On Tuesday, June 11, 2024 at 6:00 p.m. Michael Ambler of Restoration Laos will be at Kennebunk Free Library to discuss the work his organization is doing to clear bombs from villages in Laos.

 

From 1965 to 1974, 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 we dropped way back then didn’t detonate at the time, 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 this half-century old scourge. But the work is too slow: many villages will wait years or decades more for a bomb clearance team to arrive.

 

Restoration Laos 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.

 

Come join Michael Ambler, the head of Restoration Laos, to learn more about the Secret War, the damaged yet beautiful nation of Laos, and the work of Restoration Laos.