Project Phongsali: Village elders accept our working near a religious site, but ask us not to demolish UXO if found. A quandary that we must somehow resolve.
Children in Sop Houn are at risk from ordnance on the hill beside their playground. The school yard itself has never been searched for UXO.
Day 50
We’ve got a little cultural conflict going here. The fault line runs between a conservative (mostly elderly) faction within the village and a less traditional, more progressive (mostly younger) segment. The issue is related to our earlier discussion with village elders over clearing the land next to the school that is also adjacent to an old burial ground. (There is no formal “council of elders” within the village, nor any organization, association or political body representing the “old ones.” They make their opinion known through informal channels, and they carry a lot of weight with arbiters of village consensus.)
Initially, there was strong resistance to our clearing that parcel; the most traditional and most deeply religious people were opposed to intruding on land they felt was occupied by spirits that, if disturbed, might bring misfortune to the village, perhaps in the form of accident or illness. Other less traditional villagers reasoned with the elders and won approval to clear the land of brush — the first step necessary for our team to search for ordnance. Acceptance of that plan seemed to imply that, should the team find ordnance, we would destroy it.
Now, the elders (some? all?) are alarmed that we have found UXO in the vicinity that needs to be destroyed, and they’ve withdrawn their approval for the team to proceed. This morning the village naiban brought us word that the old ones want us to move that item and destroy it far from the burial ground. We explained to the naiban that the weapon, an M-83 cluster bomblet, is too dangerous to move. His response was that a volunteer villager could move it for us. We immediately declined that offer, but now I’m worried that, in the dark of night, the item just might disappear.
The M-83 cluster bomblet, containing over 220 grams of high explosive, packs a good wallop. It’s a touchy device to work with because it has three fuses: an impact fuse, a mechanical time-delay fuse, and an anti-handling fuse. A tidy little three-in-one, a solid performer that demands respect.
We have not yet finished searching the schoolyard, so we’ve put off any final resolution of this issue until we see how much other ordnance turns up. I plan to do as the Lao do, just take things “step by step.”