Bombhunters Movie Update

Filmmaker Skye Fitzgerald has been documenting scrap metal collectors that disable bombs for meager profits in South East Asia. (You can read more about CPI and scrap metal collectors in National Geographic and on Brita's Blog). His film is titled "Bombhunters" and he has been sending periodic updates to his emai list.

This is his latest dispatch from Cambodia:

Kompong Cham Province, Cambodia
View Map

February, 2005

"Swimming for Bullets"

The bridge spanning the river is long. From the middle, if you look down, you can see the twisted remains of three train cars that somehow found their way to the bottom of the ravine from the bank above. When we ask the Khmer man at the far side of the bridge how the train cars landed in the bottom of the ravine, he replies that this site was a former munitions storage area during the war. He does not specify which war. We notice he has an enormous pile of bullets under his hut.

There is a path along the south side of the river. We follow it 800 meters east of the bridge, and hear voices, and the splashing of water. We also smell TNT as we walk down the bank towards the river. About 50 yards away there are two small fires with a gaggle of small, nearly-naked boys huddling around the acrid flames, warming their hands. They smile as we walk up, and then run back down the bank and jump into the chocolate brown water of the river.



They dive beneath the surface and come up spluttering for air. Every once in a while, one of the boys reaches down, pulls a bullet from between his toes and tosses it onto the bank. The boys on the bank gather the bullets and drop them into ever-expanding plastic bags.
There are many plastic bags.
Four or five boys stand in the water, jabbing at the muddy riverbank with meter-long lengths of wire. They jab and listen. Jab-listen, hoping to hear the distinctive rasp of metal-on-metal. When they do, they plunge their arms into the thick brown mud, following the wire to the bullet buried deep in the bank. They wriggle their prize out, rinse and examine it and then laugh some more before dropping it into one of the plastic bags on the riverbank.
When the sun starts to retreat and the water is no longer tempting, the boys with the plastic bags carry them to a washed-up log. Several at a time, they pull the bullets out of the bags - AK47 rounds, revolver bullets, and even one or two large caliber machine gun rounds. Using sticks, and one rusted bayonet likely retrieved from the bottom of the river, they begin to hit the bullets. By holding each round firmly against the surface of the log with one hand while hammering at the tip and mid-section of the round with the other, it is possible to dislodge the head from the metal shell casing.
The boys regularly rotate the bullets on the log in order to get a better angle for the blow - though the bullets are often pointing right at them as they strike, or sometimes, right at us. If we notice in time, we stop filming, and turn the bullets away from potential victims. In the middle of this bustle of activity, one particularly mischievous worker successfully de-pants two other boys in the space of ten minutes. Everyone laughs, and then goes back to pounding. The bayonet is the most effective hammer, and all the boys want to use it. It takes several direct hits, but gunpowder soon leaks from the battered casings and the bullets roll loose.
When all the bullets are prepped and tossed into the plastic bags again, the boys gather their flip-flops and slip their way up the bank to the path above. They retrace their steps to the bridge and the man's hut with a pile of bullets below. One of the boys slides a portable scale from underneath the hut and they pile their bullets onto the scale, clamoring over one another to see how many kilos they have gathered. The boys weigh and calculate while the adults smile and laugh at the kids ingenuity. After several moments and a short conversation with the owner of the hut, it appears the price of metal is better with another buyer.
The boys turn and stride down the dusty road, swinging bags of bullets, and profit, in their hands.