The Laos problem is quite different to the mined countries problems, but it shares many of the same responses for dealing with such situations. Most of the ordnance found there are UXOs and 'bombies', which are set off mainly by striking and sometimes just by touching. But the awareness program put in place to try to encourage safe behaviour is similar in many ways to mine awareness programs operating in other countries.
Every 8 minutes during the 9 years from 1964 through to 1973, one plane load of bombs was dropped somewhere in Laos. Some of these bombs consisted of new prototypes of what later became 'cluster-bombs', and what the Laotians referred to as 'bombies'. The 'bombies' were small round bomblets which were designed to explode on impact, explode after a time delay and to explode when touched. Because they were still in the testing stage at least 30% of them were faulty and did not explode when they were designed to. Twenty years on and the 'bombies' are still a major threat to the communities.
The Mines Advisory Group (MAG) have started a Community Awareness program, which attempts to educate and change the peoples behavioural patterns. It is not an easy task as they are challenging some of the local peoples basic farming techniques. For example, if the people uses a hoe to dig a hole it is more likely to cause a 'bombie' to explode than if they use a shovel to do the same task. But because fo the ground being so hard it is much more difficult to break the surface using a shovel. In this case they have to try to encourage people to wet the ground first, although in some areas there is not always available water.
The MAG community awareness teams stay in one village for a period of one week. During this time they conduct formal lessons, have informal chat sessions, conduct school visits, map known locations of ordnance, report the surface ordnance for quick removal, show awareness videos and have night time performances.
MAGs mandate is to equip the local Laotian staff with the skills, confidence and capacity to continue this program by themselves as soon as is appropriate. (November, 1996)