Laotian Family Savors Life at Harvard : Culture Shock: The Ngaosyvathns are the first Laotian scholars to study in the United States since the 1975 communist takeover.

SOMERVILLE, Mass. —  Mayoury and Pheuiphanh Ngaosyvathn smile as they recall the Laotian capital city of their youth. “People were afraid to go beyond the pagodas at night,” they said. “Too many tigers.”

They hadn’t expected tigers in Cambridge, Mass., where they had come to study and write at Harvard University--the first visiting scholars to come to the United States from Laos since the communist takeover in 1975. But neither had they expected to feel free walking at night.

They had read that American cities were full of violence and were startled to find people on the street smiling “for no reason at all” and offering to help “without even knowing us,” said Mayoury (may-YOR-ee).

“Except for bureaucrats,” added Pheuiphanh (pwee-PAHN), still in the throes of making travel arrangements back to Laos. “The bureaucrat here is like in other parts of the world.”

Pheuiphanh is a high-ranking official in the Laotian foreign ministry. He studied economics and management at Harvard’s Mason Program for mid-career government officials. Mayoury, her country’s first woman jurist, used her time as a visiting scholar at Radcliffe to research a book on women in Laos.

They met and married as law students in Paris in the 1960s and returned to Vientiane (now Viengchan) in May, 1975--just as most other Laotian intellectuals were fleeing. It is a decision they say they do not regret, despite adjustments and hardships.

“According to American statistics, no country had ever been bombed as much as Laos,” Pheuiphanh noted. He said the transition to communism was less harsh than in neighboring Cambodia, where 1 million to 2 million people were killed by the Khmer Rouge. He attributed that fact to the importance of family ties and a tendency to “take the middle” in Laotian culture.

Mayoury recalls stepping off the plane from Paris in 1975 with stylish European shoes and long painted fingernails. She quickly filed her nails and adopted the shoe of the times--sandals made from rubber tires. Her last belt from Paris was sold to buy chickens, which the family raised in their apartment. Their sons would sell eggs door-to-door to neighbors, she says.

The chickens are gone, but many other changes dating from that period remain. Most striking, Mayoury says, are changes for women. “My mother came from a peasant family, but she took her husband from the city. She never expressed her ideas directly,” she said. A woman was expected to walk several steps behind her husband in public and wait until he had taken his third bite before eating.

For peasant women, the rhythm of agricultural life continues much as it did before 1975, she says. Women take care of children and gardens; they fetch water and wood. Urban women, however, work harder. Many have office jobs, shop and attend political meetings, as well as care for their children. But they also have their own voice, can talk with their husbands and even challenge their ideas, she says.

National mentalities are changing as well. After years of strict isolation, Laos is opening its doors. The country expects more than 1,000 tourists this year, about the same number that have visited since 1975. Thailand opened the first supermarket in Laos recently, and the Laotian government recently passed the most open code of foreign investment in any socialist country.

This opening will mean new business, growth, technology. But it may also have a dark side. The Laotian capital city is very beautiful compared to Bangkok or Manila, they explain. There is little crime and no prostitution. But with floods of tourists, foreign investors and “quick money,” social problems are more likely.

They worry most about children: Half of the country’s population is under 18. Increasingly, Pheuiphanh says, they are growing up without traditional Lao ideology: “Everyone must live simply.” With so many imported goods and temptations, they fear that the young generation cannot live the ideal.

How have his own children borne the temptations of life in a U. S. city? “They changed too, but they lived here simply,” he said. “But they want to get new sneakers and hit songs.”

So has he succeeded in protecting his children from the temptations of urban life? He smiles. “There is some contest.”