Vietnam

Heather visited Vietnam on behalf of No More Landmines and the Mines Advisory Group (MAG) to meet the people affected by the scourge of landmines and to help raise funds and awareness of the landmine issue. Many villagers had been injured and required treatment and were waiting to move back to their land once the charity had cleared the area of landmines. Heather visited Quang Tri Province, near the former Demilitarised Zone that separated North from South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. This area is one of the most mined areas in the world. The problem is that the people need to grow rice in the fields and vegetables in the gardens, so they work the land despite the risk to life and limb. Accidents are frequent, some 2,000 women, men and children are injured or killed every year. Lai Ly did not sit around and complain. She hoped that luck would be on her side, which is why she named her 6-year-old daughter Dueng (which means fate) and her 3-year-old son Tinh (which means love). In 1972 her family had to leave Quang Tri Province when the fighting around there turned particularly ugly. They finally returned in 1997, but found that the only piece of land they could afford was in the middle of a minefield, right where the US firebase Charlie One was located during the war.

Everybody thought Lai Ly was crazy. She was very lucky. For four years, Lai Ly lived with her husband, father and two children amongst the mines hoping and praying that they would not go off, and thankfully nothing ever happened. Of course they were terribly worried, and Lai Ly's father moved countless mines and pieces of unexploded ordnance away as he prepared the area for the house and the fields. When the British mine clearance organization MAG finished clearing the area around her house in 2001, they had found more than a thousand mines and 7,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance. Two of these mines had been sitting right next to Lai Ly's kitchen. It was a miracle they did not explode. When Lai Ly saw the MAG team working around her house, she decided that she wanted to be part of this important work and help to make life safe again for the people of Vietnam. So she joined the MAG team as one of several female de-miners in 2001. Since then she wakes up every morning to go and clear the mines. Lai Ly does not consider herself brave. On the contrary, she says now that she is trained as a de-miner, she does not have to be afraid of landmines anymore, because she knows exactly how to deal with them.

On this trip, Heather also met Suong, an 8-year-old girl who was out playing with her friends one day when they found a piece of unexploded ordnance. There was a big bang, and Suong does not know what happened next. She just knows that ever since, she has not gone to school and the splitting headache from the piece of shrapnel lodged in her head has become a part of her. It costs just $1,000 to remove it, but that is far beyond what her family can afford.

Heather's trip was shown on UK national television, on the Tonight with Trevor McDonald show, to raise awareness and funds for the people of Vietnam.

Heather now works behind the scenes counseling amputees and the victims of landmines. No more landmines mine clearance operations, mine risk education programmes, mine clearance training and mine detection dog training programmes have been taken over by the Mines Awareness trust.

To learn more about Mines Awareness Trust please visit www.minesawareness.org for more information.