigner in Thai, but we weren't able to talk too long.

Luang Prabang Day 3

Went to the pier to check out how to catch the slow boat to Pak Ban tomorrow. We bought our tickets and then looked for a seamstress to sew up a hole in my levis. I asked a woman, in Thai, at a shop on a main street and she pointed me up a small street to the house on the end. Joan saw the dog barking and waited on the main street (where she got a fancy coffee). The pants got sewn, but not as nicely as they did the other side in Thailand. As we walked back to have breakfast, the lady who told me where to find the seamstress opened her garden gate and asked in incredible English if I’d gotten my pants sewn. Turns out she studied Education in Hawaii and knows a Lao teacher Joan knows in Anchorage. We talked for a long time about the projects she’s working on to help various schools in the area. She’s teaching at the College here in town now and appears to be the senior teacher in town.

As we finally made our way back to get some breakfast we ran into our Japanese friends who are taking the same slow boat we take tomorrow. We had breakfast with them and then went back to see make an audio recording of Phonesvan in the exhibit area near her house where they are developing products and figuring out how to do fundraising.

After that we ran into our two Italian friends and had an Indian lunch with them. And we met some monks at the temple where they are learning how to restore and maintain the temples here. This is a UN – New Zealand funded project. More later.

Luang Prabang Pics

Here are a couple of shots of the first evening. Here are our Italian friends Enrica and Cristina.









The vegetarian dinner spot where everyone sits together. See the first Luang Praban post for more.









The evening market set up on the street.















Joan at the riverside restaurant where we hand light snack.

Luang Prabang Sunset

Here are some shots of Luang Prabang from Phousi Hill the first evening.

Luang Prabang 2

I'm figuring out how to use this machine. Sort of. These are pictures from yesterday's bike ride. Here's the lady at the shop with her son who got us pointed in the right direction to the grave site. By the way, that extra woman in the picture yesterday was a German woman who was biking alone and also couldn't find the spot.

You can see how hazy it is, and how nice it could be from this mountain view.

Luang Prabang

Our 10:10am flight left at noon - the smoke in Luang Prabang was too bad to fly in. But eventually we got there. Then several of the people we got to know waiting at the airport - Enrica, a Japanese couple, and Christina - got a taxi together to a guest house in town. At the guest house Enrica and Christina discovered they were both Italians working in China.

Luang Prabang - what to say? I've wanted to come here since back in Peace Corps days, but it was tricky back then and I only made it to Vientiane. This has been designated a world heritage site - the whole town. It is full of temples. It is a beautiful little town, former royal capital of Laos, sitting on the Mekong. I'm not sure what it is - narrow streets, not much traffic (mostly motorcycles). I think it's the details - the buildings and the streets are nicely finished, clean, and plants and trees are everywhere and blooming. And of course the people are delightfully friendly. But this place has been discovered and is crawling with tourists. And it has obviously changed to accommodate all the tourists. It seems that every fifth house is a guest house and there are outdoor restaurants everywhere aimed at tourists.

Last night after watching the sun set over the Mekong and Luang Prabang from the temple on the little hill in the center of town, we met all the folks from the taxi ride and while looking for a place to eat, stumbled on the vegetarian buffet. Fill your plate for 5000 Kip (about .$50). The amazing part was the long tables filled with people from everywhere. There was a Canadian next to me who had worked summers in Cordova. Two others from Vancouver who are taking a semester abroad from UBC law school in Hong Kong. One of them started speaking great Japanese with our Japanese friends. Joan was talking to a customs official from Holland.

And then we walked down through the night market that was filled with displays of various local crafts. On and on and on.

Today we biked to see the grave of Henri Mouhot, the man who found Angkor Wat buried in the jungle. He died up the road from here of malaria at 35. It was really just a destination for us that seemed like a reasonable bike ride. We couldn't find the sign. We finally stopped at a little shop - a shack really - and asked. It turned out we could walk to it in 15 minutes from there. A young man led us to it. When I got back we met the headmaster of the school and visited a few classrooms and one of the men took me into the village to see his house. I have lots of pictures to print and send them.

And I have lots of pictures, but again, I can't figure out how to reduce the image size to post them in a reasonable time. I'll try a couple. Anyway, Luang Prabang is truly an incredible place. Don't know how long it can last with the influx of tourists, I know it must have been much more interesting 5 years ago. It is really an unexpected jewel of a town way out in the jungles of Northern Laos.