Our de-miners had already worked for 28 days without a break but they volunteered to give up their first vacation day in a month and clear the coffee garden of UXO.

The fellows on our team suggested a solution. They proposed giving up a day of their hard-earned break and using that day to begin clearing the family’s land. That single day isn’t sufficient time for the team to clear the entire garden of UXO but it does constitute a considerable start; we are determined to clear the entire area over the next week without displacing another family.

The following video is my send off to the team on the day they began work on the garden.

Our De-miners Put The Needs Of Others First

Pre school children who have never had a store-bought toy or, are hungry,are attracted to the brightly colored BLU 3-B, mistaking it for food or a toy.

Sadly, one cohort remains more at risk than the others: pre-school children—no doubt because they are a group that is rarely assembled as a group for instruction. But, perhaps more significantly, because they are harder to teach risk education concepts and they more inclined toward impulsive behavior than any other age group.

In this video, we example a particular cluster bomblet that has been associated with many child injuries. It’s the bight yellow bomblet we call the “BLU 3-B” (Bomb Live Unit). On several occasions, I’ve seen unsupervised children pick up this bomblet, and each time their parent has explained, “Sorry Mr. Jim. He thought it was fruit”.

Check out our new video and see how we deal with this bomblet.

Bombs on hillside

The child who had a near miss with UXO must take us back to the site so we can destroy the ordnance.

And here’s an irony!

Immediately after we learn that a child has found a life-threatening piece of ordnance (and quite possibly had a brush with death) we must ask that same child to take us to the location where the mine, bomb or other dangerous device was found.
As much as we hate putting children in harms way, we have no alternative but to ask them to re-trace their steps and lead us to the ordnance.

Usually, the child that we ask to guide us will insist that friends or family members come along, to instill confidence and to help find the correct location. As a consequence, we often find ourselves being led by a troop of child guides.
When village women find ordnance, there is a different problem. No respectable woman would let herself be seen traveling unaccompanied with strange men.

The solution? Inevitably, our adult female guides will insist on bringing one of her children along!

The following slide show was created as a tribute to the brave children and adults who have put themselves at risk to make their community safer and, to the members of our team who on hundreds of occasions have followed guides into harm’s way.

Please watch our heart-felt tribute!

Children Lead The Way

In earlier posts we described how a Lao construction company undertook the construction of a road without first clearing the roadway of old ordnance. Their actions put their workers at grave risk and ignored the safety of villagers who live near the construction zone.

In the video embedded below we show how WHWV came to the aid of a family whose garden was left contaminated by cluster bomblets unearthed in the process of road construction.

A Challenging Day

Concerned children await the demolition of a cluster bomblet that a man carried into the center of the village. Because the device was too dangerous for us to move we had to demolish it where it lay, just a few feet from the front door of a house.

It wasn’t the first time someone has approached us with ordnance in hand, but it was the first time that my video camera was running and I captured the excitement on tape.

We were in a village to discuss the safe removal of some ordnance and I was filming the team’s discussion of how they might remove a fuse from a large, general purpose bomb. Suddenly our priorities changed.

The rest of the story is best communicated on the video embedded here.  Please click on the title below:

Don’t bring that here!

One-year old Pome faced a bleak future if he could not get treatment for his foot.  He was born with a birth defect known as “club foot” (talipes equinovarus) but had never received medical care.  People in his village knew him as the boy “with his foot on sideways”.  His parents had no knowledge of treatment options.

Fortunately for Pome and his family word reached us while working in a village some 20 miles from his home.  We made our way to his village and convinced Pome’s family to let us take him to our friends at COPE: the Cooperative Orthotics and Prosthetics Enterprise. When we met the family it was nearly the end of the dry season. We knew that if we didn’t act promptly Pome’s treatment would be delayed due to the coming torrential rains.

The following video shows our earliest interaction with Pome and his family and the wonderful treatment he ultimately received at the regional COPE clinic.  We trust you’ll find the video uplifting, heartwarming, and even humorous.  For once, a story with a happy ending!

A fifty-year-old man in Sop houn Village was attempting to expand his rice field.  He died alone in the field so no one knows the exact detail of his death, but it was clear from the nature of his wounds that he fell victim to a cluster bomblet.

Over 20,000 Lao citizens have been killed or injured by old ordnance since the war ended.  Today, between 70 and 80 million cluster bomblets still litter the Lao countryside.

In this interview two of the victim’s adult children discuss their father’s accident and how his death has affected their lives.  In the shocking conclusion of the interview the man’s son confides what action he will take if he encounters UXO in the future.

This cluster munition should never have been moved, but we found it sitting on a tree stump.  Obviously, some villager carried it from the place where it was found and placed it on the stump.

Villagers know the risks associated with handling old American ordnance; they accept those risks because they want to keep others safe.

Since the war ended, villagers in May District, Phongsali Province, have never had any help with unexploded ordnance.  UXO/Lao does not serve the province.  Nor does the Mines Advisory Group (MAG) nor any other large humanitarian clearance organization.

We Help War Victims was the first organization to conduct clearance in Sop Houn Village.  With staff and equipment provided by the New Zealand-based clearance company PCL, we removed or destroyed 105 pieces of dangerous ordnance from that village.

In this video Sop Houn Villagers explain how and why they move ordnance that they know could explode when disturbed.

This grandmother in Sop Houn shares with listeners information about her most recent accident with old ordnance.

Noi is a soft-spoken grandmother living in Sop Houn.  Her two accidents with old ordnance have left her frightened to dig or plant.  Since she is a subsistence farmer, her fear is a terrible occupational handicap.

In this interview Noi describes her most recent accident and shares her feelings about the event that so altered her life.

During Project Phongsali we found numerous cluster bomblets designated the “M-83” in and around Sop Houn Village.  This device has three fuses: an impact fuse, a mechanical timing fuse, and an anti-handling fuse.  Containing over 200 grams of high explosive, they pack greater destructive power than most other, more frequently encountered, cluster munitions.

The M-83 was American manufactured but not an American invention; it was a nearly complete “knock-off” of the infamous “Butterfly Bomb” that Germany dropped on England during World War II.  As such, it represents of one of the earliest models of cluster munitions.

This American cluster bomb, the M-83, was modeled after the "Butterfly Bombs" that Germany dropped on England during World War II.