Published September 30th, 2009 in La Voce di Romagna, front page
Muang Sing,
Laos, September 2008.
I do not remember his name nor that of her friend. Its seems to me it was something like Slatah, so to speak. It was a little woman of the Akha tribe, about fifty I suppose, but it could also have ten years younger. Nice face, caciarona, all necklaces, bracelets and various pieces, a mixture of colorful merchandise that took a bit 'in her purse and a bit' in a basket that his friend was carrying like a backpack, but instead had one shoulder band was passed around the head, bent, while the basket rested on the back.
Muang Sing is one of the last outposts of the northern
Laos to a handful of miles from China. Few roads, almost all dirt roads, very few people. A silent valley, beautiful, with lots of farmland, surrounded by forests and hills, a meeting place for many tribes in the area. The only place with a little 'entertainment was the market. It was a large open space containing a central simple framework in which farmers sold their products, while the trucks came around directly in the various parts of the province and the tuk-tuk. Although I had arrived there from Luang Nam Tha with one of them, after almost two hours of grueling buffeting in the company of a pair of betrothed Brazilians and their friend arrived from London, but also from St. Paul, who had cross on their long journey pre wedding for a week.
From the market, Slatah had brought us to his village. While she cooked us rice with herbs and red eggs, her husband had carefully prepared the cabin / house on stilts used opium. In turn, we relaxed, turned on their side with legs slightly bent, with him who gave fire to the pipe while pulling the smoker. Nothing strong, slightly less than that drinking a couple of grappling irons more than allowed.
Ahka smoking opium in a village that is not the most transcendental experience that can happen to you. In northern Thailand, you may also find cards with a smoker of opium, is so culturally widespread practice FORBIDDEN. And 'curious, but most impressive are the children, especially girls, who go around the villages with their pockets full of marijuana that you have to fist as if it were rocket.
Everything is officially forbidden, of course. Slatah's husband did not want the photos we did the "crime scene", but it was not exactly scared. He said not a grower of poppies, that what was smoked stuff with friends, which is not traded, and indeed for our little smoke we asked only a dollar a pipe, the same price of the meal we had done to the market. He told us that the camps were true over the hills, but what grew there never stayed on site, if not necessary to hold on the peasants. Marijuana instead always abounds, but with that you make a few "international affairs".
Buying marijuana from Slatah and his friend to the market, there smoked a small part in the evening at sunset on the patio of our guesthouse, just in the countryside, whose silence was broken only with discretion by a tiny speakers attached to our mp3 player and a good number of cicadas. The rest remained there spare a few dollars to supplement the budget of the Akha, and regret for my friends, who appreciated much more than me, but I love it more like the fragrance.
And 'the usual hypocrisy. I recalled an article a few years ago, the Sunday Sun, which then went to reread. It was 2002 and Massimo Dini told a similar experience in Luang Prabang, the old imperial capital, then stop for a particular reality in
Laos: "The government in Vientiane, the capital where he still flies the red flag with hammer and sickle is committed to burn poppy fields. In return, the UN building infrastructure and promoting alternative crops for the many tribes that live in primitive conditions beyond the deep woods and wild. This is the official version. But the truth is another. The fields still exist, secluded, away from villages. If, at sunset, when men fall from the fields, we enter any bamboo hut on stilts, there is now the acrid smell of drugs. " Then, recalling the peaceful and serene calm nights in
Laos, ended with a consideration: being there "to no one thinks that this country is the third largest producer of opium after Afghanistan and Burma. And the West, far from being the victim, was and remains the largest party of smugglers death Democratic People's Republic of
Laos. "
I was over there a year ago, and the situation had not changed. Has not improved either in Afghanistan, where cultivation has exploded, or Burma, valuable source of dollars for the bloody and inept regime in power.
The failed policies of uprooting and conversion is unavoidable since the producer countries ruled by regimes that have only an interest in telling bales for contributions and do the opposite, and up to the rich West continues to pay well thanks to the prohibition things will not change.
And 'the utopia of wanting to destroy a drug culture than in population has lasted for centuries, if not millennia, and that the West has turned into a culture of death transforming the coca leaf into cocaine and opium into heroin.
Today, something seems to change. From this summer the international community seems intent on pursuing a new strategy in Afghanistan, aimed at no more eradicate crops as not to offend farmers and worse. I wonder if they will also understand that to ensure that drugs only return to play their historical role, cultural and pharmacological life of these peoples, and also ours, we must turn from gold into hay, legalization?