Angolans saving lives one land mine at a time

By Craig Timberg
The Washington Post

CRAIG TIMBERG / WASHINGTON POST Antonio Cambanda digs near a red sign marking a land mine he found earlier.

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He was searching not for bulbs but for land mines. After four decades of nearly continuous civil war that ended in 2002, an estimated 500,000 mines remain sown in Angolan soil, waiting to detonate with an unlucky step.

For $163 a month, or about $7 each workday, Cambanda seeks out mines, inch by perilous inch. His is one of the few readily available jobs in a postwar economy that employs fewer than half of Angolan adults.

"I'm not just here making money," said Cambanda, 30, a slim, serious man who is married, has two children and dreams of becoming an engineer. "I'm also saving lives."

His gear is minimal: a shovel about the length of his forearm, a second one the size of a beach toy, a black water bucket, pruning shears and two sticks to measure the width and depth of the shallow trenches he digs in the minefield.

For protection, he wears Kevlar body armor and a clear plastic shield to safeguard his face. His hands, which come closest to the mines, are covered only by white cotton gloves.

Most of the mines here were supplied by Cuba, remnants of the support given by that country to the Angolan government — then avowedly communist. The Cubans laid the first mines in this field in 1980, when they had a military base here, according to the Halo Trust, an aid group based in Scotland that employs Cambanda and 530 others doing similar work in Angola.

The Angolan military added more mines to this field in 1988 and 1992, according to the trust.

Even small land mines contain enough explosives to kill or maim. The Angolan government says 700 people were killed and 2,300 injured in land-mine accidents over the past six years. Aid groups say the numbers are higher.

Workers such as Cambanda employ a rigorous technique to find land mines without detonating them. The pressure plate that triggers a mine is on top. Hitting a mine from the side or from below poses little danger, unless it has been dislodged, perhaps by unusually heavy rains, from its original position.

Cambanda never digs downward. He squats on a patch of soil already cleared of mines and leans forward, scraping the wall of a shallow trench in front of him. With each pass of the shovel, he moves gradually forward.
 
Generally, workers each clear an area 16 feet long by 3 feet wide in a full day of work. In that time, they might find 10 mines — or none.

Here in Huambo province, a rebel stronghold and the scene of some of the most intense fighting during the war, Halo Trust has identified 289 minefields, which discourage thousands of Angolans from returning home to replant their fields or resume school.

This minefield is among the worst. Since clearing began in September 2001 — several months after an accident blasted a man's arm off — workers have unearthed more than 1,000 mines. The area includes a schoolhouse, crumbling old colonial buildings and a line of new mud-brick homes. Workers shout at the villagers to go inside during the frequent controlled explosions.

Two hours into his workday, Cambanda felt the thud of plastic. He put down the short-handled shovel and grabbed the smaller one to clear dirt more gingerly. Soon he could see an intact mine about 2 inches below the surface.

Cambanda marked the spot by pounding two crossed sticks in front of the mine. Between the sticks, he wedged a red sign bearing a skull and crossbones and the word "Danger" in Portuguese and English.

Mines are detonated during the 10-minute breaks that safety regulations require after each 30 minutes of digging. The supervisor planted a charge, retreated 300 yards, then waited until the charge and the mine exploded together.

Cambanda pulled the plastic shield down over his face and returned to work.