Barely one hour after arriving in Vientiane, Vanes found herself with a baby on her lap...
...and Annemarie got a new best friend.
After India we noticed that we had arrived in quite a different country! Chai is replaced by Lao Beer and women hang out in bars and have fun.
Quite another side of Laos life, we found by visiting COPE, a center that builds and distributes prostheses to victims of cluster bombs. During the Vietnam war, Laos was 'secretly' bombed by the US army. It is supposed to be the heaviest bombed country in the world; 2 million tonnes of ordnance have been thrown on the country, that wasn't even officially in war. Many of the bombs didn't explode, especially cluster bombs: 30% doesn't explode directly. Even after the war 20.000 people have become victims of old bombs exploding. Mainly farmers, and children and adults looking for metal scrap to sell to metal dealers for relatively good money.
Art made out of UXO (unexploded ordnance).
Rockets found by UXO Laos, an organization that clears land from UXO. Still nowadays great areas of Laos are unsafe because of UXO. This means they cannot be accessed and this hinders the (agricultural) development of the country.
No comments:
Post a Comment