Week Four Day Twenty-Seven Today we’re clearing the schoolyard in Kiew Ka Cham village. It’s slow, tedious work since searching for UXO in a heavily trafficked area, such as a school or marketplace, involves excavating a substantial quantity of non-lethal contamination: nails, washers, bolts, bottle tops and fragments of exploded bomb casings. As...
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Week Four Day Twenty-Six We’re still plugging along at Mr. Bouncham’s farm, searching for bombies and marking them for demolition. The rocky soil here is challenging but may, in the end, prove to be an excellent training ground for our novice deminers; they must excavate methodically, deliberately, economically, always alert least they mistake a...
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Week Four Day Twenty-Five I took an immediate liking to Mr. Bouncham, even before I learned that he was a fellow beekeeper. He’s a happy-go-lucky sort who, like me, enjoys an ironic joke. When asked whether he felt anger toward the United States because of the bombs that currently plague him, he quickly dismissed...
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Week Four Day Twenty-Four It’s become clear to me why so many villages are littered with old bomb casings that still contain fuses, boosters and other dangerous components. The construction company that is rebuilding the road that runs through the southern districts of this province is working on uncleared land and is, as one...
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Week Four Day Twenty-Three One important lesson for anyone who has a job that requires following a Lao farmer into the forest to look for ordnance (or bamboo shoots, or a lost water buffalo, or anything else). If the farmer starts out, takes a few steps, stops, contemplates, and then returns to his house...
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Week Four Day Twenty-Two We’re not quite through our first week of work with the complete team, but I’m beginning to see a pattern emerging that will require us to adapt and adjust. Most mornings we’ve headed out of camp intending to search schoolyards and destroy any ordnance that we find lurking under foot....
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Week Three Day Twenty-One Every morning speakers hooked to the village public address system issue a community-wide wake up call. First, we’re gifted spirited strains of martial music. Once awake, invigorated and inspired, we hear an enthusiastic reading of the local news. I doubt that villagers ever kick off neighborly small-talk with the question,...
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Week Three Day Twenty: Road conditions here are tough on us and our electronic equipment. Luckily, we humans are largely self-healing. Bounce me down the worst road in the province for a day. I may be coughing dust and spitting mud at the closing bell: stiff, sore, banged up and run down but, even...
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Week Three Day Nineteen: Today we the headed back to Sop Houn to destroy ordnance that villagers showed us last week. We started with a cluster bomb in a tree plantation. The woman who found the bomblet often carries her children with her to the fields so she can tend to their needs while...
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Week Three Day Eighteen: A couple of days ago an American couple living in Muang May invited me for a breakfast of coffee, fruit, bacon and eggs, an enjoyable change of pace after weeks of standard Lao breakfast fare: noodle soup, steamed greens and sticky rice. But, what I enjoyed most and devoured with...
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