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Six-year-old Maithao’s cheeks are blushing pink from running around the school playground, and the freckles on her nose light up as she smiles.

She wraps her arm around her three-year-old sister Pahoa Moue, who shares the same fair features and sweet smile.

“I love going to school,” Maithao (pictured above) says. “It lets me play and have friends.”

It’s Maithao’s first year at the new early childhood school in Homsai village, where she lives, in remote eastern Laos.

The school, built with the support of ChildFund Laos and the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP), helps more than 30 children from poor families in the village, including Maithao and Pahoa Moue, prepare to enter primary education.

While Maithao is one of the older students in her class, she is grateful to be surrounded by other children around her age and finally have the opportunity to learn and play.

Before the school was built last year, Maithao spent her days on the family farm with her parents, helping them pull weeds and grow rice and corn.

“Sometimes, we had to stay at the farm for many days before coming back home,” Maithao says.

“I am very happy that I have started going to school. I can play in the playground, with the toys and my friends, and I can learn.”

For more than four decades, Paye and his family struggled to grow food because unexploded bombs dotted his one-hectare farm in northern Laos.

“When I was farming, I often found bombs and I didn’t know whether they were still destructive or not, so it made me scared and doubtful all the time,” Paye said.

“I never dug the soil because I was afraid to dig up unexploded ordnance.”

Laos is the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. Unexploded ordnance (UXO) around Nonghet has left the community in fear and it is difficult to farm and build in new areas.

Families such as Paye’s, who have used the same land for generations, have not been able to fully capitalise on their farms.

“I have seen many people in the village die from UXO explosions,” Paye says.

“I always have to be conscious when I do anything, such as going into the forest, farm, garden, or making fires anywhere other than my house.”

Children in bomb-contaminated regions such as Nonghet have high levels of malnutrition and face the daily risk of death or injury from unexploded ordnance.

 

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