It may be the most dangerous job in the world, but it doesn’t seem to faze Helen Gray. The feisty Scot heads a team of female ‘de-miners’ in Mozambique, a country littered with thousands of lethal landmines after nearly two decades of deadly civil war. Over 900,000 died in the fighting, which began in 1977. Five million civilians were displaced, while thousands lost limbs as a result of the landmines. Gray and her Mozambican colleagues work for the HALO Trust, a small non-governmental organization whose sole mandate is to rid countries of military debris. And in Mozambique they’ve had resounding success. ‘More than 100,000 mines have been destroyed since 1994,’ according to Gray. ‘The four provinces in the north are now mine-free.’
De-miners’ work differs from that of sappers – soldiers who plant and disable landmines – so only the peace-minded need apply. Once an occupation dominated by men, HALO began recruiting women in the 1990s. Gray was just 24 when she signed on in 2004. She spent two years in Angola, then in 2007 transferred to Mozambique.
