Mangled arms, legs legacy of cluster bombs in Laos
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VIENTIANE — Novalee bounces up and down on his new artificial leg.
“Comfortable. Comfortable,” he says, smiling.
A cluster bomb blew off his real limb below the knee, leaving Novalee, 38, among the estimated tens of thousands of civilians around the world who have been killed or wounded by the weapons.
The Laotian Hmong man plans to tell his story at a conference that begins in the capital Vientiane on Tuesday. More than 1,000 government officials, charity workers, and survivors of the bombs will be aiming to speed up efforts to rid the world of cluster bombs.
Novalee lost his limb in 1992.
He had gone out to the rice fields of Bolikhamsay province when hunger hit and he decided to shoot a bird. He did not see the “bombie” that exploded at his feet.
As Novalee lay wounded for more than four hours, he thought he would die, he recalls through a translator at a local rehabilitation center.
Finally his father found him.
Novalee says he spent two-and-a-half years under the care of a village healer, and fashioned a homemade prosthesis out of bamboo..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101109com7.html
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