Report 4 Yai and I always arrive on site at least a week ahead of the rest of the team. We meet with village leaders, pick a site for camp, arrange for delivery of food and water, and begin logging reports of problem ordnance. By day six or seven we’re always eager for the...
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Report 3 Our camp is in good shape. Our tents are on flat land next to a small building that should protect us from the prevailing winds and the dust they carry. We’ve found a safe spot to build our cooking fire. (It’s dangerous to build fires on uncleared land. Less than two weeks...
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Report 2 Today was a roller coaster: highs and lows, good luck immediately followed by bad. After being out of phone range for several days, my morning high was hearing Marty answer her cell phone in Wisconsin. However, we only talked for a few minutes before Yai, my interpreter, interrupted our conversation to convey...
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Report 1 We spent our first day in camp inspecting all the equipment that we carried from Vientiane, looking for damage and cleaning everything that was soiled by road dirt and diesel smoke. It was an all-day job, made necessary by conditions largely beyond our control but magnified by a few silly choices we...
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Click on the image below to access our November newsletter. Learn about the contributions of four brave women to our UXO clearance team. Read about the on going struggle to get food giant Nestle to stop marketing coffee creamer in a way that causes it to be confused with infant formula. And…find easy access to new videos...
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In a recent blog I informed readers that Save The Children and a long list of other humanitarian non-profits have taken a public stand against the marketing practices of the Swiss food company Nestle. They charge that Nestle is again marketing products that entice parents in developing countries to cease breastfeeding their children. That...
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For the sake of younger readers this senior citizen will provide a bit of historic background information. About half a lifetime ago (well… half of my life, anyway) Nestle, the Swiss food manufacturer, was harshly taken to task for aggressively promoting it’s infant formula in third world countries. Mothers, in response to compelling advertisement...
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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...
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A fellow hand delivered a cluster bomblet to us! What in the world was he thinking? Many people in his village have had tragic, first-hand experiences with the device that they call “the bombie”. During our visit villagers described incidents in which at least six of their neighbors had been killed by similar bomblets....
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