Peacecycle

Ho Chi Minh City to Ankor Wat 25 February - 7 March 2010 462 km

The Legacy of Armed Conflict

After the battle, soldiers go home. But many of their weapons remain on the ground, waiting. These weapons, which no longer serve any strategic or tactical purpose, make it difficult, often impossible, for the local population to return to ordinary life. Every day landmines, UXO (unexploded ordinance) and other ERW (explosive remnants of war) are detonated by scrap metal collectors, farmers, curious children, even animals. It’s estimated that these weapons have caused more than 40,000 casualties since 1995.

What is MAG?

The Mines Advisory Group (MAG) was founded in 1992 to survey the extent of this problem in Northern Iraq. MAG quickly began to offer training and expertise to local communities who would then go on to do the dangerous and tedious work of clearing the munitions from their villages, fields, and wild areas themselves. MAG now works in 17 countries in Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Central America. (They have a great website, maginternational.org, filled with short videos and lots of downloadable reports and reviews.)

The Ride

Laos, Central Vietnam, and Eastern Cambodia were the most heavily bombed places on the planet. Now, more than 30 years after major conflict ceased, there are thousands of square kilometers that are still contaminated with ERW. The expertise and infrastructure are in place to clear this land. What’s needed is money. At the end of February, I’ll be riding my bike 300 miles across Vietnam and Cambodia as part of a fund raiser for MAG. We’ll depart from Ho Chi Minh City and ride West visiting small villages, war memorials, battle sites and areas that were cleared of mines years ago where the locals now grow rice. We’ll end our ride at Ankor Wat in central Cambodia, once the most extensive urban complex in the world, and now a UNESCO World Hertitage Site. After a day off, we’ll follow local demining teams as they interview villagers, map the mine fields, and clear the mines. Most of the group will then return home, but I’ll stay on for another week or so to visit with friends who run a small Buddhist chaplaincy in Phnom Penh, the Brahmavihara/Cambodia AIDS project .

Why I’ll Ride

Besides being a great political and moral cause, and a simple and direct way to help people, there is also something personal. I met Maha Ghosananda some time in the late 1980’s. Maha was the leader of the few Cambodian monks who escaped Pol Pot and the killing fields. He didn’t say alot, but he made a deep impression on me with his gentle smile and inexhaustable commitment to helping other people, not only ministering to the refugee community, but also taking the time to teach Western students as well. At that time he was returning annually to Cambodia to lead a peacewalk, the Dhammayietra, through very rural, very isolated, and very dangerous areas of Cambodia. I hoped to go with him one year, but, for reasons I can’t remember, I couldn’t get the trip together. Although I continued to see Maha occationally until he passed in March of 2007, another opportunity never presented itself. (Read more about Maha here.) So, in a more personal way, the ride is also a tribute to an extraordinary teacher, and a way to connect what he taught me to my life in the present moment.

How to Donate

As I mentioned above, what MAG needs is money. Each rider needs to raise $6000 to participate on the ride. That’s $20 per mile for the 300 mile trip. $6000 will train, equip, and employ a local deminer for one year. Please help me reach my fundraising goal! You could sponsor a number of miles or just send what you can. Any amount is appreciated. As a thank you, everyone who donates on my behalf is eligible to receive a cool T-shirt I designed (available in Men’s M, L, XL and Women’s M, L).

There are two ways to donate:

1. Send a check made out to me and I’ll bundle it with other donations and send it on to MAG.

RB Stewart
629 Smith St
Fort Collins, CO 80524 USA
gaelasdad@yahoo.com

(If you’d like a T-shirt include your size)

2. Donate directly to MAGInternational by credit card here.

Be sure to put my name and ’Vietnam to Cambodia Challenge Ride’ in the comments box. Then send me an email (gaelasdad@yahoo.com) telling me when you completed your transaction so I can track it, and, of course, tell me whether or not you’d like a t-shirt.

Please donate early.
The majority of my fundraising is due by December 18, 2009, but every donation will count toward my total!

And remember it’s 100% tax deductable. Thanks everybody!