monor;Klll(~s then the French and later the United States. The H'mong also suffered severe shocks as a minority used in recent decades as US counterinsurgents and then counterrevolutionaries. All this has helped to create rough tribes that keep their women subservient. The AFSC Women's Project was only able to make headway into these hardened groups by bluntly pointing out that the tribe would get no aid if the women were not involved. This may seem like manipulative intervention, but it compares very favorably to the type of intervention responsible for these problems in the first place. The Women's Project was initiated in part because it could rely on the Women's Union- one of the most important socialist contributions to Laos. This national group, with membership all the way down to the village level, was created to coordinate disaster relief. The AFSC found these women very interested in helping to improve their villages in good times as well. In order to understand problems the women raised, the aid workers needed to watch village life very carefully, for at least 24 hours, something big aid organizations seldom do. The AFSC then worked with small projects, initiated by the women, meant to reduce their daily labor. Immediate labor reductions liberate time for villagers to indulge in health and education improvements. The AFSC Women's Project has provided: contraception, a much sought after labor saving technology; nursery pens or creches, so women do not need to carry children everywhere, and so older children can go to school rather than shepherd their siblings; better rice preparation tools; and catchment jars, which reduce the hours spent fetching water. NGO's in Laos also make indirect contributions to self reliance, such as their support for small, indigenous research centers. In the Laotian capital of Vientiane there is a group of native technicians that designs, builds and brings to the countryside small-scale technologies specially suited to the requests of villagers. This group asks the smaller NGO's to give them contracts to build equipment, such as sturdy water-powered pumps. The organizations see better results this way than when they import equipment: native technicians can design and build technology suited to the region, and they can better train their fellow Lao. Encouraging native technical competence helps the Lao feel less shy about arguing with foreign aid workers and developers. They can explain how their native technologies are less destructive than those created in the West to make profits for multinational corporations. The national government impedes this process. Like many large governments, the Lao administration has a _paternalistic attitude towards their people, and they refuse to accept that a Laotian can become expert in anything. This is in part jealousy of the independence such recognition gives people. Many talented Lao have for years been unable to advise aid projects. The government has finally granted to some Lao credentials as "foreign experts", implying that there are no native expertS. NGO's have tried to deal directly with this problem by picking more project assistants who are native. An NGO's meagre funds go farther when they leave behind skilled workers. These are the benefits of a small budget: no one can become dependent on it, and small changes are less likely to be big mistakes. To have any impact at all, in fact, very small aid organizations have to work themselves out of a job, setting up people who can continue the work without them. Medicines are always in short supply. Luckily the know much about indigenous plants. The Native Medicines Project is another encouraging development. Poor health is one of the country's biggest problems, and medicines are always in short supply. Luckily the Lao know much about the properties of indigenous plants, and this expertise could make villages self-reliant in medicines. The project workers index native cures, after they lure secrets away from tribal doctors. Project chemists and doctors find the active ingredients,
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