Michael Ambler, of Restoration Laos, will visit Kennebunk Free Library to discuss the work his organization is doing to clear bombs from villages in Laos. The discussion is scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 11.
Ambler
“From 1965 to 1974,” according to a May 17 press release, “the United States waged a secret war in the tiny Southeast Asian nation of Laos. Laos is adjacent to Vietnam, where we were fighting in an effort to prevent Communist North Vietnam from taking over non-communist South Vietnam. To try to cut North Vietnamese supply lines running through Laos, the U.S. secretly bombed the area. We dropped the equivalent of a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. Most of the towns and villages of eastern Laos were destroyed, and a generation of children grew up in caves. Laos is the most heavily bombed country in history.”
The war is not yet over for many people in rural Laos. About 30 percent of the bombs that were dropped didn’t detonate, and are deadly to this day. They still kill people, often children. They keep people living in fear. And they keep people poor, because they cannot safely use their own land to grow crops for sustenance and income.
Governments around the world, including the U.S. Government, support efforts to clear the bombs. But the work is slow: many villages will wait years or decades more for a bomb clearance team to arrive.
Restoration Laos, according to the press release, “accelerates the pace by funding a bomb team that otherwise would not exist. We find and destroy lethal bombs in the most remote and poorest areas of Laos so that villagers can once again grow rice, go to school, and live with safety and dignity.”
The program is free and wheelchair accessible. Kennebunk Free Library is located at 112 Main St. in Kennebunk. For more information, call 207-985-2173 or email kfl@kennebunklibrary.org.
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