Jars and Bombies
I was up early and through with breakfast by a little after 8. Yang (the tour guide) said we would leave by 9 with three people on the tour. The two names of Andrew and Dawn I would quickly come to know as we spent the next two days touring. They were a joy from the first miute. On a year's around the world trip, they had gotten married at the beginning of the trip (I saw the pictures of Elvis) in Las Vegas and are now 7 months into their trip (New Zealand is a favorite and they still have more to go--Cambodia, Vietnam and India). Today's tour was going to visit three sites of "jars" These huge stone jars are of various sizes, the biggest being about 6 feet tall and the smaller about 4 feet. They are about 4 feet wide with about 6 inch thick rounded sides and solid bottom. These large jars litter fields in groups ranging from a few to about 250. They are from a kind of sandstone quarried from a nearby mountain. It is thought that the stone was cut in huge boulder size pieces and then taken in some way to the hill sites where they now sit and were carved there. It is thought that they are about 2000 years old, but there is no certainty about what they were used for. There are many theories, one being that they were used for storing wine another that they may have been sarcophagi and stored remains of people.
We left the guesthouse with our guide Yang, a wiry 20 year old with a wide tooth smile and a great sense of humor, the driver (Mr. C) and the three of us in the back seat of an at least 30 year old Russian jeep. We drove through rough uneven tracks of road, had to take a track around a closed off area with branches signaling it was impassable, and through loose sand and finally pulled into the area known as Site One after about a half an hour of roller coaster driving. We walked to the first site.. which was in a wide open space atop a hill and looked over another huge open field of more stone jars. This site was the one with the most jars and had about 250. The scenery of the gentle open rolling hills, the farmland with the dry rice fields, the wooden homes with thatched roofs dotting the hillside was a beautiful vista. We drove to the second site and Yang told us that we could walk from site 2 to 3, but it was up to us. We all decided that would be fine and started in on our 6 kilometer walk. Most of the jars are still upright as they sit pillowed in the surrounding earth after thousands of years atop the soil. Some have been broken by trees that have grown inside, some turned on their side with time. To look at these huge carved rock jars created an odd "gravelike" scene in the wide green fields. Luckily for us, our guide was Hmong and lived in the area. He told us that he was very familiar with all this area as he had walked his family cows and lived in this area all his life. He knew the paths and we were able to visit many more small sites of jars that he knew about but that the usual tour guides did not take people to. It was enjoyable to just walk the paths on the low green grassed hills and see the beauty of the land all around us. By the day's end we had walked well over 10 kilometers.
Equally amazing, but of a more recent nature was finding ourselves amid a former war zone. America bombed Laos in an "unofficial war" for more than 10 years. By the end of the bombing in Laos, the US had dropped 1.9 million metric tons of bombs over this small country--more than 1/2 TON for EVERY man, woman and child in the country in addition to killing one third of it's population. That made this the heaviest bombed country per capita in the history of all wars. Bombs were routinely dumped in this area every day. My driver back to the airport was 7 when this was going on. He lived in a cave during much of these years and said that the airplanes and bombings were just a part of each day. The legacy of these bombs is still felt each day some 35 plus years later. Many people try to recover and sell the metal (at $1 a pound it is lucrative to the Lao) but recovery of what are sometimes live ammunitions causes many deaths and injuries. There are many unintended injuries as well. Children through the years play with "bombies" (small fist like bombs that would be dropped in a cluster casing filled with 600-700) . About two thirds of these bombs would detinate on contact shooting out their hundreds of pieces of metal pellets, but one third did not. These bombies find their way in growing crooks of trees, in small stands of brush, under the soil enough to be hidden but detonated when they are hit by the hoe of a farmer. Still today, people are killed by these bombs and many are children. In the schools now, there is even a curriculum complete with songs to tell children about the dangers of unexploded ammunitions. Unfortunately, not all children attend school in this country and so not all are aware of the dangers unless told by family. As I looked over the far hillside, I could count about 15 bomb craters still visible. There were many more times that we walked in a village or through a fields that Yang would point out another bomb crater.. too many to count. For many years after the war the Lao were left with all this unexploded ammunition. When the Americans pulled out, there was nothing done about the bombies, the land mines, the mortar shells, the white phosphorous cannisters. The US has given some token amounts of money, but the big share today is funded by New Zealand with Australians working in the field with an organization called MAG (Mines Action Group). The group started working in 2004 to rid this area of UXO (unexlopded ammunitions) but it is said that if this group works at the pace they now are and continue to have funding it will be more than 100 years before this area is cleared. It is a painstaking process. First the metal detectors. If there is something detected.. and there is LOTS of shrapnel that is just junk and not live, but they cannot know that until it is dug up. If they do find a bomb under the ground, they must treat it as live and work to get it detinated safely so it is no longer a problem. On our way to site 2, we saw a group sweeping an area for UXO. In our three hours of walking later we heard three bombs go off. This meant that they had found and detinated three bombs in the small area they were working in on that day.
As we walked from one site to the next, the MAG teams have swept the paths for bombs and have placed red and white bricks in the ground to denote safe areas (within the white side) and areas not checked for bombs (beyond the red side of the brick). Yang informed us that now we were going on a path that had NOT been swept, but "he knew where to walk" and we did follow him in a tight line close behind. At one point, Dawn saw something peaking just above ground level in the path. Yang said yes, that is a land mine--but "no good any more". Along the way in our day we saw several more small missles laying in a small dugout hole with a stick protruding from the top "to warn people to be careful". The remains of one small explostion could be seen in the hard clay soil where clumps of soil was randomly thrown by the impact. Another elongated missle lay in the open at the trunk of a tree. Yang explained that the New Zealand team cannot be called for each one found. "There are just too many". They must wait till there are many and then the team will come to take care of them. Each day of their lives, people here live with the reminders of the millions of pound of bombs dropped on their land. With every step I took, even when I was in a safe MAG area, I thought about the UXO and how the people here live with this each day some 35 years after the last bomb was dropped.
We left the guesthouse with our guide Yang, a wiry 20 year old with a wide tooth smile and a great sense of humor, the driver (Mr. C) and the three of us in the back seat of an at least 30 year old Russian jeep. We drove through rough uneven tracks of road, had to take a track around a closed off area with branches signaling it was impassable, and through loose sand and finally pulled into the area known as Site One after about a half an hour of roller coaster driving. We walked to the first site.. which was in a wide open space atop a hill and looked over another huge open field of more stone jars. This site was the one with the most jars and had about 250. The scenery of the gentle open rolling hills, the farmland with the dry rice fields, the wooden homes with thatched roofs dotting the hillside was a beautiful vista. We drove to the second site and Yang told us that we could walk from site 2 to 3, but it was up to us. We all decided that would be fine and started in on our 6 kilometer walk. Most of the jars are still upright as they sit pillowed in the surrounding earth after thousands of years atop the soil. Some have been broken by trees that have grown inside, some turned on their side with time. To look at these huge carved rock jars created an odd "gravelike" scene in the wide green fields. Luckily for us, our guide was Hmong and lived in the area. He told us that he was very familiar with all this area as he had walked his family cows and lived in this area all his life. He knew the paths and we were able to visit many more small sites of jars that he knew about but that the usual tour guides did not take people to. It was enjoyable to just walk the paths on the low green grassed hills and see the beauty of the land all around us. By the day's end we had walked well over 10 kilometers.
Equally amazing, but of a more recent nature was finding ourselves amid a former war zone. America bombed Laos in an "unofficial war" for more than 10 years. By the end of the bombing in Laos, the US had dropped 1.9 million metric tons of bombs over this small country--more than 1/2 TON for EVERY man, woman and child in the country in addition to killing one third of it's population. That made this the heaviest bombed country per capita in the history of all wars. Bombs were routinely dumped in this area every day. My driver back to the airport was 7 when this was going on. He lived in a cave during much of these years and said that the airplanes and bombings were just a part of each day. The legacy of these bombs is still felt each day some 35 plus years later. Many people try to recover and sell the metal (at $1 a pound it is lucrative to the Lao) but recovery of what are sometimes live ammunitions causes many deaths and injuries. There are many unintended injuries as well. Children through the years play with "bombies" (small fist like bombs that would be dropped in a cluster casing filled with 600-700) . About two thirds of these bombs would detinate on contact shooting out their hundreds of pieces of metal pellets, but one third did not. These bombies find their way in growing crooks of trees, in small stands of brush, under the soil enough to be hidden but detonated when they are hit by the hoe of a farmer. Still today, people are killed by these bombs and many are children. In the schools now, there is even a curriculum complete with songs to tell children about the dangers of unexploded ammunitions. Unfortunately, not all children attend school in this country and so not all are aware of the dangers unless told by family. As I looked over the far hillside, I could count about 15 bomb craters still visible. There were many more times that we walked in a village or through a fields that Yang would point out another bomb crater.. too many to count. For many years after the war the Lao were left with all this unexploded ammunition. When the Americans pulled out, there was nothing done about the bombies, the land mines, the mortar shells, the white phosphorous cannisters. The US has given some token amounts of money, but the big share today is funded by New Zealand with Australians working in the field with an organization called MAG (Mines Action Group). The group started working in 2004 to rid this area of UXO (unexlopded ammunitions) but it is said that if this group works at the pace they now are and continue to have funding it will be more than 100 years before this area is cleared. It is a painstaking process. First the metal detectors. If there is something detected.. and there is LOTS of shrapnel that is just junk and not live, but they cannot know that until it is dug up. If they do find a bomb under the ground, they must treat it as live and work to get it detinated safely so it is no longer a problem. On our way to site 2, we saw a group sweeping an area for UXO. In our three hours of walking later we heard three bombs go off. This meant that they had found and detinated three bombs in the small area they were working in on that day.
As we walked from one site to the next, the MAG teams have swept the paths for bombs and have placed red and white bricks in the ground to denote safe areas (within the white side) and areas not checked for bombs (beyond the red side of the brick). Yang informed us that now we were going on a path that had NOT been swept, but "he knew where to walk" and we did follow him in a tight line close behind. At one point, Dawn saw something peaking just above ground level in the path. Yang said yes, that is a land mine--but "no good any more". Along the way in our day we saw several more small missles laying in a small dugout hole with a stick protruding from the top "to warn people to be careful". The remains of one small explostion could be seen in the hard clay soil where clumps of soil was randomly thrown by the impact. Another elongated missle lay in the open at the trunk of a tree. Yang explained that the New Zealand team cannot be called for each one found. "There are just too many". They must wait till there are many and then the team will come to take care of them. Each day of their lives, people here live with the reminders of the millions of pound of bombs dropped on their land. With every step I took, even when I was in a safe MAG area, I thought about the UXO and how the people here live with this each day some 35 years after the last bomb was dropped.
posted by Tracy at
1:01 PM
