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 soccer player. He shyly showed me his soccer ball, 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 soccer player 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 organized
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 meters 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 soccer pitch, I couldn’t help but hope that
I might have played some small part in creating the world’s next soccer sensation.
Report by Sean Moorhouse, Technical Field Manager