A Young Boy in a Dangerous Job

This weekend all of us at CPI here in Vietnam went on a staff retreat to Ba Na. Ba Na is a beautiful location high in the mountains above Da Nang. I am sure one could see for miles from where we were... but our timing was bad and we were surrounded in pea soup fog... visiblity was about 20 feet, tops. Regardless, the CPI staff is a fun bunch and we had a good time in getting away from the office for a couple of days.

On our way back down the pass on Sunday morning, we saw a young boy walking down the mountain with an inexpensive metal detector strapped in a feedbag that he had made into a backpack. Knowing what he was up to, we stopped the CPI truck to talk to him.

Many people in this region collect scrap metal that lies in the ground from the war here. Not just old bomb fragments... but live bombs as well. The fragments are sold as is or the live bombs are dismantled and defused and the the bomb casing sold as scrap. This is as dangerous as it sounds and we gain a lot of beneficiaries this way.

We inspected what the boy had in his "backpack" and asked him if he knew how dangerous it is to do what he was doing. He said yes, but he was not afraid and he does it every morning before school. He makes about a dollar from this work on a good day.

We told him to be careful, as there is little we can do to stop such a thing, and that if he ever found a live bomb to leave it where it is and not try to scavenge it. Duc then gave him a business card and told him if he ever is injured doing this work he should have his family call us. We told him we hoped that we never had to meet under such circumstances. I hope we gave him pause.

We drove off and only a couple hours later we received a report of another thirteen year old boy being nearly killed while trying to scavenge metal from an old bomb in Hue.... it seems to never stop here.

We will visit him on Wednesday.