Beating Bombs into Plowshares

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Not all arms conversion programs are institutional. In Laos, a Hmong smith named Lee Moua turns scrap metal from American bombs into gardening tools, Karen Coates reports in Orion (Nov./Dec. 2005). Some of the tools are sent to Hmong Americans who order his knives and hoes from overseas. The ingenious Moua's anvil itself is a repurposed artillery shell, and his bellows are fashioned from a parachute flare canister.

Almost every village in Xieng Khouang province has its own blacksmith doing similar work, Coates tells Utne: 'The local markets sell spoons, knives, soup bowls, and garden tools formed from old bombs, and every town has at least one or two scrap-metal shops. Much of that metal comes from old bombs, bullets, missiles, and even war planes or tanks.' Bomb casings are used throughout the Laos countryside for 'fence posts, animal feeding troughs, small bridges, planters, and even cooking pots,' Coates says.

Reclamation of scrap metal can be deadly, however. Coates notes in Orion that the U.S. military dropped 4 billion pounds of bombs on Laos between 1964 and 1973, killing at least 350,000 civilians, and that up to 30 percent of those bombs never detonated. Now they kill and maim every week as farmers plow fields, people tend yards, and children pluck from the ground things they think are toys.

The mortal balance seems everywhere precarious. In Mozambique, Hilario Nhatugueja, one of the creators of Tree of Life, speaks of changing 'instruments of death into hope, life, and prosperity.' Phnom Penh artists say that through their work they send a message that the Cambodian people love peace. In Laos, where an organization in charge of clearing mines is one of the country's biggest employers, gardening is risky business, but still imaginable.

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