There are places in Laos that get more than eighty inches of rain a year, and the Lao countryside is laced with rivers and streams. Still, many villages do not have a dependable source of clean drinking water. The World Health Organization estimates that forty per cent of the Lao people drink water from...
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The man pictured here was horribly disfigured as a consequence of a disease called Noma. As a child he developed an infection in his mouth that eventually became gangrenous. By the time the disease ran its course both of his cheeks had been eaten away by rampant infection. Ninety percent of all children who...
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There are, by conservative count, nearly fifty distinct ethnic groups in Laos. Some, like the Hmong and the Khamu, have populations that live in diverse regions of the country and number in the hundreds of thousands. Other groups, possibly headed for cultural extinction, have barely a few hundred members and live in tiny, compact,...
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Most Lao are subsistence farmers. They grow what they need to live and have little surplus to take to market. The family’s survival depends on successfully harvesting crops and then supplementing that harvest with plant products foraged from the forest. Men build, and fish, and hunt and contribute to survival in many ways but...
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There are several reasons we limit our work to the dry season. It’s hard on our workers and their families if we are on site for months at a time. And, in the rainy season our work hours are often shortened by rain storms. But, the greatest challenge during the rainy season is simply...
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Our ten-person team is headed for a remote setting that lacks electricity, phone lines and internet connection. We would like to keep our supporters informed about our efforts but timely communication via the internet just isn’t possible at this time. For now, the best we can do is to post photographs that document the...
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Report 41 Very early in the Vietnam War American military planners considered using our ground forces in a blocking action to stop the flow of soldiers and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Instead, the United States attempted to halt traffic through aerial interdiction. We bombed peaks and valleys along the trail to...
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Report 28 Here in Laos, people associated with clearance work always reference the “NRA”. I’ve had to rewire my brain to not automatically conjure an image of Charleton Heston and the National Rife Association whenever I hear those letters. What the Lao are referencing is the National Regulatory Association, the government agency responsible for...
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Report 42 When Yai and I rooted around in the storage room at the Dak Door Primary School, we found a steel box labeled UNICEF that contained maybe three-dozen children’s books. It was an uncommon find for a Lao school; we often quote the National Library of Laos statistic that more than 90 percent...
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Report 41 I did a favor for a lady yesterday and today I collected payback. Admittedly, my assistance didn’t amount to much: she came to our camp holding a wild chicken and a squirrel that her husband had shot or snared. The guys all encouraged me to buy the chicken; no one was much...
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