Unloading Wheelbarrows
Unloading the wheelbarrows — in temperatures that partially melted
the heavy industrial paint on them — left permanent reminders on
three different t-shirts and one pair of pants. It also left me sore,
but satisfied from hard work. The barrows were distributed in pieces
— two separate wheels, the axle to connect them, and the barrow were
all separate. So once we unloaded them, we had a group of people who
assembled them all.
After this you’ll see one of the guys who helped unload rolling a set
of wheels away after he attached them to each other, and one of him
with me and Manuel, my housemate, our French logistician on the
mission.
Did I mention that these are among the strangest wheelbarrows I’ve
ever seen? 🙂
Scenes from the School
And finally, some slightly arty shots I managed to take at the school
which functioned as the storage, loading and unloading point for all
of our distributions. Naturally, there were some times when we were
waiting for trucks to arrive, for loading or unloading, or just
moments when we’d take a break from the heat and sun. These were shot
during those moments when I was resting a bit and just looking around.
The brown stuff on the ground is unhulled rice set out to dry — in
one shot you see it in the foreground, with a shipment being prepared
in the background. In another shot you see a closeup with the small
broom for stirring it around so that it all dries evenly. Traveling
around the countryside, I saw a LOT of rice being harvested, and often
saw small amounts laid out to dry like this, before being hulled and
finally prepared.
Exploring Guangxi
I’ve been traveling around a bit these past few weeks and I’ve learned
some things. It’s kind of nice, getting up and out periodically. About
this blog, my latest trip to Hong Kong allowed me to view my blog
online, and I learned that when I post batches of photos all at one,
they appear smaller on the blog…as in the case of all the things
posted about Nanning, since the posts in May about Beijing and Hong
Kong. This means I’ll now try to post more individual photos, even
though it takes a lot longer.
This especially applies to the photo you see here, which I simply felt
deserved a good amount of space. This is Detian Waterfall, on the
border between Vietnam and China, about a four hour bus and shuttle
odyssey away from Nanning. The weekend after my latest trip to Beijing
— during which the vacation I was supposed to take to Gansu, the week
of July 18, got cancelled since there was work needing done back in
Nanning — I woke up each morning with a serious case of wanderlust,
for some strange reason. Following, you will see photos from the two
day trips that resulted from this wanderlust: I hopped buses and
traveled, first to a park 1-1/2 hours outside Nanning that’s known as
home to quite a large number of wild monkeys (if you discount that
fact that many of them have come to expect peanuts from the tourists
wandering through — all of whom are basically local and regional tour
groups). This was a great trip — the park is lovely, the monkeys were
interesting and it was wonderful and special for me, for the first
time, to see monkeys in a basically wild setting living and
interacting as a group.
Then Sunday I woke up still itchy to travel, and decided that since
it’s been raining a TON (enough that we launched a new short-term
flood-relief project in eastern Guangxi, of which you should have seen
photos just before this), it might be a good time to go see the
waterfall. My guidebook tells me this is the world’s second-largest
transnational waterfall (the first, of course, being Niagara). What’s
interesting here is that, unlike Niagara, there’s no border-crossing.
There are two border crossings between Guangxi and Vietnam, but both
are east of these falls. I’ll post a few more comments as we move
through the photos to come, but this is one of the nicest shots of the
falls: as you look at them, Vietnam is on the left, and China is on
the right, with that largest clump of cascades being all in China;
Vietnam has only the smaller clump of cascades, to the left.
Cross-Border Trade
As I mentioned earlier, this is not a formal border crossing; indeed,
on the Chinese side at least I noticed a few soldiers with binoculars,
who I assumed were watching for illegal border-crossing attempts. It
interested me that on the Chinese side, there’s quite a bit of
development: this is clearly a regional draw, with tour groups coming
from Guangzhou, Nanning and elsewhere in the region. There are TONS of
stalls selling useless trinkets, what looks like a rather nice hotel
with views right out over the waterfalls and a decent restaurant, and
so on. Though it wasn’t overrun with tourists the day I was there, it
was certainly a popular attraction.
On the Vietnamese side, there are very few people. In some of the
following shots, you’ll glimpse the small footbridge that allows
people to cross from the mainland over onto the little island in the
middle of the two different sets of cascades — the island is in
Vietnam, and the boats that operate from the Chinese side come right
up to it, but no one is allowed to step out. However, the enterprising
young man here has set up a small operation from which he sells
drinks, cigarettes and various little trinkets to folks on the boats.
I found myself contemplating the meanings of borders and of history a
bit as I wandered the trails around these lovely falls. Any American
of my generation grew up knowing there was this dreadful war with
which so many in my country disagreed — for me and many like-minded
Americans of my generation, Vietnam has been for a long time a symbol
of American foreign policy gone tragically astray. It felt nice,
thirty years after my country stopped trying to defoliate Vietnam and
crush their independence, to give a wee bit back by buying a bottle of
water from this guy. 🙂 And on a broader note, to think about the
fact that thirty years ago, no American would have been welcome
anywhere near this spot — whereas now, I can have nice talks with my
fellow tourists and even a bit of a chat with the young soldier who
encouraged me to take the boat tour…for which I thank him, since it
was indeed interesting.
(so much world, so little time....) 