Week Five Day Thirty-One: Yesterday a Khamu villager showed us several pieces of ordnance that he found in his rice field, carried home, and showed around the village, asking family, friends and neighbors if they thought the items could be safely opened. (They were an assortment of rockets and mortars). His hope was that...
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At my school, our Leadership Institute has an ongoing lollipop sale that helps Mr. Harris’ projects in Laos. We call it “Lollies for Laos.” Last year, we sold many, many suckers — enough to make four thousand dollars. Our goal for this year is five thousand dollars. People in Laos live with the everyday...
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Week Five Day Thirty: We Help War Victims has ardent supporters among students in the D.C. Everest Area School District, Schofield Wisconsin. The Everest district, like many others in central Wisconsin, has a diverse enrollment that includes ethnic Hmong and Lao families that arrived as refugees from the Indochina War. While many refugee families...
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Week Five Day Twenty-Nine: Nobody seems to have a handle on what illness has claimed the lives of four children in Kiew Ka Cham village, and sickened many others. (Symptoms suggest one of three likely viruses: whooping cough, diphtheria, and influenza). Thus far, the deceased have all been young children between six weeks and...
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Week Four Day Twenty-Eight: As our deminers continued clearing the schoolyard in Kiew Ka Cham village I observed four men working in a stand of trees not far away. When I first spotted them, they were taking turns with a shovel, either digging a hole or leveling a mound; I didn’t have a clear...
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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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