Miss Dynamite

8/7/2019 Miss Dynamite

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Miss

Dynamite

Meet Helen Gray,30, from Scotland.This is her all-womenteam in Mozambiqueand they have oneof the most dangerousjobs in the world

w o r d s a n d p h o t o g r a p h s

B y c r a i g s t e n n e t t

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r e a d e r s d i g e s t . s e P t e M B e r 1 0

and an intense wilting Arican heat.

Helen Gray, a resourceul Scot brought

up on an East Lothian arm and now

programme manager or Halo (it stands

or Hazardous Area Lie-Support Or-

ganisation) in Mozambique, pulls into

the compound in her Nissan pickup and

surveys the scene. What greets her is a

blur o activity. Land Rovers and trucksare being reuelled, tents and sleeping

bags are being loaded and stores are

emptied o ood and the essential de-

mining kit the teams will need or the

three weeks theyll spend in the eld.

Ater several hours they are ready

or deployment throughout Maputo

province and they leave the relative

saety o Halos compound.

Helen has just returned rom taking

Susan Eckey, deputy director-general

o the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, and

her accompanying delegation on a act-

nding mission in the Halo mineelds.

One o the two all-women teams Halo

employs had extended their days in the

eld to accommodate the visit and will

now redeploy later in the week.

Hlo, o-profit o-govermetlorganisation, has its head oce in Dum-

ries, Scotland. It deployed its irst

de-mining team in Mozambique on

February 20, 1994, and has now declared

the countrys six northern provincesmine-reeater exploding more than

100,000 minesleaving only the south

to be made sae.

Ater nishing her BSc in biology

and anthropology at Durham University,

Helen worked or the Scottish Sea Bird

centre and then as an expedition guide

Its deploymet dy t the Hlo Trusts

compound in Zimpeto district, north

Maputo, Mozambiquea day thats

ondly described in Portuguese, the

national tongue o Mozambique, as the

day oconfuso. Halo is the worlds

oldest and largest landmine-clearance

organisation and, today, 15 o 26 highly

specialised teams working in Maputohave just returned rom their eight-day

leave and are about to embark on three

weeks o living and working in one o

Mozambiques remaining 139 mineelds.

The atmosphere is tense because these

men and women work at what is widely

acknowledged as one o the worlds

most dangerous jobsde-miner.

Its still the rainy season, but today

theres nothing but brilliant sunshine

A day in the lie: the de-miners

must pack enough provisions to

last them or 21 days in the feld

(let); a typical day starts at

6am (top); clearing a path to the

minefeld itsel (above)

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goes back to the local community, and

you can return in a ew months and see

maize growing or the houses or schools

that have been built there. The landmine

problem has goneor ever. You dont

get that sort o reward in many jobs.

Learning to be a de-miner is painstak-

ing work. Helen remembers her rst

day: I really wanted to nd a mine. For

saety reasons, the drill we learn is sys-

tematic and repetitive. But, as Id done

all the training, I didnt want to nd a

metal signal with the detector and then

spend 20 minutes careully scraping

and excavating my way towards a coke

can! I wanted to nd a mine.

Its this level o commitment that

allowsHelen and her sta to tackle the

mine clearance Mozambique so des-

perately needs. A country that ater 20

years o struggle with Portugal aced

an internal civil war between Frelimo

(the Liberation Front o Mozambique),

now the government, and Renamo (the

Mozambican National Resistance party),

which was secretly backed by Rhodesia

and later South Arica. An eective

cease-re came into orce on October

15, 1992, and it has stuck to this day. Its

legacy, however, was 900,000 deaths,

ve million displaced persons and an

estimated 200,000 landmines deployed

by all sides in the confict.

Levig the ompoud Hele jois the

road west o Maputo, driving or an

hour towards the South Arican border.

We arrive at one o the equipa de meni-

nasmineelds or girls sections. The

women are working in a mineeld near

the old electricity pylon route.

in Perus threatened rainorests. Back

in Britain she speculatively sent her CV

to Halo. Her neighbour had told her

about the organisation and shed already

decided she wanted to work in a hu-

manitarian eld.

Helen has worked or Halo since

2004when she was just 24doing

her initial six-month training in Cabo

Delgado, on the northern border o

Mozambique, in the mineelds laid by

the Portuguese back in the early 1970s,

when the country was ghting or its

independence rom Portugal. She then

worked in Angola, but returned to Mo-

zambique in January 2008. In February

last year she was asked to run the coun-

trys operations, with responsibility or

all its 370 sta and a budget o 1.8 mil-lion, just over hal o what she needs i

Mozambique is to hit its 2014 target to

become completely mine-ree.

My job gives me tremendous

satisaction, Helen says. Its brilliant

to be able to send de-miners to an unsae

area to clear the land. That land then

Let and top:

the charge and

use that will be

used to destroy

a Russian mine.

Above let: Helen

Gray supervising

the delicate work.

Above right: Claudia

Matsinhe, de-miner,is also a single

mother with a six-

year-old daughter.

Right: this plume o

smoke means that

the detonation has

been successul


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o a mushroom-shaped black plume o

smoke that pushes its way up into the

sky as the explosive charge and the mine

itsel are destroyed. Then its all over

and in Maputo province theres one lessmine to worry about.

ordnance we discover, Helen explains

as she monitors Onorios progress.

Then we know its gone or all time.

The two walk slowly into the mine-

eld, the sae zones being clearly marked

by red-tipped sticks in the ground. I

youre inside these markers then youre

sae, says Helen.

They solemnly pass the skeletal re-

mains o two individuals whose deaths

in this mineeld passed without cere-

mony long ago.

They were probably trying to steal

metal, then stepped on one o the mines

planted here, but managed to crawl o

only to die here alone. Theyre not

rom this area, so their bodies havent

been claimed. Were deciding with the

locals what we should do with them

once weve completely cleared this

area, she comments.

A whistle blows, giving the signal or

the whole team in the mineeld to with-

draw to a sae distance as Onorio lays

the charge. You always do this part

alone, Helen explains. One man, one

risk. A use that will burn or ve min-

utes has been chosen, ample time or

Onorio to join Helen 100 yards rom

the blast zonethe distance deemed

sae or this type o landmine.

The minutes are counted down, then

the seconds as the detonation time

approaches. The noise o the banghits you rst, ollowed by the sight

been trained to ollow to stay alive.

The women wear ballistic visors and

kevlar fak jackets and systematically

cover the land inch by inch with metal

detectors. Since lapses in concentration

could be atal, they take a ten-minute

break every hour.

The rst womens section was ormed

within Halo in 2007. The perception

in Mozambique was that de-mining was

a job done by men, says Helen. When

we were recruiting, we clearly stated

that applications were welcome rom

both women and men, and we ound

that many women applied. Theyve done

incredibly well and some have been

promoted through our system.

Helens mobile is ringing; when she

answers shes inormed that theyre

ready or the destruction o a landmine

at Mubobo mineeld a mile or so away.

Mubobo is the most heavily mined area

remaining in Maputo province. The

Frelimo government laid it during the

civil war to impede sabotage o the vital

pylons providing the capital, Maputo,

with its electricity supply.

Setio supervisor Oorio Muel, 22,

meets Helen on our arrival. From the

saety o the designated control point,

he ormally bries her on the situation

in the mineeld. Ater the saety equip-

ment has been put on, Onorio primesthe pentolite explosive charge he needs

to destroy a Russian mine theyve de-

tected near one o the pylons. This type

o mine is designed to blow o not just

a oot, but a whole leg.

Its Halo policy to destroy every

mine and each piece o unexploded

The ten-strong team has been awake

since 4.30amwork starts in the mine-

elds at rst light at 6am, nishing at

1pm in the aternoon. The working day

is dictated by the need to avoid the worst

o the heat. Nevertheless, temperatures

can get into the late 30s C, producing

a punishing environment in which

its hard to maintain physical strength

and concentrationboth crucial or

de-minersalong with the strict adher-

ence to all the procedures they have

Domigs Lrimos Li Dis,

28, a Halo supervisor, says: We

work here to rid our country o

mines. I eel proud as a woman to be

doing this job. It was seen as mens

work, but I am proving otherwise.In January 1997, the last year o her

lie, Princess Diana visited a Halo

minefeld on the outskirts o Huambo

City, Angola. The pictures o her

visit were seen throughout the world.

Diana was visiting theInternational Committee o The

Red Cross in Angola when they

suggested that she should visit one

o our minefelds, Helen says.

She brought antastic visibility to

the need or humanitarian mine

clearance and the issue o mine use.

HaLO IcOn

RD

Passion KillerFrom a report in the Daily Mail about the Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne:

In the week he left his wife for a younger woman, his expenses reveal he claimed

money for servicing an old boiler. Submitted by Pam Collins, Coventry

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