Phongsavath Manithong

One afternoon a few years ago, my friends and I went to find our final test results for the first term of fourth class in high school. It was my sixteenth birthday.

We were walking down the road on the way to the school when my friend saw a small bulb. He didn’t know what it was. He picked it up and passed it to me. I didn’t know that it was a bomblet. I took it from him and tried to open it to see what it was. It detonated immediately. My friends ran back to our village to get help, and left me where I was, unconscious.

After I don’t know how long, my family arrived. They put me in a car and took me to the Vientiane Province hospital in Louksambouk. I woke there, fourteen hours later.

Eventually, the doctors amputated both my hands, because they had been so severely injured in the accident. My eyes were injured also. At first I could not see at all, but within time, fifty percent of my eyesight returned, only to deteriorate again. Now I am blind.

I spent one and a half months at the hospital. My family had to sell two buffalo for 120,000 kip, borrow 6,000,000 kip and use their entire life savings (about 16,000,000 kip) to pay for my medical care.

I am so sad because I cannot work to support my family, or myself. How can I?

I want to help People with Disabilities, and make sure that UXO are banned.
The world can be made a lot better.

“In the future, people will not be hurt by UXO. UXO will not affect socioeconomic development. The world will be safer and more peaceful.”