Hardship in Laos

Wood collecting in Laos - 5/02/2011

We’d heard about Northern Laos and what a tough, challenging landscape it is for so many people trying to eek out an existence from the land, so as part of the Kingdom Diamonds Circle of Life program we decided we had to come and see it for ourselves.

Where there’s hardship and suffering we try to be there to help if we can. But no matter how fertile your imagination is, or what you think you know, we soon found out that nothing can prepare you for experiencing the real thing.

The jungle is dense to the point of being impenetrable, as if nature had a tough planning day and stuck too much vegetation into too small an area. Trying to struggle your way through it is to be assaulted by thousands of giant leaves that scrape, slap and tear at the skin, while you slip and slide your way over terrain intent on tripping you with roots and vines that snake across the jungle floor. The humidity is so thick you could carve it and serve it on a platter. And then there’re the insects – every imaginable size and species, each one seemingly intent on extracting its lunch from your flesh.

And this is where the people and their children, yes children as young as five, sweat and strain and toil day after day to find enough wood to fuel their fires and cook their food. That’s their cycle of life – searching the jungle, gathering wood that is in short supply, hauling it out to the road and stacking it to be collected by a rickety cart, which is drawn by hand. Back breaking doesn’t begin to describe how hard this work is.

But the hardship doesn’t stop there. Once the wood is burned it creates vast amounts of pollution that hangs thick in the air of their homes and fills the valley basin. These unfortunate people are copping lung-fulls of smoke every time they cook a meal, but what else can they do? Gathering the wood is simply a matter of life or death for them.

That’s where we come in. As simple as it sounds, by donating a cookstove to a local family we are literally changing their lives for good. Because the cookstove is so efficient in its use of wood, the people only need to gather a fraction of what they normally would. This saves them time and tons of hard work so they can devote more time to other things like growing food. Perhaps more importantly the cookstove burns cleaner, significantly reducing pollution and helping create a healthier environment. In short, a cookstove can help save lives.

One of our goals is to give lots of cookstoves to the people here in Northern Laos. Having met and spent time with the beautiful people in this amazing place, how could we not?

Of course we could always do with some support ourselves. We need you to contact us and see how you can help, and there are plenty of ways you can – even if it’s just to follow us online and tell your friends and help us get the word out.

If you’ve just read this you know how important it is. So get on board with us at the Kingdom Diamonds Circle of Life program. Together we can change the world.