Day 61

30/08/2009

One of the reasons for stopping at Vientiane was that it has a rehabilitation centre where they make and fit artificial limbs, many of which are for victims of cluster bombs. These were dropped by the Americans between 1964 and 1973 when they flew over 500,000 sorties in Laos, dropping more than 2m tons of bombs. Cluster bombs are a large bomb which opens during decent to allow around 670 bomblets (or bombies as they are called here) to spread out and detonate on impact. There small explosive charge and a hundred or so ball bearings will kill over a range of tens of metres.

Unfortunately as many as 30% of these bombies may not have exploded, and many are still waiting to be found by villagers in the affected areas. Children are particularly at risk as they find and play with the bombie, and also farmers tilling the soil. Victims who are not killed outright often loose limbs and eyes. The approach here is to educate the children so they don't play with the bombies if they find them, provide experts to deal safely with them, and also to provide support and practical help to those injured.

As a group, we chose a UK based charity to support called No More Land Mines, which has unfortunately become a victim of the economic downturn and transferred all it's assets to a charity it has worked with in Kosovo, called the Mines Awareness Trust. We will split any money we raise between MAT and the organisation in Laos called COPE.

Vientiane doesn't have a huge amount to offer by way of sight seeing, so we occupied ourselves with visits to a couple of markets, and wandered around the shops selling copies of electronic goods, particularly mobile phones. Simon bought a Nokia N97 phone in China for about £600 I think, the copy here is $150. Not sure which bits will actually work for that money!