XIENG KHOUANG PROVINCE, LAOS
The US spent seven billion dollars (almost $37 billion after inflation) on “The Secret War” in Laos, so-called because the government didn’t officially admit to it until 1997. Most of that money blew itself to smithereens, but at least some survived in the form of scrap metal from unexploded ordinance.

In a region like Xieng Khouang, which has been poor since anybody can remember, two million tons of steel falling from the sky is a big deal. Granted, it’s explosive, but cunning entrepreneurs can sell the scrap from one big munition for upwards of 150USD. That’s almost half the average Laotian’s yearly income.

When Western NGOs started to filter in after the war, particularly MAG, the value of scrap metal presented a huge problem. They offered to remove UXO for free, but the easiest way to do that was to completely destroy it and any possibility of making money. When people heard that they wouldn’t be getting the metal back they started keeping their unexploded bombs, occasionally blowing themselves up trying to defuse them. Luckily, somebody at MAG came up with the “low-order technique” – a method of dismantling explosive charges without destroying the casing.

Many of the towns scattered throughout the valley use defused bombs as plant pots, structural supports and decoration. It’s tempting to think about this as a way to make peace with the war, using these vehicles of destruction as tools to better communities, but I suspect necessity far outweighs metaphor. For certain, some people have intentionally made that connection (a few restaurants throughout the valley have displays of UXO), but it’s doubtful that poetic justice is a major motivation for building your chicken coop out of cluster bomb casings.