Page 10 RAIN Winter/Spring 1991 Above: Lao Lue woman spinning cotton. Below: Spinning by hand. is to ask the villagers what improvements they want to see, and to keep projects small, respecting the scale of native technologies and the rate at which native cultures can absorb change. One Australian group is helping to repair existing, traditional gravity fed water systems. These are tiny dams high in the hills that catch rain or springwater, which then runs down flumes and ditches into rice paddies. The Australian project also helps to repair the village social groups that keep these irrigation systems in working order. Village cooperation plummets during a water shortage. Villagers can't take their frustrations out on the sky, so they take them out on each other instead. Under this kind of social pressure village organizations cannot easily be formed. Compare this with, say, the ease of organizing against governments or corporations during hard times, when victims can direct their frustration towards individuals in those institutions. The Australian project encourages villages to set up Water Groups when there is plenty of water and everyone is getting along. The village management of irrigation then runs more smoothly through the dry season. The villagers make their own rules, and eventually write them down and post them, promoting both cooperation and literacy. Some might cringe at introducing explicit rules into this loose, happy social setting, but some rules make village life more fair. The Lao respect each other's right to survive, but when times are tough people will sometimes respond selfishly and try to get more than their share of water, even if they don't need it. Their paddy dikes can be overflowing but they will still take more, and make life difficult for those downstream. If someone's right to survive is immediately threatened, the villagers will normally do something about it. But no one will confront the offender if the damage only shows itself later, at harvest time, when someone might come close to starvation as a result. With rules and sanctions agreed upon, and simple devices to measure water flow, the problems can be dealt with immediately. Lao villagers usually spread bad gossip about the offender, a very effective sanction in a small community. Respect for survival makes most other crime disappear. Even in villages where there are mentally disturbed exrefugees or people maimed by bombs, violent crime is just not found. Subsistence farming requires stability, leaving little room for luxuries like violence. Elitism also seldom survives. There is little access to
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