Project Sekong 2012: Villagers dream of better lives. CARE will provide resources. We’ll remove UXO that has stalled progress.

January 29, 2012
By

Report 5

We've moved into a small village and have offered our help with livelihood projects. We'll be clearing land of old ordnance so people can expand their gardens and rice fields. We'll destroy any ordnance that we find so people can safely work the land and get on with improving their lives.

In previous years our work with unexploded ordnance has taken the form of “rapid response.”  We’ve employed the simple strategy of moving into a remote village that has a known history of contamination and telling residents that if they lead us to problem ordnance we will make the device safe within forty-eight hours.

Over three years, in Phongsali Province, we answered hundreds of requests for help.  We removed or destroyed potentially lethal devices found in gardens, rice fields, pastures and schoolyards.  Since Phongsali has never had humanitarian clearance in the years since the war ended, just about everything America dropped on the province that didn’t explode on impact is still there, lurking underground, waiting to destroy lives and property.

But…not always underground.  Years ago my team responded to a request from loggers who were felling trees and setting off explosions.  It turned out that cluster bomblets dropped forty years ago were still hung up in the cleft of branches undetected until the tree hit the ground.

This year, we’ve shouldered a different responsibility.  We’re here in Sekong Province partnering with a humanitarian organization that is implementing “livelihood” projects.  This non-governmental organization, CARE International,  is assisting villagers to complete projects that will lift the economic status of individuals, families and, ultimately, entire villages.

Some villagers want to enlarge their rice fields.  Some would like to establish vegetable gardens and grow cash crops that could be sold at market.  Others want fishponds.

Usually, these projects are far more labor than capitol intensive, and require simple resources that are already close at hand.  In most cases, what has stalled an endeavor is the need to clear land of old ordnance before the site is otherwise disturbed.

The day we pitched our tents here in Dak Dor, villagers stopped by our camp and invited us to inspect a project they are confident will benefit every member of their community — an irrigation ditch that will convey water from a mountain stream to parched rice fields.

This district has sufficient water to support year-round agriculture.  During the five-month-long dry season the challenge is to redirect water from mountain rivulets and streams onto parched fields that, always in the past, have been abandoned after yielding a single annual crop.

Talk about “shovel ready” projects!  These folks are hell bent to start digging new trenches but have been warned again and again about the danger of disturbing land has not been cleared of ordnance.

We’ll probably start at an irrigation project near the village of Dak Den.  For weeks villagers have been collecting rocks from the bed of a small stream and carrying them to the site where they will build a dam.  When completed, water will back up behind that structure and create a pond about 150 feet in diameter.

What villagers need before investing their labor in building the dam, is for us to clear a path for the ditch that will convey the water to their fields.  It’s not much of a clearance job; the path needs only be about four feet wide, four feet deep, and 800 yards long.  It’s sad to think that a project of such importance, so simple to execute, has been delayed so long.

Leave a Reply