Mozambique Diary
April 20 - 27, 2002
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On operations:
Team 11 has recently moved to a new task in Ancuabe district, Ancuabe is located in a central region of Cabo Delgado, it is 67km from Ancuabe to Pemba, and Pemba is the capital city of Cabo Delgado. The team is at the moment setting up the minefield. The minefield lays alongside the main road which links all the way down from north to south of Mozambique. There is too much traffic in this road but fortunately it does not disturb us too much, although some people sometimes slow down the speed others stop from a very long distance to watch us working.
We are still facing the problem of earth contamination, sometimes we have to stop working for ten or 20 minutes due the rain, apart of that the work is going well and we are destroying mines.
The life in general
I’m Juma Luatinho, 24 years old, I’m married, and we have two daughters. Our children don’t go to school yet because I have not saved enough money to pay their school fees. I have been working for The HALO Trust since 1999. Since I’m working for the HALO Trust I have noticed significant improvement of life. My main objective now is raise up enough money enroll my daughters in the school, if my life continues like as it is going now I’m sure they will go school next year.
When joined HALO Trust I was a deminer, I was a hardworking deminer everybody in my team appreciated my job, so I was promoted to trainee assistant supervisor after sometime I was again promoted this time to assistant supervisor. My responsibility in the team a very big now, I’m responsible for all the cases in the team, I have to be sure that everybody is ready to work and that all the equipment is clean neat and in good condition to be used, I have to check all the deminers lanes when they stop working verify the detectors and so on. I have to report everything to the team supervisor.
I’m now working harder I hope one day I will be a team supervisor. The relationship with my team- mates is not bad, but sometimes I have to be a bit rude to them. At the weekend we go walking in the village, the locals (men) do not appreciate this a lot because they think we go there to create trouble to them.
Juma Luatinho
(Assistente Supervisor)
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