Remember the place I talked about COPE? Well when I visited back them, I was toured by my teacher's old college friend Xay(short). What he does now is well, he works at COPE and what he does is not as dangerous as digging for landmines and propping them out of the Earth. He actually goes down with his colleagues to villages to help fight against the issue. Now Laos isn't that big compared to other countries; I know because I actually went across Laos all the way from the northern part all the way to the bottom to cross over to Cambodia on my travels. However his job is to go all over to educate people to not go hunting for landmines on their own and to get support for the teams who should be the one who actually go hunting for them. Now before I start with the dialogue of our interview let me give you more about the situation of you would understand more about what Xay's job is actually about.
(Xay and his boss)Although landmines are dangerous, you would expect adults and children to stay away, sadly they aren't. In such poor countries such as Laos where Xay grew up and lives, villagers are still in need of money to prosper. Like how we would collect cans and recycle them for money, these villagers are trying to recycle any scrap metals they can including landmines. Children as young as your average elementary school kids are going around with metal detectors trying to find these bombs and disarm them themselves, only to lose their own arms. Why? Because what would any other good kid would do, just as parents don't want to see their children struggle, so goes the kids.
I originally wanted to interview my teacher but she couldn't really help with my topic. Luckily I have met Xay back in my travels. Fortunately for me too contacting him wasn't as hard thanks to modern day technology! I found him on Facebook using the email address my teacher have given me(I was afraid he may not check his email often) and was able to schedule a Skype session with him on November 23rd 2013. As a busy man as he is I only had one shot for a face to face interview so I had to plan out my questions carefully to get as much information as I could about my topic, and one by one I asked away until we were done. I won't go into the small chatter we had about reminiscing on the experience we all had in our travels together but I will display only the dialogue of the questions I asked. Here goes a fragment from the dialogue of the interview:
Me: "Alright, here is my first question for you. I know that you guys help people with lost arms and legs by creating fake ones for them, and rehabilitating them that's why you guys are called COPE right? But what is it exactly is your job?"
Xay: "Well I don't actually create any of the prosthetic, nor help any of the patients instead I have colleagues and I meet with them."
"What we do is create events and find sponsors to help fund our organization so we would be able to provide patients with free prosthetic and we want to spread the awareness of the dangers of landmines to everyone.
Me: "When you mean sponsor, what do you mean?"
(I knew what this meant, I just felt like I should ask)
Xay: "Donations, sponsorship, grants, or anything we can get that will help us fund for our projects and other events. Awhile back we had festivals, galas, and even a concert to raise awareness of landmines." (I asked for a couple of flyers which he emailed me)
Me: "It may be hard for me to understand this, but why raise awareness in your own country? I mean while growing up wouldn't your parents know better to warn you and tell you scary stories while growing up about being careful where you may go to play? Since it is your home area that is infested with landmines wouldn't the residence of that country already know better about the issue going around?"
Xay: "We try and reach out to other countries to get sponsorship, and maybe to collaborate on projects to help get teams to clear minefield in different areas around Asia. And yes while growing up my mother have always told me to not go into places I have not been to before. But other kids want to dig up the landmines for their families"
"We go into villages and spread awareness about the landmines and try to convince adults to keep themselves and their kids from digging up landmine for money"
Me:"How does digging up landmine give you money?"
Xay:"The villagers down to the south are very poor, here in Vientiane is the most industrialize city in Laos. To try and get money the kids would go get their dad's metal detector or find one and go look for these mines and use the scrap metal to sell for money since they can be recycled."
Me: "I see. Do you guys get a lot of injured patients going to COPE?"
Xay: "We get a good amount of patients, but we can get more. Not a lot of people have internet access like we do in the city. So we are trying to spread the word to villages and other countries so that we can help others and give them hope. Also if we can get enough funding we can try and create a system to go get those people who cannot come here on their own because they don't have no way or no money to see us."
Me: "Do you like your job? What is it like to work there?"
Xay: "Its okay. I have a lot of deadlines and meetings but it is not hard, it just take a lot of time to get done. Sometimes I work a lone in my office with one or two other people and once in awhile we all meet together and discuss our plans and what we all need to do."
Me: "Okay one last question, I know you don't look for landmines but how do you guys look for them"
Xay: "They use a metal detector and a sharp tool like a knife or screw driver. They go in groups with metal detectors and go through the road or sides through trees until they find something with their metal detector. Next they carefully sweep the dirt until they find the bomb, if they apply too much pressure by digging than they can activate the bomb. Then they take the knife and cut the side of the bomb and find the trigger and rip that out then cut the wires apart. That's it" (Sounds so simple...)
Me: "Is there an easier way to find these bombs? Like a new type of machine or something?"
Xay: "No a machine would be too heavy and active the bomb and I don't know what other machine there could be"
Me: "Well when I meant machine I didn't mean a car or anything but I meant like a stronger metal detector or anything?"
Xay: "I don't know."
Me: "Oh it's okay Thank you so much Xay! Keep in touch"
Xay: "No problem"
Skype Call Ended.
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