REPORTER: Ginny Stein
ABDULLAH MCHOMVU: Yeah as you see here is a place where Garvey lives. Maybe I can open the cage so you can have a look at Garvey.
Here in Mozambique, the Cricetomys gambianus, or as it’s better known, the African giant pouched rat, is no longer feared or reviled…
ABDULLAH MCHOMVU: Yes, this is Garvey. Come out.
In fact, rats like Garvey are fondly admired by their human colleagues…
ALBERT ZACHARIA: It’s a very good rat. It’s social, hardworking.
Albert and Abdullah are two rat trainers who have helped give the rodents a makeover from vermin to life saver. But even they admit to being sceptical in the beginning.
ALBERT ZACHARIA: Mostly in our African culture rats are considered as a useless animal, So at first when I heard rats were being used for demining I didn’t believe it.
Here at this training camp in Chokwe, near the Limpopo River, these furry heroes are going through their final training. Running on lines between their handlers, they are sniffing for the bits of non-lethal TNT that have been laid here. When the rats detect some explosive, they indicate by scratching the ground. The trainers then make a clicking noise to let them know they can return for a reward.
ANDREW SULLY: You know what we are trying to do is here the rats are an African solution to an African problem.
Andrew Sully works for Apopo, the Belgian NGO which runs the rat program. He says the inspiration came from scientific work dating back decades.
ANDREW SULLY: Well rats have actually been used for the detection of explosives for many, many years. I mean there were experiments using laboratory rats back in the 50’s if not before that…
Putting that reasearch into practice hasn’t been easy, and each rat takes 2 years to train. But they have some distinct advantages over their canine counterparts. Unlike sniffer dogs they’re loyal to food, rather than one particular trainer. And they can also be more effective on windy days, like today.
ABDULLAH MCHOMVU: He still can manage to get the smell of the TNT. Different with a dog. If it would be a dog it would be difficult for them to get because the dog is somewhat higher from the ground, the rat is very low from the ground that’s why he can manage also to get the smell.
It’s early morning and the rat team is getting ready to move out.
ALBERT ZACHARIA: Its’ good to travel during early because if the temperature gets higher then the rats also start to face some problems of hydration and also start to lose energy.
Their mission is to demine a remote rural village, 5 hours away by road. Sadly for the rats, it’s economy class all the way.
ALBERT ZACHARIA: Those cages we just use them for travelling, but if we arrive there we’ll remove the rats from the travelling cages and we put them in bigger cages where they can play around and enjoy themselves.
Demining teams have spent more than a decade trying to clear Mozambique of landmines. Millions of them were laid during the ten-year fight for independence and the two decades of civil war that followed. Today the rat team is on its way to the former garrison village of Hate-Hate.
ANDREW SULLY: From the initial surveys that have been done I think there have been at least five or six mine accidents in this horse shoe shape which was the mine area around the barracks.
This area is currently bone dry, but soon the rains will come and these roads will be unpassable. The deminers know they’ll have to move quickly.
ANDREW SULLY: So we will probably run 12 rats a day which will be 1,200 square metres a day. So a task like this we would expect to take about three weeks. Three or four weeks.
SINGING WOMEN: Please listen, everyone from all over the world, please listen we are going to tell you about things in our country, in Hate-Hate Kwadukaza.
In the village of Hate-Hate there’s great excitement at the imminent arrival of the demining team.
SINGING WOMEN: In our country, in Hate-Hate, we need peace and we need to stay in peace. Thank you.
Only a few hundred people have returned here since the end of the civil war… and almost all of them have been affected by landmines. Marta Massingue witnessed the death of one of the villagers.
MARTA MASSINGUE: The man came from this side. He went straight to the tree and right there a path goes that way, that path goes to Hate-Hate. There was a landmine. When he stepped on it he died on the spot.
Marta’s had to learn to live with landmines - inventing stories to keep first her children and now her grandchildren safe.
MARTA MASSINGUE: What we tell them is that if they go that way they will get burnt, that there will be fire and they will get burnt. But if they go along the path they will be fine.
For ten years villagers have been waiting for help to clear the mines… now it’s at hand they’re surprised to hear what form the help is taking.
ALEXANDER SITOE: The rat! I am so surprised because it is a rat. I don’t believe this. I don’t trust it because I’ve never seen it.
MARTA MASSINGUE: I never knew that rats could smell out landmines. I was surprised to hear that. I don’t know whether the rats will be able to smell them, but we will be so excited if they do smell them because we can live in peace.
Five hours after they set off…the rats have finally made it…but the journey has clearly exacted a toll… Rat team leader, Vendeline Shirima,is worried about his rodents…they all appear to have passed out.
Q: It is stress or is it heat?
VENDELINE SHIRIMA: They became a little bit tired because of the journey and also the weather, due to the heat.
Luckily today is a rest day… for the rats at least.
ANDREW SULLY: That is still full? Yes,. And we are emptying this? Yes.
But the demining team are busy clearing the scrub before the rats can be put to work. Already they’ve spotted two landmines…they almost drove over them.
ANDREW SULLY: Well we actually know that there have been eight mine victims around this area. So we have a high expectancy of finding more mines.
The next day, work begins early. The rats have recovered, but there’s no breakfast for them. Instead, they’re kept peckish to keep them focussed, and only fed when their day is done. The rat handlers suit up before they venture out to the mine field.
ALFREDO ADAMO: Actually it is the protective gear, so it’s much safer to work than going without it.
Alfredo Adamo gave up his job as a school-teacher to work with the rats… and he’s proud of his new career.
ALFREDO ADAMO: I know every time we found, we find a mine and we will destroy it, I knew if we continue there something bad should happen, it would injure a person or an animal or an actual cattle.
The area the deminers are working in today, lies either side of a track leading down to a bore hole – the area’s main water source.
SHIRIMA: So they put mines in this area in order to protect those local people inside here.
The rats are put to work traversing the mine field. They are not heavy enough to set off a landmine…and their scratching when they find one is lighter still.
Q: So Alfredo have any of the rats indicated anything yet?
ALFREDO ADAMO: Yes, two rats have indicated.
Each carefully pegged out box will be gone over not once but twice by two different rats. It’s a system designed to eliminate error.
SHIRIMA: Yeah the rats show indication but not yet going to clarify to see what are they indicating.
Villagers have been warned to stay away while the rats get down to work. But this is cattle country… and the main track to the water hole runs right through where the demining teams are working. Rats may not be heavy enough to set off landmines, but the cows most certainly can. And the dogs are an added threat….to the rats. For the rat handlers, it is a nervous start to the operation here.
ALFREDO ADAMO: I was actually worried. I know the local people really o know about the existence of land mines and they believe they know the right path and that but I don’t need to believe in that because I know cows can just walk wherever they want…
Q: and set off a mine while you are working?
ALFREDO ADAMO: Ah yes, I was not actually very comfortable.
Cerveza is the leader of the bomb disposal team, and has a close relationship with the rats.
CERVEZA: We understand what rats are like. We’ve been friends for... We’re with them every day. At night, if they make a noise, we check on them. In the day, we’re together in the field. Day after day, we’re with the rats.
Cerveza’s team needs total confidence in the abilities of their pointy-nosed colleagues. Once the rates have sniffed out the explosives… these men have to walk through the minefield to verify what’s been found.
CERVEZA: I’m confident about the work that rats do. Yes, I trust them completely.
The rats’ day finishes early… they’re prone to develop skin cancer if they get too much sun. But by the end of today’s shift, they’ve arleady found this fragment of a mortar mine…
CERVEZA: This is what’s left of it. It’s already exploded.
…and two live landmines. The final job of the day is to safely detonate the rat’s haul.
CERVEZA: It’s TNT, almost all of it... There’s 150 grams. This is the detonator.
It’s slow and painstaking work, but bit by bite, Mozambique is being cleared of landmines, thanks to the work of man’s new best friend.
Reporter/Camera
GINNY STEIN
Producer
AARON THOMAS
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN