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Dynamite words and photographs
By craig stennett
[[1L]]
It’s deployment day at the Halo Trust’s and an intense wilting African heat.
compound in Zimpeto district, north Helen Gray, a resourceful Scot brought
Maputo, Mozambique—a day that’s up on an East Lothian farm and now
fondly described in Portuguese, the programme manager for Halo (it stands
national tongue of Mozambique, as the for Hazardous Area Life-Support Or-
day of confusão. Halo is the world’s ganisation) in Mozambique, pulls into
oldest and largest landmine-clearance the compound in her Nissan pickup and
organisation and, today, 15 of 26 highly surveys the scene. What greets her is a
specialised teams working in Maputo blur of activity. Land Rovers and trucks
have just returned from their eight-day are being refuelled, tents and sleeping
leave and are about to embark on three bags are being loaded and stores are
weeks of living and working in one of emptied of food and the essential de-
Mozambique’s remaining 139 minefields. mining kit the teams will need for the
The atmosphere is tense because these three weeks they’ll spend in the field.
men and women work at what is widely After several hours they are ready
acknowledged as one of the world’s for deployment throughout Maputo
most dangerous jobs—de-miner. province and they leave the relative
It’s still the rainy season, but today safety of Halo’s compound.
there’s nothing but brilliant sunshine Helen has just returned from taking
Susan Eckey, deputy director-general
of the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, and
her accompanying delegation on a fact-
finding mission in the Halo minefields.
One of the two all-women teams Halo
employs had extended their days in the
field to accommodate the visit and will
now redeploy later in the week.
M I K E F O R S T E R / D A I LY M A I L / R E X F E AT U R E S
In January 1997, the last year of her
Section supervisor Onorio Manuel, 22, Onorio to join Helen 100 yards from
life, Princess Diana visited a Halo
meets Helen on our arrival. From the the blast zone—the distance deemed of a mushroom-shaped black plume of
minefield on the outskirts of Huambo
safety of the designated control point, safe for this type of landmine. smoke that pushes its way up into the
City, Angola. The pictures of her
he formally briefs her on the situation The minutes are counted down, then sky as the explosive charge and the mine
visit were seen throughout the world.
in the minefield. After the safety equip- the seconds as the detonation time itself are destroyed. Then it’s all over—
“Diana was visiting the
ment has been put on, Onorio primes approaches. The noise of the bang and in Maputo province there’s one less
International Committee of The
the pentolite explosive charge he needs hits you first, followed by the sight mine to worry about.
Red Cross in Angola when they RD
to destroy a Russian mine they’ve de-
suggested that she should visit one
tected near one of the pylons. This type
of our minefields,” Helen says.
of mine is designed to blow off not just Passion Killer
“She brought fantastic visibility to
a foot, but a whole leg. From a report in the Daily Mail about the Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne:
the need for humanitarian mine
“It’s Halo policy september
to destroy
2010 every “In the week he left his wife for a younger woman, his expenses reveal he claimed
clearance and the issue of mine use.”
mine and each piece of unexploded money for servicing an old boiler.” Submitted by Pam Collins, Coventry