Children can walk to school as trust clears landmines
Generations of children and cattle in Zimbabwe learnt to pick their way in single file across some of the deadliest terrain on Earth.
Landmines on its borders with Zambia and Mozambique have killed and maimed more than 1500 people and 120,000 cattle since they were laid by the former Rhodesian regime during the liberation war in the 1970s.
The British charity Halo Trust has declared the districts ‘‘minefree’’ after destroying 53,000 unexploded devices.
Kinglong Gotseai, 15, said that until now his ‘‘heart was banging’’ each day as he walked to school in Mt Darwin. He clutched the hands of younger children as they kept to the narrow track they knew to be safe.
‘‘Once I got one over I would go back and get another one, collecting the little ones one at a time,’’ he said. Some children living on the other side of the landmined pastures never went to school.
‘‘Families would keep them at home to avoid the mines. But they were sorry they could not learn to read.’’
Every hectare in droughtravaged Mashonaland Central province is precious to the farmers, who planted and grazed right up to the minefields, which often killed their cattle.
‘‘I farmed as much of my land as I could,’’ Fibion House, who is about 70, said last week at a village ceremony to mark its new status. ‘‘But I was scared.’’
Representatives from the British, United States and Japanese embassies, which funded much of the trust’s work, attended with Zimbabwean officials.