You spend your whole life training and then working in your specialty and are so successful that you are no longer needed.
That is what has happened to my favorite rodents, the HeroRats.
Historical achievement
On the 17th of September 2015, at a ceremony in Maputo, His Excellency Minister Oldemiro Júlio Margues Baloi Minister of Foreign Affairs, will declare the country ‘Free of all known landmines’. APOPO’s Head of Mine Action Africa, Tess Tewelde says “APOPO is extremely proud to have played a part in this historical achievement that now allows the people of Mozambique to finally live without the fear of landmines and explosive remnants of war.”
Since 2008 APOPO has helped rid five provinces from the scourge of these insidious weapons, In the process APOPO has destroyed a total of 13,274 landmines and returned 11,124,446 square meters of safe land for productive use back to communities. Most households in these areas are headed by smallholder farmers who have not been able to use their land to grow crops and sustain their livestock for decades until APOPO released the land. They can now live, work, farm and play without fear.
Well your next step is to travel across a continent to Angola!
Rat reinforcements to Angola
2014-10-28
Today, 20 fully trained APOPO mine-detection HeroRATs will be setting off to support their veteran rodent colleagues in Angola. Uhuru (pictured) and his fellow HeroRATs have spent the last 9 months in APOPO’s training and research center in Morogoro, Tanzania, learning to detect the insidious weapons that terrorize communities across the globe. Landmines kill and maim thousands of innocent men, women and children all over the world every year. As well as physical casualties, landmines also create a major obstacle to development, cutting communities off from basic needs such as productive land, water sources and travel routes. Due to the on/off war between 1975 and 2002, Angola is the third most mine affected country in the world.
"This country has had enough of war'’ says APOPO’s Angola program manager, Frank Gregorio. "And communities that are forced to live in or near areas contaminated with land mines have it worst of all. The rat reinforcements will help APOPO get these people back on their land and productive again as fast as possible".
Once the rats arrive, they will be given a couple of months to acclimatize before the Angolan National Mine Action Authority (CNIDAH) will test them to make sure they are fully up to speed before deployment to the minefields.
However Neema Hashim, one of the rat trainers in Tanzania will be feeling sad to see the rats go. “I know they are off to help people and to save lives,” She says, “but I’ll miss Uhuru. I had really grown fond of him”.