Mozambique Diary
October 13, 2001
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On Operations:
My team has returned from our stand down period, we have started on a new minefield in Nangade District in the north of Cabo Delgado called Mandimba Barracks. The minefield is 452km from Pemba town and it takes us over 12hrs to drive to the site. This minefield was laid by the Portuguese in the late 1960’s early 70’s, the minefield reportedly contains M969 mines and we estimate the contaminated area to be 1500SqM. We deployed to the minefield on the 09th Oct. This is a very busy time for us because we have to construct our campsite, which includes erecting tents, collecting bamboo, wood and grass to construct fences, buildings for kitchens, food and fuel storage as well as eating areas. This is done concurrently with the mineclearance operations, so everyone is working very hard but when this is finished it makes our life here more comfortable.
So far we have located and destroyed 12 x M969 mines and cleared an area of 916SqM, I am concentrating on defining the boundaries of the minefield, when this is done I will then deploy all the deminers on the clearance of the defined area. There are no major obstacles for us to over come on this area as the vegetation is now dieing back which means the deminers have less cutting to do and there is very little metal contamination to hinder our detectors.
The weather is getting very hot here now, which makes our work harder and means that I have to keep an extra eye on the deminers as it makes their work a lot harder and more uncomfortable. However the rains will start soon which means our work periods will be disrupted then in January we will have heavy rains which will make some roads very difficult and dangerous to travel and other roads impassable, as a result we may have to suspend our operations here and move to another task.
On Life in general:
I am 22 years old and have worked for HALO since 1998 starting as a deminer and I have worked my way up to Team Supervisor. It is hard some times being away from my family, I have only been married for 1 year and have one son who is 6 months old but it is the same for all of us. If I had not got a job with HALO I would still be selling things in the market earning little money, but now I have a good wage with which to support my family.
This is a very exciting and challenging time for me as this is the first time that I have deployed with a team of my own as Joao Madomal has left the Team and is now in Angola training to work as a Supervisor for one of the Dog teams. I have also just passed the HALO EOD class 2 course, which means I have gained another qualification, which I would not have had the opportunity to obtain if I was not working for HALO.
Januario Camara
(Superviser)
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