Don't Follow My Lead

Back on the horse Robert.  People need you.  So I say so to myself.

It’s hard sometimes to write, because sometimes you have a blog post that you want to get out there, but you don’t have the time to do the research to do it justice, and such is the case in this blog about Laos.

I have left Laos over 10 days ago I think, and still this post has been haunting me since then.  Making it harder to move on to more current updates.  It has to do with a museum, small little museum in Vientiane, the capital of Laos.

As far as capitals in the world goes, Vientiane is very underwhelming,  the night market was very repetitive, the food ok.  Overall, if someone was to ask me, should I go to Vientiane?  My answer would be, not really, however if you do have a few hours of your time in the city I would recommend going into the COPE museum.  That is, if you can find it first. Is not really a museum, but more like a room with some exhibitions on it.  It’s free and it survives on donations and fundraisers.

So what is COPE? To answer that, I need to give a little of history lesson.  One I didn’t know myself until I was in Laos.  You see, Laos has the sad record of being the MOST bombed nation in the world.  More than Germany in WWII, more than Vietnam, more than Korea.  During the Vietnam war, Laos was a neutral country, albeit with communist ties.  And they supported the Vietnamese communist movement.   The USA in order to stop the influence of Laos in the Vietnam war, they decided to secretly bombed the previously-declared neutral country.  And they did, for 9 years, at an average of a bomb being dropped every 8 minutes.   Unfortunately, is a black eye in US, since they denied for years that they were doing this, and ultimately it had very little effect in the overall effects in the war.  A better person with a history degree can provide a more detailed account of this events and the complexities of them, but after doing some research, it seems that all this facts do add up.

Which brings me to COPE.   COPE is an organization that strives to provide prosthetics to the people that TODAY are still being affected by the effects of this bombs.  Because not only were this bombs dropped, but a lot of them didn’t explode, so they are still in the ground, and when farmers working on their lands can ignite this bombs, kids trying to find scrap metal will try to dig the bombs for the metal might (have) detonate this old bombs.   Many losing limbs or worse lives.  COPE helps those affected by this bombs.  Is very somber reality and very respectful work this organization does.  They don’t receive money from the government (or very little if they do).  The exhibition is small but powerful.  It makes your heart ache for those affected by events that happened over 40 years ago.

COPE is housed within the Center of Medical Rehabilitation, one of the hospitals in the capital.   You don’t see many signs until you are there, so is not easy to find.

Prosthetics have been used, created or outgrown by the kids.

Exhibit of the cluster bombs used during the attacks on Laos, the bigger bomb would relase about 75 small grenade size bombs

Closeup of the bomb inside the cluster bomb