These days, the skies at the Changing Life Center are not only filled with the smoke from all of the fields being burned at this time of year, there is also a lot of dust.
The dust is associated with the lining of the banks of the Mekong River with rocks on the outside of the bends in the river. This is to keep the riverbanks from washing into the river, which was eating into the banks up to several feet a year.
It is easy to understand why. The Mekong River is the largest river in southeast Asia. It originates in the mountains of the Tibetan region of China. By the time it gets to the Changing Life Center, it already has a couple of thousand kilometers behind it! The banks at the Changing Life Center are more than 50 feet above the water level.
It is a gargantuan task. These large trucks come down the road, laden with huge boulders. It looks like a lot of rock.
But then they dump the rock in a huge stock pile, and the pile of rock is so large, one hardly notices the difference that it makes that this load of rock has made.
Eventually the rocks in the stock pile make it down to the river, were they are dumped and then scooped into the river with an excavator. The rocks seem to disappear without making any difference at all. And then you look at all that has been done and all that remains to be done and one wonders how the task will ever be completed and at the expense of how many mountains that have to be removed in order to get enough rock to complete the task.
Yet steadily, day after day, the work goes on until the task is done. One only need to look at the parts that are completed to know that it is possible.
This process reminds me of the task of learning the Thai language. We keep studying Thai, yet it seems like we are hardly getting anywhere. When we listen to someone speak, sometimes we catch so little we wonder what difference all of that studying has made. After three years it seems like we have made so little progress. (I think if I had made as much effort studying the Haitian language when we lived in Haiti, I would have spoken it better than the natives.)
But like the putting the riprap along the Mekong River, there are signs that progress is being made. We just have to look back at the part that is completed now and then, and not just at what remains to be done, to see that this is the case. And then we need to persevere at the task of learning the language. And perhaps we will live here long enough to see the task completed.
 |
| A partially loaded truck (they don't fill them when moving them from the stockpile to the river) |
 |
| One of the many stockpiles |
 |
| The backhoe taking the rock from the truck |
 |
| The not so large excavator |
No comments:
Post a Comment