Clearing Safe Paths
Story and photograph by Geoff Turner, Information and Production Coordinator
“We knew about the landmines and were scared, but we had no choice,” says Kim Heourn, sitting outside her small house in Spoung, a village to the west of Cambodia, near the border with Thailand. MAG cleared safe paths through the village thanks to funding from ECHO, enabling fellow NGO, CARE, to build a water pump and filter pond, giving the villagers a clean supply of water for the very first time.
Kim Heourn is thirty seven years old and has lived in the village for six years. During the civil war her parents fled the country and lived in a refugee border camp in Thailand. When the family returned to Cambodia it took them a while to find somewhere to settle. “There was no chance of living anywhere else,” she says. Eventually, she moved with her husband and daughter and settled in Spoung with enough land to build a house and have a 30m x 60m plot for farming.
MAG’s work, alongside that of CARE, has had a huge impact on the villagers. Before CARE could get access to build the filter pond, the nearby river was the only source of water and was used by the villagers for bathing and sanitation as well as drinking, causing a lot of illness. Now water from the river is used mainly for watering the crops and never for drinking. “I’m really so grateful to MAG,” Kim explains. “I wish I could give something in return. Everyone here feels safer and we have access to clean water so we don’t worry about sickness anymore.”
(L to R) Nyn March, Nheoung Ny and Thu Yau pump fresh water from the filter pond in Spoung village
The residents of Spoung no longer live with the fear of death and injury that used to go hand in hand with carrying out such mundane and everyday activities as bathing and collecting drinking water. Sem Savy emphasises the point. She has lived in the village for five years and runs a small grocery store, where she lives with her husband and four children. “MAG has done a proper job here and I feel 100 per cent safe,” she says. “There have been no accidents in the areas already cleared, and I no longer fear for myself or my family while we’re walking along the paths of the village or working nearby.”
Between February and August 2005 a total of 2,460 sq/m were cleared by two teams. Thirty one landmines and thirty two items of unexploded ordnance (UXO) were found and destroyed.
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