But the province, now at peace, does provide opportunity. Villages are springing up wherever road improvements are made. People are homesteading regardless of the risk of land mines and buried bombs or the fact that there is no infrastructure to support them. I learned a great deal in a short period of time traveling the dusty rutted roads of western Battambang Province. Bob and I traveled there to address the problems of land mines, but we discovered that problem was only one thread interwoven through the harsh fabric of living on the fringe of life.
Land mines are a threat, but so too is malaria and drought.
Everywhere we went the story was the same. Moving back onto the land was risky, but the risk had to be taken. Like any disease, mines are a part of that harsh environment influencing all the other factors. Mines and unexploded bombs prohibit the digging of wells, the improvement of irrigation systems, the expansion of agricultural land. Schools and health centers can not be built and if they could, getting to them might be a problem.