Week Three Day Twenty: Road conditions here are tough on us and our electronic equipment. Luckily, we humans are largely self-healing. Bounce me down the worst road in the province for a day. I may be coughing dust and spitting mud at the closing bell: stiff, sore, banged up and run down but, even...
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Week Three Day Nineteen: Today we the headed back to Sop Houn to destroy ordnance that villagers showed us last week. We started with a cluster bomb in a tree plantation. The woman who found the bomblet often carries her children with her to the fields so she can tend to their needs while...
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Week Three Day Eighteen: A couple of days ago an American couple living in Muang May invited me for a breakfast of coffee, fruit, bacon and eggs, an enjoyable change of pace after weeks of standard Lao breakfast fare: noodle soup, steamed greens and sticky rice. But, what I enjoyed most and devoured with...
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Week Three Day Seventeen: In the year 2000 the United States government provided Laos with maps that communicate most of what is known about the 580,000 bomb runs that America flew over Laos between 1964 and 1973. During those missions the US dropped over four million general purpose bombs, and 285 million cluster submunitions....
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Week Three Day Sixteen: Vilasak and four deminers left Vientiane two days ago and traveled up Route 13 to Luang Prabang and then on to Muang Khoua, by way of Oudomxai, retracing the route that Yai and I took two weeks ago. For them, the journey was far less comfortable than our trip. They...
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Week Three Day Fifteen: For two weeks, Yai and I have tramped around the southern-most districts of Phongsali province, interviewing people and inspecting problem ordnance to determine which locales are most in need of help. Now that we have a clear vision of where we’ll work, it’s time to find a place to call...
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Week Two Day Fourteen: Four village girls, each about eight years old, happened upon a rusty hunk of suspicious-looking metal. Having seen us at their school earlier in the day they knew that we’d returned to Sop Houn and were back to deal with unexploded ordnance. Wisely, the girls obeyed a fundamental tenet of...
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Week Two Day Thirteen: Mrs. Khangbao, a genial, peaceable soul, somehow ended up married to one of the most daring village bomb experts that I’ve ever met. She jokes that long ago she conceded defeat, and no longer struggles to drag him with her into old age. Now, both physically and emotionally, she distances...
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Week Two Day Twelve: Today we trucked back to Sop Houn to discuss with the village teachers their use of two “Book Box Libraries” that our project donated last year. This is the first school year that students have had literature books to read. In the past, as is the case in over...
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