Week Five Day Thirty-Nine The decision by the Lao Construction Consortium (LCC) to rebuild Highway 2E without first clearing ordnance along the roadway clearly puts their employees at risk. We’ve repeatedly spoken with equipment operators who know that their lives could end at any time, should they happen upon a bomb. Their response is...
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Week Six Day Thirty-Eight: Today we stopped in a village to drop off several bomb casings that we recently cleaned of boosters, fuses, and remnants of high explosive. Returning casings helps us to build trust among the villagers. We enjoy proving wrong the cynics who predict that our team will disappear with the casings,...
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Week Six Day Thirty-Seven: Tomorrow is International Woman’s Day, a time to celebrate the many diverse contributions that women throughout the world make to family, community and nation. In Laos, all government offices and schools will close and the event is certain to inspire daylong parties. Here in Muang May the partying has already...
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Week Six Day Thirty-Six: Rarely do we not get full co-operation from villagers when we have to move people and their possessions around to assure safety during a demolition. Once, in Khammouan Province we had to control the movements of over 500 people for most of a day while experts worked on a 750-pound...
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Week Five Day Thirty-Five: As we passed through Kiew Ka Cham village this morning we noticed a pick-up truck with government plates sitting along the road. In the bed was a large white Styrofoam cooler, the kind that Lao venders use to transport meat, fish, vegetables and other perishable foods from market to village....
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Week Five Day Thirty-Four: To say that I acted on intuition would suggest a premonition. To be honest, I had no inkling, no gut instinct, no hunch. I was bored, becalmed in the doldrums, and simply hoped to provoke something, anything, interesting to happen. We were returning to our camp after a long, hot...
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Week Five Day Thirty-Three Usually, when we head out in the morning to demolish ordnance, we either have to search for the reported item or make a return hike to the location where we saw it days earlier. By the time we get to the item, post sentries, clear the area of people and...
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A mother in Nondaengneua village, Soukhouma district, Champasak province, in southern Laos, is still mourning her daughter’s death after she was killed by UXO in February last year. She was 13 years old, she should not have died and been taken from her family, the girl’s mother, Ms Jone lamented. Her son survived the...
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KPL Laos News Agency Government of Japan has agreed to provide a grant total US$744,680 in support of UXO Lao operations in southern provinces of Saravane and Sekong, for 2011. The grant contract was signed in Vientiane Capital, on 25 March between the Director of Lao National UXO, Mr. Bounpone Sayasenh and Ambassador of...
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