The Landmines of Kamrieng Commune

It's a guy thing, this love David has for things that crash and blow up: tipping over towers of building blocks and cheering mightily as they tumble to the floor, or watching stock cars collide in flames in NASCAR race films, or hurling toy trains from toy bridges. He shares this crashing fascination with other boys his age. He loves this stuff.

But when the crashing and blowing up are over, David gets up and asks for cheese puffs and chocolate soy milk. Snacks, not catastrophes, have the final say. All this crashing stuff is a small part of a larger story in which life goes on.

On the other side of the world, in Kamrieng Commune in Cambodia, six-year-olds like him share his fascination with exploding things--with one important difference: Kamrieng is strewn with landmines once planted by the Khmer Rouge and by the government.

There, boys throw stones at what seem like toys, the winner being the one who detonates the mine. What would otherwise be a typical boyhood fascination, far from ending in a snack, can sever limbs and sear flesh. The larger life-over-death story does not emerge--at least not there, not yet. In Kamrieng, life does not necessarily go on.

Add to this the physical hunger and poor nutrition resulting from the mine-pocked fields. Kamrieng borders a jungle and the soil is perfect for growing yellow corn. But farmers can be suddenly maimed or killed by the exploding mines. So the black, rich soil remains untilled while families do without proper food.

Someday the landmines will be cleared from Kamrieng, and the larger story will re-emerge. Severed limbs, seared flesh, and diminished lives will no longer have the final say. People will regain their trust in the typical thrills of boyhood and the soil that gives life to an incredibly beautiful land. Life will go on as it did before.

But not yet. Right now, there's too much work to do.