UXO in Laos: Generating Pain and Hindering Development, 30 years after the Vietnam War

Photo by Maryanne Mutch

To reach the village of Yam Cha Yeum Xay, we must venture down the river in a shallow wooden boat, the noise of the engine causing the water buffalos to look up from their contemplative cud chewing as we pass by. Our vista of tree covered mountains, topped in mist, and the dense jungle whose ancient trees reach skyward and whose vines and runners reach down to graze our shoulders, lets me cling to a fantasy that we intrepid explorers are the first to ever experience this beauty. But when we step onto solid ground again and cross a rickety bamboo bridge, we find a village full of people, well established in this place. They wash their clothes on these banks. The water buffalos grazing on the shore belong to them. They eat the fish of these waters everyday. This place is their own.

We are here to ask questions about agriculture, sanitation and nutrition in order to find out whether this village would be a good location for a new MCC food security project. But development in this place has more than the usual obstacles. Bombies (as the Lao call the bomblets of cluster bombs) and other unexploded ordnance (UXO) which have remained hidden in the earth since the time of the Vietnam war (or as it is called here “The American War”), are ready to maim or kill the unsuspecting farmer who strikes it with his hoe or the curious child who is fascinated by this strange new toy.

Here in the village of Yam Cha Yeum Xay, we are sent to visit one such child in his home. Twelve year old Lampan Vanmasane was excited to have a break from school last April for Lao New Year. He spent the day fishing in the river with a friend. As the boys started for home, Lampan realized that he had forgotten his shoes on the bank and so he sent his friend on ahead while he ran bank to collect them. But as Lampan bent down to slip on his shoes, he saw something shining in the water. “I thought it was a flashlight,” he recounts now, as we sit cross legged in the only room of his family’s bamboo home, set high off the ground on stilts.

Lampan was disappointed with what he found, however, for when he reached down to pull this “flashlight” out of the water. What he held in his small hand was only an old, rusty tube of metal. But as he threw his discarded treasure back into the river, the impact triggered an explosion, sending tiny shards of metal shooting out in all directions, including one small piece, which lodged itself in Lampan’s side. Though he still feels sharp pains in his side six months later, Lampan was lucky. Not only did the water keep the debris from traveling further, but the scrap of metal in his body did not pierce any internal organs.

The noise from the explosion set the village into action. Lampan was quickly laid into a boat and taken to the nearest road, where he traveled first by military jeep and later by bus, through most of the night. Finally, at 3 a.m. he reached the hospital. The cost of transportation and two weeks in the hospital set Lampan’s family back over $300 U.S., more money than most Lao families see in a year. Three of the family’s precious cows were sold to pay the debt. “I am happy that we were able to take care of my boy,” Lampan’s father tells us. The security of owning livestock is a luxury beyond the means of many of his friends and neighbours.

And so, if we decide to work with food security in this place, we must first cover the expense of having the rice paddies and river in this area cleared of UXO. The situation is filled with irony. It was North Americans who left behind these deadly souvenirs and now, as a North American relief and development agency we must deal with the consequences. But it is the Lao people who pay the true cost, year after year, in the loss and injury of their animals, friends and families, stretching on into the unseen future.