Day 52 It came as no surprise to us that the cluster bomb on the hill above the school has gone missing. Its disappearance ends the controversy over our plan to demolish it. It was located near an old cemetery, and to some people in the village the device posed a danger of angering...
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Day 51 We spent all of Saturday and Sunday clearing the schoolyard, taking advantage of the students being gone for the weekend. It was slow going, but the fellows stuck with it. With the sun beating down on them and the ground as hard as cement, the work was a grind. And boring! Hour...
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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...
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Day 49 Two American friends are due to arrive today. Karen Coates and Jerry Redfern, wife and husband, now live in New Mexico, but Karen is originally from Brookfield, Wisconsin, and Jerry grew up in Montana. They spend as much or more time in Asia than they do in New Mexico, making that state...
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Day 48 I continue to make purchases for our museum collection back home. I’ve picked up several child-made toys, a wooden rice steamer, a skein of raw silk, and some wedges for splitting firewood. The wedges are wood themselves but feel as hard as steel. (What species of tree?) Then today I came upon...
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Day 47 The head schoolteacher finally wore down the last opposition to expanding the schoolyard. She is a force to contend with, and probably a great teacher. Every time I pass her classroom, she has her students on task doing math problems in their notebooks or copying her reading lesson from the chalkboard. To...
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Day 46 Every day we do two or three demolitions. Soon the team will catch up to Yai and me as the stream of villagers taking us to see ordnance has finally slowed. Once the team is right on our heels, we’ll put the guys to work surveying the schoolyard and clearing it of...
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Day 45 When we go to the site of reported ordnance and find the items have gone missing, the first thing we do is scan the immediate countryside asking ourselves, “If I found ordnance and decided to move it in order to keep my family safe, where would I put it?” Then, we check...
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Day 44 Last year when I first visited Sop Houn, I met a little girl who is visually impaired; each of her eyes is clouded over by white patches that I assume are either cataracts or corneal scars. There wasn’t much more that I could do last year than take photographs to pass around...
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Day 43 The head school teacher here is a bit frustrated by the process of getting agreement on clearing a land parcel adjacent to the school in order to enlarge the school grounds. There is no school board or village council per se that meets and votes on issues and proposals. Rather, the village...
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