It’s Not About The Mirrors
This is Peng. He’s an AK or trans-femoral amp. About halfway down his bone, same as me. He lives in a town called, in Lao, “10 Kilometers” ‘cuz it’s about 10 kms out of Luang Prabang on the road out to Kuang Xi (a lot of stuff has a Chinese ring to it up here).
Peng and Onu makin’ a difference!
He’s a strange case; he got terribly burned in his lower body due to a propane tank explosion. He ran into his flaming hut over and over to save his family. Fully 15 years later, having been more or less functional for years, he developed a bone infection in his right leg and consequently lost it. The stump looks real good, it was a good procedure; practice makes perfect and the surgeons here get plenty of opportunity to hone their craft.
After the surgery, though, he was offered a pair of shitty crutches for 10 bucks USd and told sayonara. He doesn’t have a fake leg and there is no reason why he shouldn’t; he has plenty of stump. I’m not sure what happened and I bet he isn’t either.
I went out with a mirror feeling certain that, all things considered, he must be in a world of phantom pain. In a word, he’s not. Some peeps just get lucky. In a way, phantom pain is like life itself. Anyhow, I was perversely disappointed that he wasn’t in agony and equally perplexed as to why he wasn’t up and running, so to speak. His operation was in 2006.
The wife gets pissed off cuz he’s not much help in the garden. He used to make his money as an organist and musical composer but found that after his trauma his creative talent dried up. This is super-common and not very well understood. Now he just kinda skootches around his hut on his ass, cuz he doesn’t even like his crutches. He couldn’t believe that I was on a bicycle. 10KM Town is fairly isolated.
I was brought to him by my new Lao friend Onu who is both a first class chap and a number 1 translator – he spent 10 years in Montreal and Quebec City as a kid and happily doesn’t have a Quebecois accent. Onu is a self-made man and done very well. He has a mini-mart (where I met him), a hotel, he’s developing property etc. And he cares very much about his people. So he’s dragging me around and introducing me to amps.
So now Peng doesn’t need a mirror, but a leg would come in handy. I asked him did he want one and was he willing to go to Vientiane (the capital) and spend maybe as long as 3 weeks getting one fit and he said, ‘Ya, sure.’ I said, ‘100%?’ He said, ‘120.’ So his auntie is giving him the bus fare (it’s a long ride) and the pin money and I’m picking up the hotel (a cheapo) and, one way or another, the leg.
We’re gonna give him some dignity and get him to take out the trash!
