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,...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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....
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
Week Five Day Thirty-Two: Laundry Day: somewhat overdue. It’s griddle-hot here but the humidity is low and we haven’t had even the faintest hint of rain. As we travel and work along Highway 2E, a narrow, unpaved road being completely rebuilt into a wider unpaved road, we’re constantly enveloped in a cloud of dust....
Read more »