Afghanistan, April 2008

In April 2008, I went to Afghanistan to conduct an appraisal mission of a joint mineclearance and agricultural development project. This meant I got to go to Kabul as well as a very scenic area in the North between Takhar and Kunduz provinces.

Afghanistan is a buzzing place with plenty of aid work and military activity. It felt relatively safe but that was behind the reassuring feel of armoured glass in the vehicle I was travelling in (apart from the yellow cab I used in the capital...) and within the confines of guarded compounds. That said, I managed to get out onto the ground and interact with the local people... something I got the impression that more of Afghanistan's more 'long term' expatriate community need to do more of.

First up is a picture of my driver, Samy... this was taken in the Kabul 'holiday resort' of Gharka, where the renowned Kabul Golf Course had its mine and unexploded ordnance cleared a few years ago.


The next photo is on the main road north out of Kabul. It shows some of the thousands of discarded vehicles left by the Soviets after they fled in disarray in 1988/ 89.

This next pic was taken just before the Salang Pass, the world's highest road tunnel.

Here we see a fuel stop... built on top of old armoured personnel carriers!

What a view from the office; the HALO Trust compound in Pul-i-Khumri with Soviet missiles as gate guardians...

This is a photo of a T55 tank taken through wheat, somewhere east of Kunduz.

I'm standing in an area cleared of mines by the HALO Trust in Khanabad, Kunduz province. The view is from a former Northern Alliance/ Taliban trench.

A baker in Kunduz town. Despite the fact that Kunduz province was a former 'bread basket' in central asia, the region now imports wheat from Pakistan due to food insecurity stemming from 3 decades of conflict.

HALO's manager in the north of Afghanistan is a former opera singer with no military experience. He's in charge of 1,400 Afghans and is doing bloody well.

A beautiful view of the Hindu Kush mountains in Keshim, Badakshon province.

That's all...

Work in the Sudan - Chad border area

An eventful fortnight, and things have not been plane sailing, to use a deliberate pun. Our EOD team went to work near to the eastern border with Sudan. This is an area where the effects of the Darfur conflict, including refugees and rebel activity, has spilled into Chadian territory.

Last weekend my team had ensconced itself in a vacant school in Bahai town. We had been sent there to check an area that was cleared a few weeks earlier near the Karivari refugee camp, the northern most refugee camp in Chad, managed by the International Rescue Committee and UNHCR. We found nothing at Karivari and decided to leave Bahai as soon as we could, to avoid getting trapped by overflowing wadis. Mother Nature had other plans; that weekend the heavens opened and we were trapped because the exit road was flooded.

(above) None Shall Pass. A wadi, passable only 24 hours previously, has been blocked off by recent rainfall.

(below) This is what happens if you try to cross a swollen wadi too soon. The truck was toppled by the force of the current. We decided to wait for it to reduce. After 3 hours, an army pickup was the first to succeed in crossing. I was napping but woken by the sound of the celebratory gunfire from its cannon, and the crowd whooping with delight.

That weekend the supply aircraft could not reach us due to high winds and I had to delve into reserve rations. The supply of cans, and the occasional perishable like potato and onion, which I purchase in the capital is an excellent alternative to 'going local'. Although I have sustained myself on local food in several parts of the world, it is often sensible to stick to a diet that your stomach knows. That same day the Cessna broke down and throughout the week no resupply reached us.

By Thursday night my 'decent nosh' emergency supplies had dwindled and the goat stew seemed inevitable. I decided to buy a chicken and killed it as I had been taught at Sandhurst, by pulling its head clean off between the V of two fingers and then asked the cook to feather and gut it. My intention had been to go to the team that evening and dine with them after presenting the chicken. Unfortunately my slaughter method was not Halal and the bird was politely declined. In any case it tasted absolutely dreadful so the poor bird's life was wasted in vain. I went without that night rather than impose myself on the team's meal, feeling a little silly for forgetting the cultural sensitivities in a fairly pious country.

The last time I had to economise food was exactly the same time last year in Sri Lanka; most 'staple' supplies including flour, potatoes and eggs ran out for a week in early September which was cut off from supply. We were not alone; 600,000 people in Jaffna were trapped. The seas were ravaged by naval combat between the Sri Lanka Navy and the Sea Tigers, the road routes were blocked by two active front lines where the Tamil Tigers and Sri Lankan army had it out and all public air services were suspended. There was no way out or in, except for military supplies, for several weeks. 54,000 IDPs would be displaced by the conflict and life and business as normal stopped. We helped to distribute the last of the WFP stocks to IDP distribution centres and then had to consider our own supplies as it was clear that all food in Jaffna had been bought by those that could afford the inevitable price hikes. The only consumable commodity that did not run out, I believe, was beer which fuelled several expatriates until around November, by which time humanitarian flights had resumed and I was sneaking bottles of wine up via Sri Lankan air force Antonovs. (We also had a goat called Linda, however supplies got through before resorting to slaughtering our house pets.) Helaena sent up three huge bags of commodities from the US Embassy. Later Kim Parsons sent up a freezer box of goodies, including 8 cans of Boddingtons and a jar of Jaffna Lime Pickle as a twisted joke.

Back to Chad and 2007.. and last Friday morning in Bahai.

We drove to a village and some of the generous villagers provided us with a delicious breakfast of rice, sugar and camel milk. Rice pudding! I ate a little with the team and we continued to work; that day we would find 11 x 107mm rockets in the vicinity of the village, one about 100m from housing. None of this had been reported to the authorities and as such, it was thought that there had been no battles in Bahai. Later that day my flight to the capital was delayed again because of an emergency evacuation of military casualties from an anti-tank mine accident, hundreds of kilometres away in the Tibetsi mountains. Yesterday the new aircraft, a luxurious and spacious King Air twin engine, picked me up from Bahai. After half an hour the pilot told me he had to divert to collect casualties from Abeche.

'Casualties'

As you can see, they do not seem to be injured and it seemed to me that they were going on holiday. But that is the way things work in countries such as Chad, ranked as the most corrupt in the world (it doesn't seem to be because it is so poor); ministers' relatives and the exulted tax the system for whatever they can get out of it, for as long as they can, which is often brief.

Most of our UXO guides are children, but this week for the first time we were led to dangerous items by girls.

Chad has a Muslim majority; they are a hospitable and somewhat pious people, moderate from what I have seen yet dilligent in their prayers. Society is largely patriachal and womenfolk have a very limited 'public footprint'. These girls played their part in helping their community.

We drive around asking people if they know of anything left behind after battles. Sometimes whole battle areas are missed because there is no passage of information. We have destroyed a tonne of ammunition in Bahai this week, all of which was not reported.

A typical developing country ammunition store- radio chargers with vehicle spare parts and old mortar bombs

See the above example. We were told to inspect the gendarmerie store in the middle of town and were met with this image of disarray. Clearance organisations the world over are dealing with this sort of thing; forgotten stores with badly kept ammunition ranging from bullets to surface to air missiles. Many governments are concerned about the poor storage of ammunition and have attributed large budgets to weapons non-proliferation. A shoulder launched missile shot down a Stealth fighter in 1999 and there have been attacks on BA flights with the same weapons. Here, though, are over 100 Soviet mortar bombs. It has been stored with a small padlock for security in a country where Al Qaeda operate.

They were in such a bad state that the explosive failed to explode. But still, the poor state of storage and security meant that their destruction had humanitarian value. (In 2005, in Battambang, Cambodia, a similar store exploded spreading dangerous items for 20 km and badly damaging a village as well as killing several people. An ammunition store in N'Djamena, the capital of Chad, also exploded a few years ago and the clean-up is probably a future task.)

This fired rocket had either been moved into the village to get our attention, or nobody had thought to report it.

Our work has brought us into conflict with many participants in the many internecine, inter-tribal and international conflicts that Chad has taken part in over the years. Conflict is a way of life here. Many people have weapons and it is hard to distingiush regular soldiers from rebels.

An image of Africa conflict- the pickup, the RPG, the machine gun

One day, after we destroyed a shell and whilst we were inspecting the crater, a white pickup raced towards us. Someone in white garb got out and I managed to understand their French- we had created a 'disorder'. They had thought that there was rebel artillery fire. No, I countered, we had express permission of the local military commander and the sous-prefet (mayor). And, if they thought it was artillery, why where they driving towards the explosion with a child in the back of their vehicle? After this my French failed me and I uttered 'je ne parle pas francais'. Of course I am quite plausable with that phrase so the said person seemed to take offence. I gestured towards the chief Chadian, Rama, who was already getting heated, saying that we were 'helping the children' and they were 'interfering'. It nearly turned into a shoving match between Rama and this irratated person, which is always uncomfortable when you cannot speak their language, everyone has weapons and you are miles from any semblance of order. I then sensed something about the group that had arrived; there was a high ranking officer who although calm, seemed to let the person who talked to me so rudely just carry on, despite the fact we had acted within our rights. The person in white turned out to be a village king; in particular, later we learned he was a very well connected VIP.

After shaking hands and departing the scene having been told to stop work, and with Rama incensed at their unhelpful attitude, we prepared to leave Bahai. Before our planned departure the following morning, the sous-prefet apologised to me and asked us to carry on working there. Then a pickup crammed with heavily armed soldiers came. A highly ranked officer got out and greeted Rama and I (the soldiers were surprisingly wearing the same fatigue dress, so I knew this was an important commander). It was the local gendarmerie commander, and he too apologised for the 'visitors' who were 'drunk yesterday'. The bloke in white, the village king, actually tagged along to watch us work later that day. He was somewhat sheepish and keen to help. He turned out to be the president's nephew and in the end was an 'alright lad'. One day we returned from work and my driver gave a surprised gasp- there was a person sleeping on his bed with some sort of bong next to him. It was the president's nephew again. He has since become an informal part of our group; he plays cards with the team most nights and brought me an ice cold coca cola one day. Not a bad chap, but not one to upset.

Not so amusing was the arrival of irregular soldiers to our camp. Arriving in the most battered pickup I have seen yet, they unfurled their mattresses outside the room next to mine. I started to worry about being seen as in league with armed groups which was not a good idea for a westerner, as well as the security of our equipment. No doubt they would want to borrow this and that. As I voiced my complaints to my interpretor, he told me to be quiet- these people could speak english because they were from Sudan. They were rebels fighting the janjaweed. Nevertheless I aired my concerns and the ever helpful sous-prefet moved them on with no fuss, just a friendly wave goodbye.

The rebel equipment was old, decrepit and their vehicle had clearly had been hit several times. I don't know why I found it so odd, but they seemed like perfectly normal people. When I met a Tamil Tiger leader in Sri Lanka, he seemed intense and quietly menacing. These guys were quite the opposite; they looked like your average laid-back African with whom you would have banter with over chai. They struck a friendly ambience whilst reclining on their carpets and generally taking it easy- after presumably causing havoc the other side of the border, perhaps even harrassing African Union troops. Then I realised how naive I was- even the sous-prefet had lived for decades in this combat zone, and many local people were willing or unwilling combatants at some time. The sous prefet told me he used to be a deminer and he had been trained to shoot down planes in the '70s.

The guy on the left is Idriss. He is one of the older members of my team and seems to be the team character. Here he holds up the head of a Gazelle recently shot by the soldiers for supper. The chap in the middle is a gendarme who guided us to the location of a couple of dangerous items one morning.

The guy on the right is Rama Inne, the senior Chadian that I work with. He's about 40 years old and has been to the Commando school in the Congo, is parachute trained, has fought for the Chadian Presidential Guard, survived an anti tank mine blast where 6 other people were killed and carries either a .357 (under his t shirt) or a Kalashnikov. He has received training from the US Navy SEALS as well as the French military. He's a nice guy and is a Colonel in the army, and hearing him regale me with tales of Chad's many layers of conflict is humbling. In the west, we don't realised how we have been spoiled by the absence of conflict. Rama says that Chadians are 'les specialistes du lutte de l'afrique' or Africa's combat specialists. That says something.

A gendarmerie team with my EOD chaps. In the rear is the perrenial symbol of conflict throughout the developing world- the pickup truck mounted with RPGs slung off the side. As you can see, uniform is not standardised throughout.

This picture that came out somewhat better than I expected; the view across a dry wadi between Iriba and Tourgba. It must have been a fluke, like the one I took of David Pickersgill skiing 4 years ago when he was somehow not in snowplough and looked in calm control.

I revise the team after finding a rare squash head projectile.

Sunrise as seen from my campbed, about 0510hrs, Bahai.

The sight that greeted each mornings for much of last week- a row of hanging cow flesh, hung out to cure (and inevitably attracting hundreds of flies). This is one reason I avoided eating with the team.

Our home in Delhi that I can't wait to get back to.. Helaena has prepared a luxurious apparentment, though apparently our dog Lhotse has been chewing through the upholstery and no doubt our attention seeking non-declawed cat has been ripping through the sofa covers.

This T55 was one of many abandoned hulks north of Iriba. The ammunition had been burned out inside the tank. Rama stands on top after conducting a quick visual search.

The hospitality of Chadians sometimes slows our work down quite a lot. After about 5 minutes of al hamdu li laah greetings, and a session of tea drinking, we were physically prevented from leaving this village in Erre, north of Iriba. A plate of pulped maize and animal fat gravy was brought to Rama and I for our consumption.

Two symbols of Chad- hot, sweet, ginger infused chai, and a traditional dagger (often used as a can opener).

Biltine

Sunrise near Haj El Fassil

The Village People, Chad style

Bulk demolition at Gamara village, 17 August

A Tchadian village from a bird's eye view

Blog update on Saturday 18th August. I'm in N'Djamena at the moment on an admin weekend. We have spent the last three weeks doing EOD callout work in Biltine, a municipal seat in the eastern district of the same name which borders Darfur.

An OG7 found by locals

This kid showed us some bits of RPGs, an empty mortar bomb and a 12.7mm bullet

White marks show where kids have thrown stones at this 106mm HEAT shell..

.. resulting in accidents like this, where this child (with a fragmentation wound on his foot) was the only survivor. Four other children were killed. They were probably banging a rocket.

My spacebar and 'c' keys are sticky thanks to the dust in the field. I've been reading the Alistair Campbell diaries ('The Blair Years') which is a right riveting read. It's almost like it has just hit me that an era is over, Blair is gone, the leader of Cool Britannia and projected as the young lovestruck PM in 'Love Actually'.

Listening to the new Manics album, sounds okay but not as good as Know Your Enemy. Talking of which the enemy and Interpol have some good tunes. Got the latest Avril Lavigne album but so far I'd rather listen to goats bleating and Chadians snoring than hearing teen-rock. And I've heard a lot of the Chadians at night. Despite the 0430 wake ups, they just make a racket every night, they don't sleep because of their sugar laden tea that they may as well have on intravenous drip.

This week spent mostly driving around, finding less dangerous items and getting bogged in a lot. I lost it a few times with the drivers who were stupidly 'driving quickly to get through the wet bits', which at one point saw two of our three vehicles get stuck in the sand twice each within 300m. They just end up getting stuck further in to a large wet area.

My driver mechanic Abba takes a mouthfull of the good stuff whilst sorting out a diesel filter change

I'm now thinking about moving on to other places and later returning to Biltine. This job is different from mineclearance because we rely on locals to find UXO. It is not feasible to clear an entire area ourselves and keep people away from it until we've finished. So popping back again to check is probably the way forward. If we're not finding anything here, we could be reducing the threat in other places before returning to check.

In Gamara, a village 15km south of Biltine, nothing had been found for a week. Then yesterday we did a bulk dem there of some 122mms found in Abeche (below) and some locals alerted us to a 107mm rocket location, and we also found a 90mm HEAT. So, when do we call it quits here?

Had a bit of a recce to a village 9km south of Abeche, the country's second city. Some city- no tarmac roads. Had to grip our pilot for not maintaining comms so we could not work. George had to turn around from his mission to Am Zoer.

At the village, where there were dozens of boys at a muslim college, we found a blind 122mm rockets and a 106mm HEAT round right by the main road and between mudhuts. Mad that this place hasn't been cleared already. Lots of scratches on the HEAT round where kids had been throwing stones at the thing.

I think George and our Belgian pilot friend are having some difficulties understanding each other. This probably wasn't helped by the fact that on Thursday night, they both traipsed into the darkness for half an hour and failed to find the great big white Cessna. In fact, George says they didn't even find the runway, which is right behind our house. Things are so much more difficult when (1) you cannot speak the local lingo fluently (2) not everyone speaks the local lingo (3) the translators make mistakes (4) there are no street lights..

The nomads here are very friendly. Many times this week we have been driving along and waved down. After a barrage of al hamdu li laahs, they always present us with some sweet camel milk in a bowl. I've had no upsets yet due to camel milk but profess to have tactfully limited my intake.

Story of the week

Camel milk.. qui sera sera

Tried to download Lost series 3 episode 1 off the net but connection broke. Unfortunately my DVD planning was poor- I brought along very few films and the ones I brought include Out of Africa, The English Patient and Lawrence of Arabia. Hardly escapism when you're actually in the desert. I'm missing Helaena, our home and our pets, even more for the fact that she has all the decent DVDs. Today Helaena sent me pictures of the flat in Delhi, which looks awesome compared to my pad at the moment. Our loo is in dire need of disinfectant. When you go for a pee a flotilla of flies rise up from the long drop hole. I want to throw a stick of C4 down there to vaporise the little critters.

Roger ate some camel last night. He said it was like beef 'but had an aftertaste of piss'. Not sure where he was going with that, it tasted perfectly okay as a red meat to me. I stuck with 'capitane' fish. Had two beers and a caparinha and was KO'd before long. Roger is excellent company, a former Swiss army officer now working as a UN logistician. As a Warrant Officer at the age of 24, he had to work with British WOs of the same rank in Kosovo.. all of whom were dubious about him because in the British Army WO is a rank that is usually achieved after 12 - 15 years of service!

A 'ship of the sea' having an easy ride

This week we're heading off to the oolloo a bit, no mobile reception and 100s of kms of rutted wet roads. I'm off to a place called Iriba and then Bahai, which is not on any maps I have seen (bar UNHCR maps) and is on the border with Sudan i.e. North Darfur. More in two weeks.

Easy to lose, apparently

Tchad.. and a chocolate cake

A villageperson in Gamara, Biltine District, Tchad

This contained a dozen RPGs, a fragmentation projectile and high explosive rocket

A dangerous, 'live' projectile found by nomads tending their camels

Handing out mines risk education leaflets to children in villages near to battles

Before I begin talking about Chad, I have to mention a humourous incident involving somewhat less-than-honest house staff. Our house servants in Delhi, John and Mary, cooked a wonderful chocolate cake for us when we first moved in. Astounded by the quality of the baking, and with raptures of appreciation from three friends that were staying over at the time, we decided that we had acquired the best possible house staff in Delhi. As time went by the gloss came off their performance with Mary spending more time giving our puppy baths than cleaning and John trying is level best to produce items fit for human consumption. Then one late July day, Helaena and I were walking around Vasant Vihar and stumbled across a great confectionary shop. Inside we found the following.

It looks like our cook might not have whisked up that choco cake after all

I've been in Chad for over two weeks now for a short work contract. It's only 3 months in duration, until the beginning of November, but seems like an age to be away from Helaena and our pets Lhotse and Puli (who I hear today nearly ripped his tail off in an accident involving a spike on a fence). She has set up our new flat in Delhi and describes it as a 'spa' and, at last, all our belongings (including my much missed guitar) have arrived there. Instead of revelling in the luxury of a decent flat in a modern city, well, read below, here I am in the worlds most corrupt country and somewhere in the Premier League of Failed States. Work here has been rewarding and enjoyable however the existence is barren as you may expect from the sub-Sahara.

Someone leave a comment- is this a desert orchid?

Where is Chad? In the north-centre of Africa, with Sudan to the east, Libya to the north, Central Africa Republic and Cameroon to the south and.. I'm not sure who is to the west, possible Niger or Nigeria. It's flat and sandy, though with the current wet season patches of green abound.

Ships of the desert

The work is a UN project for emergency explosive ordnance disposal (EOD), which means that we are clearing up the shells and rockets etc. from fighting as recent as three months ago. Chad is a volatile country that has seen battle this year in many places; the capital N'Djamena was nearly overrun by rebels last autumn.

A spearman on horseback

In the first week I met the other expatriate on the project, John 'George' Owens, who is good company in this rather barren place. I'm also supervising a team of 12 Chadians. Their boss is a 41 year old army officer called Rama Inne. He carries a .357 handgun and an AK47 variant. Sometimes he takes potshots at birds but has missed so far. I've made a note not to piss him off.

George - 'vous parlez Geordie like?'

Rama Inne (left) and crew

The Chadians I am working with are moderate Muslims of black African stock although there is some Arab in a few of them. They are a hostpitable; when I first deployed on our long roadtrip to the east, Rama gave me a pillow cushion made by his wife and a comfortable mattress and the team plied me with tea (hot, gingery, sickly sweet stuff) and plenty of goat dishes.

George and I each have an interpreter each but most of the time George and I speak French directly to the staff, and I am trying to learn a little Arabic. George's Geordie-infused French, with no attempt at the colloquial accent and spoken literally, is amusing but it works! One of the interpreters is old, dresses like Jarvis Cocker at the Brit Awards and we use him for odd jobs. The other (mine) is good, cheerful, dresses in bright western garb but sings badly- in French. They love their '50s French love songs here, especially when you are trying to get to sleep.

Bullets, rockets, tank rounds.. not in very good nick. Best we blow this lot up before it does naturally!

Our first job, after a hurried (and far too short) handover with a 62 year old former Royal Navy officer, Richard, and an ex Kiwi SAS chap called Paul, was in the capital. The military had a store they wanted us to inspect. We were presented with some poorly kept ammunition. None were dangerous however the storage facility was far from ideal and to avoid another 'Battambang' (where a store exploded in Cambodia in March 2005, killing dozens and spreading ammunition up to 20km away) we took over a tonne of rockets, bullets, shells and mortars away. We drove 75km to an army training ground and left them overnight, driving back in a sandstorm.

A sand and rain storm menaces in the distance

And arrives!

The next day we returned however had been beaten to the range by a military convoy. A General wanted to test-fire his new Chinese 14.5 cannons, which were mounted on Toyota pickups. What ensued was a wait of over 5 hours and a show of the different types of weapon employed in African 'scrub' combat- i.e. pickup truck warfare on open, flat plains with only scrub and wadis for cover. Firstly the 14.5mms fired, then some 20mm cannons and finally some small tanks fired their 90mm guns. The soldiers started to fire their AK47s and RPGs to the side of the range. When they slaughtered a goat, ate it and started to leave, we proceeded to the items we had taken the previous day. Our cache of ammunition was in the firing range and had not been hit (otherwise work would have finished early that day!). To our amusement it did not look like any of the targets had been hit by the 90mm tank rounds. The craters were a long way from the broken vehicle targets. Then, as we dug a pit in which to blow up the items, we heard the crack and whizz of small arms fire again. The Chadian army was firing to our left and right but they were aiming away from us so we carried on. This was very far from the controlled, planned range days that anyone in a western army will be familiar with. At about two in the afternoon we set light to the safety fuse which would take about 4 minutes to burn and drove off behind cover. (EOD spotters- we don't have electrical dets that do the job for bulk dems here.) The detonation was about 20 seconds late but satisfying- our first tonne of ammunition had been destroyed. We heard the familiar sound of fragmentation whooshing overhead and then came an unsettling noise - a whirring, getting louder and louder meaning something sharp was heading our way. We all ducked behind the cover, a large sand bank, as a metal piece the size of a tennis ball, red hot and and sharp as a razor blade embedded itself into the protective sand bank the other side of where our interpreter's head was. All in all it was a good day and we drove back through a different shower, this time of huge flies which splatted against the windscreen for over an hour, almost completely obscuring vision.

Japanese vehicle, Chinese weaponry, African warfare

The ubiquitous PG7 fired from the shoulder of a Chadian soldier

A South African? French? made armoured car fires its 90mm anti-tank gun

Just about caught on camera; our first demolition of over a tonne of ammunition at the Massaguet army firing range

In the second week we deployed to Biltine, a quiet municipal town in the East of the country. It took two full days to drive there, only three hours of which was on tarmac. The roads between the two main cities in Chad are nothing more than sand or laterite dirt tracks, levelled in some places but difficult and boggy in others.

Sleeping outside on the way to Biltine

Dawn in the scrub

The wet season makes for difficult going in the sandy scrubland of easter Chad

The long road to Biltine; this was a good stretch

Biltine had three fatal accidents in the past month with most of the casualties being children. In each case they were tampering with items of unexploded ordnance (UXO) which are very unstable when armed and fired. The local people have taken extraordinary risks with UXO. For example if they find something, they would not know if it is safe or not but will still move it, burn it or bury it. Some of these items are designed to kill people up to 200m away, so toasting it over a fire or chucking it into an animal hole is not safe.

Give us a lift mate

An PG7L (RPG) found after being buried by local people; this one posed no threat as it had not been fired and was in reasonable condition so we moved it to be destroyed elsewhere

French made mortars left lying around for 16 years after the truck carrying them broke down

Unfortunately it looks like the people who are supposed and paid to educate against the risk of mines and UXO have not visited the places most at risk. They have not gone to the villages near the battles but have opted to stay in the comfortable towns. As such we have less information; normally we would obtain a lot of knowledge from these 'mines risk education' (MRE) teams as they do their rounds and interact with communities. That laziness has cost our time and they may have otherwise have prevented accidents. Not all people will change their risk taking after MRE, but it does reduce casualty rates by raising awareness of those risks and also of professional EOD teams whose job it is to deal with dangerous items. In northwest Cambodia, people would still eek out a meagre $0.75 per week by hunting for bamboo shoots in a minefield with a prolific accident history.

Most of our guides are children; most of the accident victims are children

Local people have ripped open this RPG and taken the explosive- not good

Children at a basic mudhut village read our education cartoon pamphlets

Most of the work time is spent driving around, either with a guide or in search of local farmers who might know of the location of dangerous items in nearby fields. Many of our guides have been children. Some have been nomads, who ply the desert with scores of camels on which they ride in brightly-hued carriages with their flocks of goats and sometimes oxen. On average, each hour a guide will take us to find something. Sometimes it is not dangerous, most times it is. There are signs that local people are taking risks such as cutting open armed and fired ('blind' or 'live') RPGs to get at the explosive inside.

J'ai un cadeau pour vous! An EOD operator hands me a safe OG7 projectile across one of Chad's rare water obstacles

Using a pyrotechnical charge to disrupt the fuse on this live OG7 projectile

Bulk demolition at Bogbog village

In the night times we live in a decrepit building which has a leaky roof and open veranda so when it rains we have to 'batten down' somewhat to prevent our equipment and clothes getting wet. And when it rains it absolutely chucks it down for hours and hours! We wash in the open from well water buckets and poo into a hole (long drop) filled with flies that come out in their hundreds if you go at dawn. There is no booze here, the only things that you can buy are bread, onion, tomato paste, mobile phone cards (this is the only town in the District with reception) and Pepsi- and goat. I have already had my fill of goat.

Dinner before..

.. and after. Idriss (in white) looks like he has just followed through

Most of our cutlery appears to have been half inched (pinched- stolen for you yanks) so George and I are eating from one plate and the only saucepan, which isn't big enough to cook rice or pasta. The forks and spoon (singular) are so soft they would probably bend in a strong wind. So far we have been engorging ourselves on tinned fish, tinned fruit, tinned pate, tinned pasta and tinned.. okay you get the picture. My favourite is potato and ham a la tin.

Myself eating like a king after our plates were half-inched

Despite the rain waterlogging the road, some nice photos abound in the post-rainfall dusk

Yesterday I flew back to N'Djamena with our Belgian emergency evacuation pilot in his Cessna 172. It was a nice flight and he let me take the controls for a while. Flying is something I might get into in the future, having earlier in my life disgarded the option of becoming a pilot thanks to colour-blindness and short sightedness. The flat plains of Chad are quite boring to look at for 3 hours but at the end of it was an air conditioned room, cold beer, good food at one of the French restuarants and hot, running water- and silence at night.

That's all for now. In the next few weeks we will remain in Biltine and that general area before heading to work in a larger city, Abeche.