The Group Visits Nghia and the CPI School

Wolfgang Brolley is travelling with CPI co-founder Imbert Matthee and visiting CPI project sites in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand

This morning we had the pleasure and pain of visiting brave Nghia ~the young lad that has lost both feet and his left hand to old, but horrifically viable ordinance (see video of Nghia here). His new, brilliant red wheelchair was parked outside his home�s entrance. Loss, pain, grief and brokenness line the life-worn face of his diminutive father -- just as painfully obvious is the inescapable and unaddressable loss of spirit. My heart broke as it does every time that I have the privilege of meeting one of our beneficiaries. The barren tragedy of such inappropriate and devastating injury ~all stemming from the natural curiosity of a young boy to open some shiny thing he finds~ wiped me out. I have no ability to reconcile that shortfall in the cosmic balance sheet � kids must have the right and freedom to PLAY! It is an accounting evidenced to be even more wildly out of whack when I squatted down next to the father to explain the importance to him of correct positioning and regular exercising of his son�s residual limbs. I patted his leg only to find that he too had a below knee amputation, and then I was told that his father (Nghia�s grandfather!) had been an amputee landmine survivor. Three generations of limb loss � all due to these sickening objects of destruction that remain so malevolently potent years longer than many human lives last in this beautiful country.


As our day wound down we breathed back in some of the reckless (as it should be) joy of kids being their totally unselfconscious, silly selves at the school that CPI made possible (in part by clearing 550 UXO out of three acres of land) near the CPI office in Dong Ha. Visiting last year, we found a sparkling, spanking new school � but it was empty and silent � we had been greeted by the lone and lonely caretaker. This year, the grounds bubbled over with young boys and girls swatting at each other with their hats, practicing their crazy kung-fu inspired rough-housing, and chasing whoever might be �it�, unless they were totally clowning for us and our way too inspiring cameras!

Every classroom was filled, the kids (until we opened the gates of visitor sanctioned bedlam) studious and immaculately well behaved. For me, this was true �swords into plowshares.� The school, the kids, and our group were all standing around not wasting too many thoughts on the fact that 4 years earlier one misstep could have cost any one of us a limb. Now, I couldn�t spy a single amputee in the crowd. That ~in this country~ is a beautiful thing.

May it ever be so.

Much love to all humanity,

wolfgang brolley