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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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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