Rose Dickson
18 October 2008
1205 – 11229 hours
White garden chair facing the Bistro, next to the mill stream on Willamette University campus, Salem, OR, USA
44 degrees, overcast
This summer I spent a month and a half traveling through SE Asia, with a focus on the village of Nam Neung, Laos. As I watch Willamette University campus this regular Saturday afternoon, I notice how different the two cultures really are. Most students on campus are, as we speak, heading into Goudy Commons with huge smiles on their faces as they await the special ‘parents’ weekend brunch’. However, in Laos, I can clearly imagine the young children in the kitchen with their families cooking rice, cabbage and chicken, which they have raised and grown with throughout their lives. This process seems widely different. In Laos they cultivate their own rice, grow their vegetables and raise their own chicken. I will, in a few minuets or so, follow the heard of people into Goudy to eat some undoubtedly wonderful pumpkin fried ravioli. This meal, however delicious, comes from a pumpkin I never seen or handled in my life. This process seems so unnatural and strange? Is this the kind of ‘hunting’ that we were talking of in class? If I am correct, hunting does seem reasonable to me now. An individual should provide their own food. Every animal on earth provides a sustainable food source of themselves and their family, why do we here at Willamette demand to be different?
Photo 1: Nam Neung
Photo 2: regular dinner in Nam Neung
Photo 3: rice fields in Nam Neung
Photo 4: woman with fresh vegetables she grew
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