Ethiopians maimed by land mines pay price of war
By Katie Nguyen
ADDIS TESFA, Nov 29 (Reuters) – The yellow fruit sprouting from the cactus plant was irresistible. His stomach rumbling with hunger, Tesfaye strained to reach it and stepped on a land mine.
When the teenager regained consciousness four days later, his right leg had been amputated below the knee at a hospital hundreds of kilometres from his village in northern Ethiopia.
“The pain burned like hell, it was so intense,” the 17-year-old said, lifting his trouser leg to show an artificial limb, carved crudely from wood.
Ethiopia ratified the 1997 Ottawa Treaty banning land mines in November, but that was after mines had already been planted during a two-year war with its northern neighbour Eritrea.
Leaders from 143 countries that signed the same agreement are meeting in the Kenyan capital Nairobi this week to discuss ways of eradicating land mines and raising money to expand mine clearing operations.
Experts in Ethiopia say up to 250,000 mines lie along its contentious border with Eritrea – undetected until a child or farmer stumbles across the explosive devices.
However, there may be four times that number littered across the huge Horn of Africa country.
“It’s one of the most infested countries in the world,” UNICEF Country Director for Ethiopia Bjorn Ljungqvist said. “It comes from a long history of war, starting from Italian occupation.”
“Land mines and unexploded ordnances destroy the lives and livelihoods of communities. It’s like living next to a ticking bomb,” he said.
As a result, some 364,000 Ethiopians have been uprooted from their homes and villages because mines have made it unsafe for them to stay, UNICEF says.
PROTECTIVE HELMETS
Within sight of Tesfaye’s mud and stone hut, deminers wearing protective helmets and full-length flak jackets over their blue overalls scour the mountainside one centimetre at a time.
Detectors pick up signs of metal buried in the rocky, arid ground, then using a thin metal prod deminers check if it is a round, flat “black widow” or a grenade on a stick, which is most common in this area.
Demining experts estimate less than 5 percent of all unexploded ordnances have been extracted so far, saying at this rate it will take another 20 years to finish the job.
“It costs $3 to plant a landmine but $1,000 to uncover and destroy it,” said U.S. actor and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Danny Glover during a trip to see the effect of landmines on Ethiopian communities.
“The message is, weapons should not outlast war.”
Sitting on a pile of wood in the dirt yard of his house, Tesfaye looks uncomfortable. He picks at a twig, snapping it over and over again, all the time avoiding eye contact.
“He’s lonely, he doesn’t go out with his friends,” calls out his mother Birzey Seyom, from inside the house where she is preparing njera, a spongy pancake that is Ethiopia’s national staple.
“Sometimes people tell him he isn’t a good person, that’s why he was punished by God,” she said.
In the tradition of women in rural Ethiopia, Birzey has a cross tattooed on her forehead marking her as a Christian. The ink has faded with age and worry.
“I felt such sadness about his accident. I thought it better that he die than lose his leg. He’s my one resource and he can’t farm,” Birzey said in despair.
The concern is common in Africa, where there is no state aid for the unemployed or pension for the elderly. Without children who can plough and harvest the fields, most parents can look forward to an impoverished old age.