So where are all these bombs in Lao?

Everywhere.

If you are sitting and reading my blog in your bedroom, office or living room, calculate the number of square yards of floor space of where you are sitting.  

Hint L' X W'= square feet. Divide by 9.  Equals square yards.  How many square yards in your room....or your house?  Or in your yard?

I was in a place today where MAG cleaned an area and there were holes where one UXO was dug up every 8 square yards or less.  There were holes all over the place.

Bombies, bombies, bombies everywhere.

Every 8 square yards or less had bombies burried about 4" underground here.

All,of the farm land and the moutains in the distance....all the land beyond 200 yards from where this picture was taken...has not been ccleared by MAG of UXO.  The Lao "just live with it."

A big bomb went off here.  There were dozens of these craters about every 100 yards or so across the entire hill top.  There were bombies dug up by MAG everywhere inside the crater and around the craters from cluster bombs that were dropped after the big bombs were dropped and exploded.

My guide told me a story today.  His cousin...about 32, a father with 4 young children, found a big bomb burried underground while working on his rice field last year.  It was about 5 feet long and 1 foot in diameter and had not exploded.  

He could have called MAG and they would have removed and disposed the bomb.  But they were poor and wanted the scrap value of the metal in the bomb....about $0.20 per kilo of the weight pf the bomb.  The cousin and 3 others attempted to remove the detonator. 

The bomb went off.

He said they all had cell phones and their families kept calling and calling them all night and got no answers.

The families went to the rice field the next day and all they found was a big hole and pieces of clothing hanging in the trees.  They found a few small pieces of body parts.....but only enough flesh to put into several 1/4 pound baggies. The rest of their bodies were vaporized.  They took the contents of the bags for a burial ceremony.

These things are EVERYWHERE.  Millions and millions of them.   Every field, every forest, every stand of bamboo, every roadside, every village.  Less than 1% have been found in the 30 years since the bombing ended.  

I bet I passed within 200 feet of tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of cluster bomb "bombies" on my 100 mile round trip today.

It is absolutely the most unbelievable tradgedy that there is not more support for cleanup.  Much of the support for cleanup comes from countries that had nothing to do with the bombing....Japan, Germany, Australia.  Support from the US is far down the list of financial supporters.

All the UXO has a huge negative economic impact on the Lao.  Economic development of the region is stunted because new land cannot be farmed.  Forests cannot safely be cut to get lumber or firewood.  Roads cannot be built betwen villages.  New houses cannot be built.  MAG is unable to handle all the requests for surveys of land.....so the Lao just dig in their fields, dig house foundations and gather wood for cooking fires in the forests anyway and just take their chances.

Please see:

MAGinternational.org