Somewhere in the vast sea of elephant grass that makes up Katanga Province, lies the village of Cantonnier. Like all of the other villages in the region, it’s little more than a string of mud huts straddling one of the very few roads. “Roads” being a rather euphemistic term for the spine-shattering stretches of mud (in the rainy season) or dust (in the dry season) that connect these remote villages.
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| Kitapa (right) and his friends |
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| The hand grenade found under the bush |
The local chief of Cantonnier had passed a message down the “road” to say that his son had found an explosive device in the village. The chief was afraid that some other children could not resist playing with it. Could I come urgently?
Three days after the find - a fast turn around in a country of poor communications and worse transportation - I arrived in the village with a clearance team. The chief was away tending his fields but his son was around.
Kitapa Mukali was wearing a dirty brown sweater and ragged green shorts. He had a ready smile and intelligent eyes, although he was a little intimidated about speaking to his first white man. I asked him how old he was and he looked bemused. Not only did he not know, but no one had ever asked him before. My Congolese colleagues estimated Kitapa to be about eight years old.
When he grows up, Kitapa wants to be a footballer. He shyly showed me his football, a ball of tightly-wrapped straw encased in old, plastic, carrier bags. It was surprisingly bouncy and durable but I was afraid that my hiking boots would destroy it a lot faster than Kitapa’s bare feet.
Kitapa wants to be a footballer so much that a little thing like a lack of a pitch wasn’t going to stop him. As the rainy season has just ended, he organised some friends to cut back the vegetation and make their own pitch. Kitapa’s dad said that if they did a good job, he would make them some goalposts.
Borrowing machetes from their fathers, the group of friends went to work. Almost immediately, Kitapa saw something suspicious under a small bush. He peered closely at the object and then recoiled with fear. He didn’t exactly know what it was but he did know that it was something he must not touch. Only last month, a team from MAG had visited his school and told everyone about the dangerous things left behind from the war in 2002.
I asked Kitapa to take me to where he could see the bush and point it out to me. He brought along 2 friends for moral support. The bush was about 10 metres away when Kitapa stopped and pointed. I could see nothing from this distance, so I sent the boys back and went to have a closer look.
Lying right at the base of the bush, half-hidden in the shadows was a black, egg-like object. It was a hand-grenade, seemingly dropped by a passing soldier. It had never been thrown. I carefully examined it, without touching, to make sure that no rusty safety pin would snap if I picked it up. It looked fine, so I tightly taped the safety pin and fly-off lever in place and carried the grenade to the car. It was destroyed later with a pile of other unexploded ordnance from other villages down the “road”.
As Kitapa and his friends ran off to collect their machetes and finish their football pitch, I couldn’t help but hope that I might have played some small part in creating the world’s next footballing sensation.
Report by Sean Moorhouse, Technical Field Manager
16 May 08
