Noimany Pialeuxay is MAG Lao’s first ever female driver, and the newest member of the all-female team in Xieng Khouang province.
She learnt to drive when just 12 years old, taught by her father, a driving instructor. “If he left the keys in the car, I would take it without asking and drive it around the garden!’ she recalls.
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"Our work really benefits communities" - Noimany Pialeuxay [photo: Nick Axelrod] |
Aged 18, she joined an elite club – women in Xieng Khouang with a driver’s licence. “At the time, other women were amazed that I could drive! But these days women drivers are becoming more common,” she says. Nonetheless, six years later, the club is still tiny. Her father has taught just 13 women.
“MAG was the first organisation in Lao PDR to recruit a female driver, and everyone was talking about it. I wanted to apply because I like driving,” says Noimany.
Several candidates were interviewed and tested. Noimany’s confidence impressed MAG Lao’s staff. “I’m not nervous driving a four-wheel drive car,” she says. “In the past I’ve driven a Russian six-wheeler truck!”
Xieng Khouang’s all-female team (one of two such teams operated by MAG Lao) was set up in early 2007 and is currently funded by the Japan-ASEAN Integration Fund (JAIF).
The team’s primary task is to clear unexploded ordnance (UXO) from agricultural land in rural communities. More than 30 years after the last bombs were dropped on Lao PDR, their effects are still being felt. UXO can explode if disturbed, causing injury and death. It also keeps people in poverty by preventing them from using land.
For these reasons, the team clears both existing farmland and land that will be used for new fields. In many parts of Lao PDR, rural communities are often afraid to expand the amount of land they grow rice and other crops on. By providing safe land, MAG improves food security. Farmers are able to grow sufficient food year round, and have an opportunity to produce a surplus which they can sell to provide a cash income.
Noimany’s main job is to transport the team to and from UXO clearance sites. The driving can be challenging. In this mountainous part of Lao PDR, many sites are only accessible on foot. Noimany must get the team as close as possible, which can involve navigating steep and slippery dirt tracks that wind through the hills.
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Xieng Khouang’s all-female team is one of two such teams operated by MAG Lao. [photo: Nick Axelrod] |
“Sometimes the mud is up to knee height,” she says. “But it doesn’t worry me.”
It is true that the mud is the least of the team’s concerns. “Most of the time you can’t see UXO as it is under the ground, so there is always some danger in our work,” says Noimany. She doesn’t know anyone herself who has been injured or killed by UXO, but in Xieng Khouang death is never far away.
“A few days ago there was a UXO accident just a few kilometres away from where the team is working,” says Noimany. “Three men died and three were badly injured. They were probably trying to dismantle a bomb to sell it for scrap.”
Scrap metal collection has become the main cause of UXO accidents in some parts of the country. Lao PDR is the most heavily bombed country, per capita, in the world. The result is that the quantity of scrap metal in the ground is enormous.
Since the steel, aluminium and copper can be sold for cash, collecting it is a tempting way of earning money in rural areas with few other options for earning a living. But collectors pick up both shrapnel (from bombs that did explode) and UXO itself. Accidents occur when they try to move items of UXO, or open them up.
Some people are so poor that they will risk their lives for tiny sums of money. A kilo of steel is bought from scrap collectors for as little as 2000 kip (£0.09 / US$0.18).
“We heard about the accident the other day because one of our team is from the same village,” says Noimany. “Her parents phoned her and told her to take care at work. The men killed were in their twenties, so I expect they were married and had children. Who will provide for their families now?” she asks.
“It makes me think that we have to work as hard as possible so that this problem does not exist in the future,” she says.
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Noimany’s main job is to transport the team to and from UXO clearance sites. [photo: Nick Axelrod] |
The team have cleared UXO from multiple sites across Nong Het district, finding and destroying grenades and mortars as well as BLUs (cluster bomb submunitions), the most common item found in Laos.
“Our work really benefits communities. In Nong Het, the next generation won’t have to face the same problems,” says Noimany.
Other changes are also taking place, albeit more slowly. Noimany says that some men cannot believe that women can carry out the demanding work of UXO clearance. “But that is one benefit of our team. When people see us at work, they realise that we can do it.”
“It was the same when I applied for this job. Some men said to me that I couldn’t do it, that I wouldn’t get the job,” she says. “But my husband is very proud that I have found a job with an international organisation.”
The team are close – they work and live together 24 days out of every month. “I got a warm welcome when I joined the team. We didn’t know each other before, but now we know everything about one another!
“In the car we sometimes sing together,” she continues. The team like traditional Lao songs, about love lost and love won. But they also like a song called ‘Women drinkers’ which praises women who do not drink alcohol. “It makes us laugh because we never have time to go out after work!”
MAG is providing English lessons for the team, so they study after work for two hours every night, and go to bed soon after, in preparation for another day of UXO clearance.
Noimany phones her husband and four-year-old son back in Phonsavanh, the provincial capital, before she sleeps. “My son tells me to do a good job,” says Noimany. She is clearly listening.
Links:
» More on MAG's work in Laos
» All-female team: profile
» High risk trade: Laos photo gallery
25 January 08
» Xieng Khouang’s all-female team is currently funded by the Japan-ASEAN Integration Fund (JAIF)
