Last Sunday was the final match of the Rugby World Cup, an event that generated excitement in countries across the world, in the expat community of Vientiane, and among friends of Lao Rugby. In the US, I’m guessing, this event was hardly on most people’s radar. The LRF had been hosting viewing events for weeks, both as a fundraiser and to support their larger goal of increasing interest in rugby in the Lao community. For the culmination of the cup, a match between France and host-country New Zealand, they staged a large-scale rugby “festival” last Sunday outside the National Culture Hall downtown.
Children waiting for rugby games outside the cultural hall.
Before the game, there were a number of sports-related activities for the LRF’s youth program, called “Champa Ban”–stretching, passing practice, touch rugby, lineout competitions, and other rugby shenanigans with a visiting Welsh team that inexplicably came dressed in a hilarious array of intense, weather-inappropriate costumes.
I attended as a volunteer photographer and face painter, which sounded like a fun and easy job. Little did I know that face painting was actually code for being accosted by a pushy mob of disorganized and demanding children (luckily many of them were redeemingly cute). We set up the face paint (actually poster paint…we’ve got to work with what we’ve got) under a tent to shade us from the sizzling midday sun. My friend and I had sketched some design choices, so kids could point to the one they wanted–a butterfly, a rugby ball, French flag, NZ fern, Lao flag, Maori face tattoos, a champa flower–and our first “customers” were the guys from the Lao national team.
As soon as the first child caught sight of what was going on, however, these guys were promptly pushed aside by a stampede of children. For the next two hours I saw nothing but a sea of children’s faces, as I was surrounded on all sides by a clamoring group of Lao kids who wanted their faces, hands, arms, whatever, painted. Luckily there were five other people helping, but still we were overwhelmed by a hoard of kids who refused to form any semblance of a line. The kids probably would have continued this for an additional two hours, once the game was underway, we painstakingly extricated ourselves from the mob of children, and shut down the facepainting booth for the night. I relinquished my volunteer duties and joined the crowd watching the game on the big screen from the shade of the Vientiane College sponsor’s tent, where we watched the second half of the close match (which NZ won).
