Off to Laos

Tomorrow I’ll be leaving to Kuala Lumpur en route to Vientiane, Laos. I have this next week off since this week is the celebration of Hari Raya, the ending of Ramadan. Today, Sunday, I went with my friend Yosuke and his family visiting from Japan to join my friend Qyla and her family’s celebration of Hari Raya. I am convinced you have not lived until you eat Malaysian food at a Hari Raya celebration. It was a great experience and I’ll be sure to post pictures and write about it another time.

So, Laos. About three weeks ago I had no idea what I was going to do for this week break. I was paging through my Lonely Planet Book for Unimaginative Broke Students, and started reading about Laos. Granted, it is kind of lame that the book inspired me to go to Laos, but it wasn’t exactly the book that sold me.

In a city called Luang Prabang, there is a non-profit called Big Brother Mouse that publishes and distributes books throughout the country. I wanted to know more so I did some research on the Internet.

Laos is a landlocked, communist country of about 6.8 million people. Of these 6.8 million people 40%, or about 2.72 million, are under the age of 14. Compared with the US about 20% of people are under 14 and in Malaysia 31.4%. Think about this, if 40% of the US was under 14 years old, that would be around 122.8 million people. That would be the rough equivalent of the population of California, Texas, New York, Florida and Illinois, the five most populated states respectively, all combined.

By looking at the numbers, Laos keeps up with the US remarkably well in the percentage of children who are enrolled in primary school. 92% of American children and 86% of Laotian children are enrolled in primary school. The drop off in percentage of children in secondary school is significant. While 88% of American children are enrolled in secondary school, only 36% of Laotian children are enrolled. I think it is fair to say that Laotian children face drastically different circumstances than American children when choosing whether to continue on to secondary or not. Also, a fault in this is that I’m not sure how accessible secondary education is, but I’ll address that again in a moment.

While the thought of all those children in Laos not going to high school is a bit depressing, there are signs of hope. Since 1999 there has been a 10% increase in the amount of children who do attend secondary school up from 26%. Also, interestingly enough the literacy rate amongst children is higher than it is among adults at 63.2% and 83.9% respectively. It does seem that there is an effort to increase literacy amongst the population and what better place to start with youth. With such a significant amount of young people in the country, Laos finds itself in a precarious position if it fails to educate a more substantial amount of its youth or face essentially intellectually starving itself.

With that said, I’m going to Laos to do my part to help out literacy in Laos. Big Brother Mouse has English tutoring sessions every morning at its office in Luang Prabang. I’ll be in Luang Prabang for two nights and I’ll go and see what I can do in the morning. I’m hoping I can learn more about Big Brother Mouse’s cause and other non-profits working in poorer countries to improve literacy rates. I am really hoping it is an operation that I can recommend others to support.

Aside from that, I hope to enjoy some French cuisine, see some Buddhist temples, do some writing, relax, and enjoy Lao culture/society.

Ian


Sources:
CIA Factbook
UNESCO Institute for Statistics