Enterprising folk in Laos reuse and resell US bomb casings to rebuild their cities.

Laos is a small landlocked country in Southeast Asia. It borders China, Cambodia, Burma, Thailand and Vietnam. During the Vietnam war it was subject to an extensive bombing campaign carried out by the US military, in an effort to restrict communist forces from entering Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Over the period of 9 years, the US dropped some 2 million tons of bombs on eastern Laos. Little did they know that, almost 40 years later, these bombs would be used by the local Laotians to supplement their income and provide much needed material for tools and implements.

From small shards of shrapnel to complete unexploded ordnance, the local population have been collecting and converting the war scrap for years now. Touring the country will yield images of villagers using flare canisters to store rice, or houses propped up on bomb casings. In one village, over 100,000 spoons have been made from aluminium collected in the nearby fields.

But, the biggest source of income is through villagers selling the scrap metal to local foundries. Here the bomb casings and other assorted metal detritus is melted down and cast as lengths of rebar.

Ironically, this rebar is then used in the construction of new buildings in Laos, many of which replace those destroyed by the bombing campaign.