Project Sekong 2012: Fishponds offer hope for improved diet.

February 7, 2012
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In Laos 40% of children starting school are already physically stunted, an indication of how important it is for families to find additional sources of protein. Fishponds will be a great source of food for villagers but like other livelihood projects, should be dug only on land cleared of UXO.

Report 15

After we finished clearing a path for the new irrigation ditch we immediately started work on other livelihood projects requested by villagers.  High on everyone’s list is a fishpond.  Nearly every household aspires to a personal pond but where land is scare, several families will have to share.  Most villagers want their new pond right outside their house, inside the village boundaries. I suppose that’s where I’d want mine too.

Measured simply by protein production per square meter, fishponds are hard to beat.  Not that people here will be growing trout, tilapia or other sizable fish.  I expect people will be netting tiny, finger-length fish that most Americans would mistake for bait.  But the Lao make good use of small fish.  They can be eaten fresh or, once smoked or dried, stored for future meals.

One popular use for dried fish is to pound them into a powder (skin, fins, scales, bones and all) and add it to soups and stews, or to a spicy sauce to compliment sticky rice.  Smoked fish make an excellent lunch since they can be carried into the field, or to school, without fear of spoilage and then eaten as a compliment to ever-present rice.

Our challenge now is to properly clear land in the center of a long-inhabited village. Running a detector around a village that’s had years of human activity is always a pain is the lower back (the very low lower back). In an established village we’re likely to find an assortment of metal objects dating all the way back to the birth of the Iron Age.  I exaggerate, but not much.

Some of the scrap that’s turned up today are bits and bobs that no one valued and simply tossed aside: bolts, nails, hinges, wire, bottle tops, and the like.  Other things we’re finding are desirable objects that an owner must certainly have mislaid and later missed.  I should carry our scrap bucket door to door and ask, “Anybody lose this shovel?  Anybody looking for a bike chain? Gotta nice hammer here!”

The ponds that people are digging will enable families to harvest small fish that can either be eaten fresh or dried and stored against leaner times. Some families may sell their fish at market and earn cash to buy necessities.

Another problem we face is that some of the ponds projected on paper already exist in fact and a few already have fish swimming about.  Apparently, some villagers grew frustrated waiting for bomb clearance and put shovel to earth before their land was cleared.

With existing ponds, all we can do is clear the land around them, guaranteeing that any further pond-side construction will be safe.  When that task is finished, we’ll move on to where projected ponds have yet to be dug and clear those sites border to border.

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