Video documenting the final departures from Ban Vinai camp in 1992 before it closed, including family and friends saying goodbye as the buses depart and the very last families waiting until the very end: a barber still working among the ruined buildings; a woman sewing pandau with smoke billowing behind her; an elderly man making metal spoons in his empty home.

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In the early 1990s I set up the Mobile Public Information Unit, a project operating in the Lao refugee camps, gathering and disseminating information about the refugees' options for the future: basically, resettlement in third countries or voluntary repatriation. The project was funded by UNHCR as well as the Catholic Office for Emergency Relief and Refugees (COERR), the Thai Chinese Refugee Service (TCRS) and the Dutch agency ZOA.

Using basic equipment (this was before computers and printers!) we published newsletters in Hmong and Lao, created mobile photo exhibitions and showed original video recorded in Laos using a giant TV screen on the back of a pick up truck. We were based in Ban Napho in Nakhon Phanom, but also travelled to Ban Vinai, Phanat Nikhom and Chiang Kham camps. Some of our information was aimed at the influential Hmong diaspora, especially in the United States.

Many of the videos we made in the early 1990s, including this one, were shot on a Sony Hi 8 Handycam and then transferred to VHS tape for editing. Even though the quality of the video isn't great by today's digital standards it still manages to capture these unique events.

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