SITKA, ALASKA
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:””;
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”;
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
Mark Gorman’s retirement was cut short by the earthquake in Sumatra that struck on his last day of work at SEARHC. A week after turning in his keys, Gorman was in Padang, working for a Los Angeles-based NGO called Relief International.
Now, Gorman’s “retirement” has taken him to another part of the world. He’s been living in Vientiane, Laos, since May, working on a two-year contract for World Education.
This Boston-based NGO has been in Laos since 1992 providing victims’ assistance and mine risk education.
Speaking from his office in Vientiane via Skype, Gorman says the scale of the bombing that took place in Laos is almost unimaginable.
“During a nine-year period, there were bombing runs over Laos every nine minutes. Bringing that home to Sitka, that would be about 132 flights a day landing at our airport around the clock for nine years.”
That nine-year period was during the Vietnam conflict, when the US engaged in a widespread – and mostly secret – bombing campaign in Laos and Cambodia in an attempt to prevent the movement of Viet Cong along the Ho Chi Minh trail.
Much of the ordinance used in the bombing are known as “cluster munitions” – a large bomb that carries between three- and five-hundred “bomblets,” each about the size of a tennis ball.
The Lao government estimates that there are 80 million unexploded bombs in the fields and forests of the country. There are roughly 300 accidents a year involving unexploded ordinance – called UXO’s. Gorman says he was in a northern province recently to visit two boys, an eight-year-old and a fourteen-year-old, who had been wounded by cluster munitions while farming.
Gorman himself has two boys. He says the visit caused him to reflect on the origins of the bombs, and the impersonal nature of war.
“Probably was manufactured in a munitions plant, probably in the Midwest forty five years ago, by someone earning an honest living, caring for his or her family. And not recognizing the consequences of that work and not really being accountable for it. Where is that person today, who created the cluster munitions? Where are his or her grandkids? It was an ‘ahah’ moment for me, because I think we all have a global responsibility – and I’m not putting that responsibility on the munitions worker in the United States — but we in this global community are often so detached from our actions and the consequences they bring to others around the globe. It was a moment of thought that kind of took my breath away.”
World Education’s efforts to assist victims and educate a generation of children who may not even have heard of the Vietnam conflict is funded by multiple sources, including the US State Department and the Bureau of Weapons Removal and Abatement. Gorman says he has a staff of twenty-five, some of whom also work on micro-finance and cultural revitalization projects.
Gorman says there are another dozen organizations involved in actually trying to clear unexploded bombs from Laos.
Nevertheless, the US is not a signatory to the Convention on Cluster Munitions drafted in Oslo last year. One-hundred and eleven nations signed the pact, which went into effect in August of this year. Laos was the first to sign.
Gorman believes that the US and a number of other nations, including Israel, India, and China think that there is still a strategic role for cluster munitions.
Gorman says the Lao people themselves do not dwell on the past.
“They live very much in the present. It’s a Buddhist culture and I’ve only encountered anger once, and heard of anger in Laos a couple of times. A month ago I was up in northern Laos, and I was speaking to an older gentleman who was about 65 years old, a former Buddhist monk in one of the most heavily-bombed areas of Laos. And I said ‘What were you doing during the war?’ ‘I was a monk and I was living in my wat (a Buddhist temple).’ And I said ‘Did you experience any of the bombings?’ ‘Oh yes. We were bombed everywhere, and our wat was bombed as well.’ I asked him how he felt about the Americans today. He said ‘That was a government, not a people. The people of America are good people.’ And I thought that was a generous spirit. I don’t know how many of us could be that kind and forgiving.”
Gorman’s wife, Nancy Knapp, is also in Laos working as a consultant for the Ministry of Health. She’s on a leave of absence from her job at SEARHC, and will be back to work in February.
Both Gorman and Knapp have extensive backgrounds in relief. He says every once in a while there’s an awkward moment when someone compliments them for the work they do – which they invariably shrug off. “We are the lucky ones,” Gorman says, “We are enriched every day by this experience.”
© Copyright 1970, Raven Radio Foundation Inc.
