Collecting scrap: a deadly trade.
Children who should be in school scour the countryside looking for scrap. They risk their lives for pennies per pound.
Boualapha District - Lao Peoples Democratic Republic
Over fifty percent of the Lao people wounded or killed by unexploded ordnance (UXO) have been injured while intentionally handling the stuff, often while collecting bomb fragments and other war material to sell to scrap dealers who, in turn, sell the metals to foundries in Laos and Vietnam.
As long as I’ve been coming to Laos I’ve listened to people debate the scrap trade. Its here to stay but no one seems quite sure what to do about it. The fundamental question pondered by clearance workers is, should we make an all out effort to dissuade people from digging for scrap or put the same effort and resources into teaching people how to conduct themselves safely while digging in the vicinity of unexploded ordnance? The argument really heats up when someone suggests that, since many collectors are children, someone should teach youngsters how to collect in the safest possible manner.
(Just for the record, I’ll note that the National Regulatory Agency, the Lao government organization that sets standards for UXO removal and “risk education”, has taken the position that, while it is valid to teach adults how to collect scrap safely, children should be discouraged from collecting and given only “take no risk” messages. A position I fully agree with).
While some impoverished parents actually hand their children a detector and send them out to search, other families try to limit their participation. Unfortunately, many parents are unable to provide supervision sufficient to keep their children out of harm’s way. My friend Khong’s son was killed while collecting scrap, after she had firmly forbidden him to participate. One day, while she was distracted with work in the rice fields her son slipped away to join friends who were collecting. Her son and two other boys died in an accident that followed.
“Parents can’t always know where their children are and what they are doing”, Khong said tearfully when we discussed her son’s death. “A mother can’t always know.”
Last week, over in Boualapha District, in the heart of the old Ho Chi Minh Trail, I saw just how well organized the scrap trade is in that neck of the woods. I witnessed numerous children, some only ten years of age, digging for scrap in the presence of cluster bomblets and other ordnance, clearly putting themselves at risk.
In Boualapha the scrap dealers, the middlemen and women who function between the collectors and the foundries, have the operation running smoothly with every factor in their favor. To avoid competition among themselves that might result in a bidding war for scrap, or concessions that would improve working conditions, the dealers have simply colluded to divvy up the trade and enforce common rules.
Those who possess the capital to function as a dealer (money for trucks, fuel, scales, detectors, and so forth) have formed a queue and take turns running collectors around the countryside and buying their scrap. One guy transports villagers on Monday and has first dibs on their scrap. A different collector takes the same collectors on Tuesday. A third guy gets the Wednesday trade, and so on throughout the week until every dealer has had a shot at the profits. Then, the rotation begins again.
The system minimizes conflict among the dealers that might mess up the good deal that they all know they’ve got going. The villagers, who lack any way to transport their scrap to distant, competing markets, have to settle for whatever the dealers have collectively fixed as the going rate. At present they pay 2,000 Lao kip per kilo, less than twelve American cents per pound.
Since most lack any means of transportation to the best collection site, their workday begins at what ever time the deal decides to run them about in his truck. Their workday ends when the dealer feels like calling it a day.
It doesn’t take much for a collector to get started in the trade. Every family has rice bags and small shovels. The only new piece of equipment needed is a metal detector and dealers have worked out plans by which even the poorest villager can obtain one. I’ve seen pickups cross the border from Vietnam loaded with detectors that dealers sell to Lao villagers for about fifteen bucks a pop.
If villagers don’t have that kind of money up front, they’ll be offered detectors on credit. Most of the first ton of scrap that the new owner collects must go toward paying off the loan, but after just a few weeks people own their detectors free and clear and start realizing a profit on every piece of metal they find. (The only recurring cost is for the cheap, Chinese, dry-cell batteries that power the units). Sadly, once in possession of a new detector, many families enlist every member in the search for scrap. Children can search and dig, relatively light work, while parents do heavy labor in the forest and fields.
Last week Yai, my assistant, and I followed a dealer, the “Wednesday” guy, as he drove his truck from place to place, moving collectors about and buying their scrap. In the late afternoon he stopped in front of a group of collectors from Ban Mai Village who were ready to wrap up a long day.
The villagers looked to be a tired lot; they had been at their work since mid-morning, dragging detectors about in the sun and digging for scrap every time their machine gave the proper telltale beep. Some villagers had bulging bags of scrap made weighty with arm-length shards of bomb casing. A few children, who considered themselves lucky, dragged bags they could barely lift. Others had pitifully light bags, indicating a disappointing haul in return for a hard day’s work.
Every child we interviewed had seen bomblets and other dangerous pieces of ordnance sometime during the day, but all swore that they knew what to collect, what to avoid, and how to remain safe. All laughed when I asked whether they were fearful of triggering an accident with a bomb. I got the impression that, like American teens and tweens, these kids defined an accident as “something bad that happens to other people”.
Everyone was excited when the dealer blasted his truck’s horn, informing all collectors within ear shot that it was time to turn in their scrap and head for home. Villagers out of sight in the forest knew that they best hurry along or be left behind.
While the villagers formed an orderly line along the edge of the road, the dealer dropped the tailgate of his truck and carefully set a large green platform scale on a level spot of ground.
Villagers took turns dropping their bags of scrap on the platform and each watched anxiously as the scale’s needle bounced from numeral to numeral before settling on its final reading. Just about every child attempted the same trick: while pretending to steady their bag of scrap on the bed of the scale they would impishly press down on the load in a vain attempt to sneak a few extra ounces onto their total.
The dealer, who must have seen this trick a thousand times before, didn’t reprimand or scold; he simply waited patiently for the child to tire of the ploy and back away. As soon as the needle settled he called out the child’s total and recorded that figure in his tally book. Adults helped the children heft their bags onto the bed of the truck and dump the contents onto a growing pile of rusty, jagged scrap.
After everyone’s haul was weighed, the dealer pulled a thick wad of cash from his shirt pocket and proceeded to pay everyone in turn. Most of the children collected kip equal to two or three American dollars. All but the smallest children appeared to have harvested amounts of scrap nearly equal to what the adults collected. Apparently, enthusiasm makes up for lack of strength.
One man, who had had the good fortune to unearth a large hunk of old machinery, collected Lao money equal to nearly fifteen American dollars. A sum he shyly admitted was far more than his usual take. He told me that he never makes less than two dollars, usually makes five or six, and on lucky days like today, ten or more.
The capper to the afternoon came after the dealer had paid all the villagers for their scrap. He then pulled a large cooler out of the truck’s cab and became an ice cream vendor. The children lined up again, this time to hand back to the dealer some of the same kip that he had just given them. In return, they received a small frozen treat. Some of the kids who had made a bountiful harvest that day cheerfully treated their friends.
Scrap collected, money paid and treats sold, the dealer called for everyone who wanted a ride home to mount the back of the truck. Villagers clambered aboard and a tired few parked themselves on the scrap pile. Most chose to stand for the ride home.
A few collectors, those from more distant villages, walked to a modest tent camp they had set up nearby. They planned to remain in the area overnight, giving themselves an advantage over those who returned home; they could resume collecting and work into the evening and then get an early start the next morning.
Later, at the scrap yard in Lan Kang Village, we met one of the dealers who works the Boualapha circuit. I told him that over the years I had learned the hard way to never inspect a bag of scrap by dumping its contents on the ground. (There is no way of knowing what might land at your feet!) He laughed in agreement with me.
He gave us a quick tour of his yard and showed us an assortment of dangerous ordnance that, over the past few months, he had discovered in the villagers’ bags. He said that, for the time being, he was stuck with those items since the foundry wouldn’t take them. He said that he hoped that UXO/Lao or another organization would someday come and remove them. Yai and I pretended that his hint flew over our heads; it wasn’t a day when we were prepared to destroy or cart away ordnance, although that is a service that we commonly provide to dealers.
The dealer told us that, on the whole, the villagers of Boualapha District deserved high marks for the care that they took around ordnance and the skills that they demonstrated. Not too shy to give himself partial credit for their success, he told us that he shares with them safety lessons that he has learned on the job. I was skeptical about his reassurances, knowing that Boualapha District has been the location of many accidents in the past.
I asked the fellow whether he had ever had an accident in his yard, given the copious amount of scrap passing through each month.
“I have never had an explosion here”, he said. “But a few times something in the pile has started to smoke and I’ve had to put a fire out.”
During our day in Boualapha Yai and I saw a lot of scrap in the truck and a fair amount of money passing from hand to hand. But, I have no way of knowing how much profit the dealer realized in the end. He has a truck to pay for, fuel to buy, and a few employees back at the scrap yard to pay. His home didn’t look much different from the average house in the village. Like everyone else around, he was a thin guy in poor clothes. He’s obviously making a better living with less risk than the collectors, but I doubt that he’s on the road to riches.
I ended the day feeling mad at the world but couldn’t quite find a focus for my anger. Parents sending their children out to collect scrap from bombs dropped by American planes. Dealers buying scrap from children at the lowest price the kids will take and then selling it at the highest price they can get from the foundry. In the long chain of humans leading from the American bomber to the Asian foundry, I wonder who should bear the most responsibility when, inevitably, a bomb kills a child?
And why, considering all the other things I saw that day, am I so steamed over the kids having to pay for the ice cream?