Meet Helen Gray,

30, from Scotland.

This is her all-women
team in Mozambique—
and they have one
of the most dangerous
jobs in the world

Miss
Dynamite words and photographs
By craig stennett
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It’s deployment day at the Halo Trust’s
compound in Zimpeto district, north
Maputo, Mozambique—a day that’s
fondly described in Portuguese, the
national tongue of Mozambique, as the
day of confusão. Halo is the world’s
oldest and largest landmine-clearance
organisation and, today, 15 of 26 highly
specialised teams working in Maputo
have just returned from their eight-day
leave and are about to embark on three
weeks of living and working in one of
Mozambique’s remaining 139 minefields.
The atmosphere is tense because these
men and women work at what is widely
acknowledged as one of the world’s
most dangerous jobs—de-miner.
It’s still the rainy season, but today
there’s nothing but brilliant sunshine
and an intense wilting African heat.
Helen Gray, a resourceful Scot brought
up on an East Lothian farm and now
programme manager for Halo (it stands
for Hazardous Area Life-Support Or-
ganisation) in Mozambique, pulls into
the compound in her Nissan pickup and
surveys the scene. What greets her is a
blur of activity. Land Rovers and trucks
are being refuelled, tents and sleeping
bags are being loaded and stores are
emptied of food and the essential de-
mining kit the teams will need for the
three weeks they’ll spend in the field.
After several hours they are ready
for deployment throughout Maputo
province and they leave the relative
safety of Halo’s compound.
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.
Halo, a non-profit non-governmental
organisation, has its head office in Dum-
fries, Scotland. It deployed its first
de-mining team in Mozambique on
February 20, 1994, and has now declared
the country’s six northern provinces
mine-free—after exploding more than
100,000 mines—leaving only the south A day in the life: the de-miners
to be made safe. must pack enough provisions to
After finishing her BSc in biology last them for 21 days in the field
and anthropology at Durham University, (left); a typical day starts at
6am (top); clearing a path to the
CREDIT
Helen worked for theseptember
Scottish
2010Sea Bird
centre and then as an expedition guide minefield itself (above)
reader’s digest . sePteMBer ’10 [[2R]]
in Peru’s threatened rainforests. Back
in Britain she speculatively sent her CV
to Halo. Her neighbour had told her
about the organisation and she’d already
decided she wanted to work in a hu-
manitarian field.
Helen has worked for Halo since
2004—when she was just 24—doing
her initial six-month training in Cabo
Delgado, on the northern border of
Mozambique, in the minefields laid by
the Portuguese back in the early 1970s,
when the country was fighting for its
independence from 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-
try’s operations, with responsibility for
all its 370 staff and a budget of £1.8 mil-
lion, just over half of what she needs if
Mozambique is to hit its 2014 target to
become completely mine-free.
“My job gives me tremendous
satisfaction,” Helen says. “It’s brilliant
to be able to send de-miners to an unsafe
area to clear the land. That land then
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goes back to the local community, and
you can return in a few months and see
maize growing or the houses or schools
that have been built there. The landmine
problem has gone—for ever. You don’t
get that sort of reward in many jobs.”
Learning to be a de-miner is painstak-
ing work. Helen remembers her first
day: “I really wanted to find a mine. For
safety reasons, the drill we learn is sys-
tematic and repetitive. But, as I’d done
all the training, I didn’t want to find a
metal signal with the detector and then
spend 20 minutes carefully scraping
and excavating my way towards a coke
can! I wanted to find a mine.”
It’s this level of commitment that
allows Helen and her staff to tackle the
mine clearance Mozambique so des-
perately needs. A country that after 20
years of struggle with Portugal faced
an internal civil war between Frelimo
(the Liberation Front of Mozambique),
now the government, and Renamo (the
Left and top:
Mozambican National Resistance party),
the charge and
which was secretly backed by Rhodesia
fuse that will be
and later South Africa. An effective
used to destroy
cease-fire came into force on October
a Russian mine.
15, 1992, and it has stuck to this day. Its
Above left: Helen
legacy, however, was 900,000 deaths,
Gray supervising
five million displaced persons and an
the delicate work.
estimated 200,000 landmines deployed
Above right: Claudia
by all sides in the conflict.
Matsinhe, de-miner,
is also a single
Leaving the compound Helen joins the
mother with a six-
road west of Maputo, driving for an
year-old daughter.
hour towards the South African border.
Right: this plume of
We arrive at one of the “equipa de meni-
smoke means that
nas” minefields or “girls’ sections”. The
the detonation has
CREDIT
women are working in a minefield
september 2010 near
the old electricity pylon route. ► been successful
reader’s digest . sePteMBer ’10
 The ten-strong team has been awake
since 4.30am—work starts in the mine-
fields at first light at 6am, finishing at
1pm in the afternoon. The working day
is dictated by the need to avoid the worst
of the heat. Nevertheless, temperatures
can get into the late 30s C, producing
a punishing environment in which
it’s hard to maintain physical strength
and concentration—both crucial for
de-miners—along with the strict adher-
ence to all the procedures they have
halo icon
In January 1997, the last year of her
life, Princess Diana visited a Halo
minefield on the outskirts of Huambo
City, Angola. The pictures of her
visit were seen throughout the world.
“Diana was visiting the
International Committee of The
Red Cross in Angola when they
suggested that she should visit one
of our minefields,” Helen says.
“She brought fantastic visibility to
the need for humanitarian mine
clearance and the issue of mine use.”
[[1L]]
been trained to follow to stay alive. ordnance we discover,” Helen explains
The women wear ballistic visors and as she monitors Onorio’s progress.
kevlar flak jackets and systematically “Then we know it’s gone for all time.”
cover the land inch by inch with metal The two walk slowly into the mine-
detectors. Since lapses in concentration field, the safe zones being clearly marked
could be fatal, they take a ten-minute by red-tipped sticks in the ground. “If
break every hour. you’re inside these markers then you’re
The first women’s section was formed safe,” says Helen.
within Halo in 2007. “The perception They solemnly pass the skeletal re-
in Mozambique was that de-mining was mains of two individuals whose deaths
a job done by men,” says Helen. “When in this minefield passed without cere-
we were recruiting, we clearly stated mony long ago.
that applications were welcome from “They were probably trying to steal
both women and men, and we found
that many women applied. They’ve done
metal, then stepped on one of the mines
planted here, but managed to crawl off—
incredibly well and some have been only to die here alone. They’re not
promoted through our system.” from this area, so their bodies haven’t
Helen’s mobile is ringing; when she been claimed. We’re deciding with the
answers she’s informed that they’re locals what we should do with them
ready for the destruction of a landmine once we’ve completely cleared this
at Mubobo minefield a mile or so away. area,” she comments.
Mubobo is the most heavily mined area A whistle blows, giving the signal for
remaining in Maputo province. The the whole team in the minefield to with- Domingas Lacrimosa Lina Dias,
Frelimo government laid it during the draw to a safe distance as Onorio lays 28, a Halo supervisor, says: “We
civil war to impede sabotage of the vital the charge. “You always do this part work here to rid our country of
pylons providing the capital, Maputo, alone,” Helen explains. “One man, one mines. I feel proud as a woman to be
with its electricity supply. risk.” A fuse that will burn for five min- doing this job. It was seen as men’s
utes has been chosen, ample time for work, but I am proving otherwise.”
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
Section supervisor Onorio Manuel, 22, Onorio to join Helen 100 yards from
meets Helen on our arrival. From the the blast zone—the distance deemed of a mushroom-shaped black plume of
safety of the designated control point, safe for this type of landmine. smoke that pushes its way up into the
he formally briefs her on the situation The minutes are counted down, then sky as the explosive charge and the mine
in the minefield. After the safety equip- the seconds as the detonation time itself are destroyed. Then it’s all over—
ment has been put on, Onorio primes approaches. The noise of the bang and in Maputo province there’s one less
the pentolite explosive charge he needs hits you first, followed by the sight mine to worry about.
RD
to destroy a Russian mine they’ve de-
tected near one of the pylons. This type
of mine is designed to blow off not just Passion Killer
a foot, but a whole leg. From a report in the Daily Mail about the Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne:
“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
mine and each piece of unexploded money for servicing an old boiler.” Submitted by Pam Collins, Coventry
reader’s digest . sePteMBer ’10 reader’s digest . rdmag.co.uk [[2R]]