Here is a cautionary tale from Laos about someone who named their cat after a government official. Fancy that! Naming your cat after a Politburo member! That’s almost as odd as hosting a lavish birthday party for your dog! (I received the story second hand and have made some edits in the interests of anonymity.)
It isn’t every day that a Lao government official threatens to have me killed, jailed or exiled.
The good news is, that it seems the third of these three will suffice — at least for the time being The bad news is, that I dare not set foot inside the Lao P.D.R. again — putting an abrupt end to my humanitarian work [in Laos]. I will have to formally request that an embassy representative accompany me from the border/bridge, as it will be necessary for me to briefly return to Vientiane (to collect the very little money I have from the Lao banks), and then (thereafter) I shall never see the country again.
I shall briefly describe the sequence of events that I learned of today, entirely relying upon my employer’s description of them […] as I have no other source of information.
This week, the local provincial government convened a series of meetings, at the largest of which the entire Lao-government staff co-operating with […] the charity that had been employing me at the time were compelled to read out formal apologies to the Communist Party for their failure to report me (or indeed even to reprimand me) for my free thinking.
The offense was: I named a cat after my favourite Lao government official (Bouasone). No, that was not a typo: I named a cat.
In countries such as England and Canada, it is not (in fact) insulting to name your cat (or any cat) after someone you like (or possibly even admire). My own boss named one of his dogs after his (deceased) father (although I have now learned this is regarded as denigrating in Laos) — and I can remember growing up around children who named all manner of pets after political figures, royalty, etc., at their whim. And, indeed, if one loves a pet, in Western cultures generally, it is considered something of flattery to name a pet (like naming a child) after such a public figure.
I must note in passing: Bouasone genuinely was my favourite in the Politbureau. I recall his taking a stand on forest preservation contrary to the party line, back when I worked in […] Vientiane. We always had some good quotes from him. And, of course, all of the government officials I was actually living with (and working with) thought it was a perfectly charming idea: not one of them said it was a bad idea to name the cats as such.
So far as I know, I have not, in fact, committed any crime or wrongdoing (see Article 31 of the Lao constitution: my freedom of speech is absolute, apparently) — but they, as government officials, are subject to Party discipline above and beyond the mere letter of the law. And they should have indeed prevented me from this crime of free thinking –which reflects, at most, an unawareness of a cultural peculiarity on my part — but, perhaps, reveals the subversive tendencies of all of the officials who surrounded me and participated in this thought crime, for their own unfathomable reasons.
At the end of the decisive meeting, it was declared that I shall never work in [...] province again — and, in fact, my employer was forbidden from hiring a replacement for the same posting. I saw a hint of the chill that their “investigation” had sent through those who knew me when I tried to check into a familiar hotel […]: “no, you can’t stay here”. They were afraid. Someone had spoken to them about me. That is as much of a hint as I need; however, human nature is more ugly still.
The root of the problem is one government official who took umbridge when hearing of the cat’s name. She […] is both married to a yet more powerful government official and, reportedly, has a sister in parliament. In case you think that Lao people (or Lao culture) is universal in its attitude toward the naming of cats, let me assure you it is not: the other officials, including the one fellow who sat laughing while she launched into a tirade against me, did not at all find offense in the matter, and, as soon as [she] was offended, I explained and reflected that in the English-language to give a name to a pet (or, for that matter, to name a boat) was not seen as denigrating to the person referred to.
My attempts at diplomacy with her over the ensuing hours evidently did not yield any results. She did not say directly “I will have you killed”, but rather what she said was that if she told her husband and other government connections about this cat-name, they COULD have me killed, or COULD send me to jail, or COULD have me thrown out of the country.
So far, only one of these three has transpired; but we’ll see if they manage the other two in the days and weeks ahead. She insisted that this could be done to anybody in Laos, and that Lao people “disappear” frequently for such minor offenses; it was hard to say if she was boasting or lamenting the latter fact. She insisted at length that just to name a cat after a government official was indeed sufficient grounds to end up murdered or as a political prisoner –and (perhpas more pathetically) she then argued that this was true of all countries everywhere, and that I should therefore know better as it was the same in Canada or in Europe. I won’t bother to relate the course that the conversation took from there, but a reasonably polite debate ensued, in which I did about 5% of the talking, and she filled the other 95% with ranting.
The greatest injustice is this: there was no punishment for the cat! The cat, at least was complicit in this affiar, and bears the same name still. Any reasonable person would require that the cat share my exile; yet no arrangement has been made for the feline to either apologise to the Communist Party, nor for it to share a slow boat to Cambodia with me.
I intend to continue doing humanitarian work in Asia — but, evidently, Laos is now off the map for me. This is an unexpected, dramatic and (frankly) hilarious ending to more than two years of work in the People’s Democratic Republic.
And, if these ironies were not enough, when my boss said in defense of my character that I was a Pali scholar, he was told, “Then he should understand the low status of animals”. Of course, in the Pali texts (as in ancient Indian religion generally) the status of animals is exponentially higher than in the Lao cosmologies of our fallen times. Cows, elephants and monkeys have retained a shed of the sacred in modern India; famously, there are a few Hindu orders that still worship even the rat.
Alas, as I have now learned, all animals are regarded as vermin in modern Laos.
11 responses so far ↓
1 jonfernquest // Sep 12, 2007 at 9:40 pm
My favorite canine is named after the Thai Miss Universe. Hope that doesn’t engender any ill-will or cultural misunderstandings like the kitty.
I think we need a more thorough brain dump of what was going on in the irate female official’s name to thoroughly understand what was happening, the thought processes involved and such. Certainly is scary.
2 Bak Falang // Sep 13, 2007 at 6:50 am
Indeed, in the West there are plenty of dogs called Churchill, Patton, things like that. That such a deep level of ignorance on the part of one official’s wife (when everyone else clearly got the joke) can get someone ejected from Laos reflects very poorly on the country’s future prospects. I suppose foreign aid workers should be expected to bow down to “cultural norms” such as corruption too, eh? Not that I’m a believer in the infallibility of Western-style development, but I have to say–Laos will have an extremely hard time achieving a modicum of economic well-being for its citizens when energy is wasted on unimportant issues like offensive pet names. I wonder how many people the Lao government has employed full-time to make sure Thai pop stars don’t say offensive things about Laos? Apparently quite a few is you consider the speed with which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs swoops down on any perceived insult. Too bad they won’t react so swiftly to food shortages or floods.
I saw a series of concerts at the National Culture Hall in Vientiane in 2003 for “Japan-ASEAN Exchange year 2003.” The Japanese performers who came always had to go through the painful ritual of attempting to sing in Lao, answering many questions from the MCs about why Laos is so great, etc.
My point: this kind of foolishness on the part of the Lao government occurs in both very public settings, or more-or-less private ones (despite the resultant public apologies) like that described by the offending pet namer. So this is a funny episode, but of course points to larger issues in Lao society.
Back when I was trying to get a visa to do research in Laos, some poor secretary who worked with my contacts in the Ministry of Information and Culture was asked to submit my visa paperwork, based on my project proposal having been approved by the Ministry, etc. The secretary accidentally submitted the paperwork twice, after which my contacts were given the cold shoulder by the visa department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Although they were told once that the department was reluctant to issue my visa, they were in general told repeatedly that my paperwork was “lost.” My main contact sensed something amiss and told me he wouldn’t be able to campaign on my behalf any further. I could tell he feared a reprisal of the kind endured by those close to the pet namer.
In my case, based on the paperwork error, perhaps some official at the MoFA feared there were two of me trying to infiltrate the country? Not as funny as the woman who took offense over “Bouasone,” but it does point up some of the same sort of misguided bureaucratic paranoia and smallmindedness.
3 Falang ban nok kok na // Sep 13, 2007 at 11:36 am
The writer puts on a brave face to call this a ‘hilarious’ episode. Anyone researching or writing critically about Laos has fear of this kind of absolute power hanging over them like a shadow. The fear that I will not be able to get a visa because of something I wrote or that my colleagues, friends and people I love as family in Laos will be punished because of something I have done is a very real one. In Thailand the silence surrounding the king as a subject of academic and popular criticism and debate is at least a subject of some muted academic criticism and debate, despite the potential ostracism awaiting. In Laos this kind of absolutist power is the unquestioned source of authority. Their is no king in Laos, there is an entire politburo full of them. What is worrying is that the legitimacy of this kind of absolutism more globally seems to be increasingly shielded from any form of questioning and nationalist sentiment is all too easily whipped up to support it. Those who are critical of the way authority is established through threat of violence are branded unpatriotic or ignorant outsiders. This is not hilarious. This is sick, sad, humiliating, insulting and something to be struggled against until death or the victory of a more humane form of government. Full stop.
4 Rumour monger // Sep 13, 2007 at 11:51 am
Fantastic story! Totally hilarious! You couldn’t script it better if you tried. While I sympathise with your predicamet being force repatirated out of Laos after two years of working there, how it was orchestrated is just amazing. Very entertaining. I would be interested to know just what it was you were doing there though as ‘humanitarian work” doesn’t immediately translate to “non-problematic” to local interests. Care to share some detail?
5 Thai Chat // Sep 13, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Entertaining indeed. Should make a short movie out of it and post the result on youtube !
6 Dog Lover // Sep 14, 2007 at 3:10 am
There was a rumour going around years ago that a couple of high-ranking people were threatened or charged with lese majeste for calling their dogs Sirikit and Bhumipol. Not sure if these rumours were accurate, but they were circulating extensively.
7 Joy Vimala // Sep 16, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Speaking as a Lao, I can say that is is certainly true that we do not name animals after people, at least not particular people. The problem in this case is that powerful people in Lao take things personally, you can’t know in advance what such people will think, so you are always taking a chance when you work in Lao. You just have to learn as much about the culture as possible, and this includes how to show respect for social status – something you can’t necessarily get just by discussion with your close colleagues. Of course it is very silly, but it is real, as our friend discovered.
8 polo // Sep 19, 2007 at 1:27 am
No sympathy from me — the author makes a big “what’s the problem?” story out of what really is not a common thing to do even in Western society, and he attempts to suggest it is even acceptable in Laos, just with certain exceptions. Nonsense.
Naming your cat after someone prominent, or after your neighbor, would not wash in Thailand or Cambodia, or in China, just to name a few. In the US if a foreigner named his dog after George Bush it would be considered an attempt to be offensive — even though a lot of people would support it.
The author has no excuse for trying to be cute or ignorant in a foreign milieu, especially one as backwards as Lao PDR. Pali studies evdiently didn’t teach him how real people are.
9 Laos » Blog Archives » Vientiane journal: Sabai dee Laos // Sep 24, 2007 at 9:38 pm
[...] Comment on Strange but true in Laos by Thai ChatEntertaining indeed. Should make a short movie out of it and post the result on youtube ! [...]
10 JOE // Sep 30, 2007 at 7:23 am
I agree with the previous post. Imagine a French guy living ion Texas who would have named his dog «George Bush» at the beginning of the Irak war! What would have happened to him?
But you have to look at the larger picture. Lao people are slowly but surely getting fed up with this kind of «wise guy» behaviour. This way of acting in a superior or «I know best» way is not only deeply ennoying, but also offensive! Andrew, did the colleagues you mention really laugh WITH you, or did they laugh out of embarassment, because – out of their natural politeness to foreigners and limited command of English – they did not know how to react otherwise?
In Thailand, the reaction to behaviour like yours has become known as farang fatigue!
11 Laos » Blog Archives » Laos // Oct 2, 2007 at 1:16 pm
[...] Comment on Strange but true in Laos by JOELao people are slowly but surely getting fed up with this kind of «wise guy» behaviour. This way of acting in a superior or «I know best» way is not only deeply ennoying, but also offensive! Andrew, did the colleagues you mention really … [...]
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