Victor Victorious: Good News!

Annamaria on Monday

Good things are happening all over this planet!  Here is the story of one of them.

About fifteen months ago, Michael posted here about Apopo, an organization headquartered in Tanzania, that trains Giant Pouched Rats to detect landmines and tuberculosis.

The worldwide landmine infestation was a cause that concerned me.  When, thanks to Michael, I found out that I could help in a small way to solve it by donating  $8 a month to support my own mine-detection rat, I jumped at the chance.  I got to name the little guy.  I thought about the future I wanted for him, so I chose to name him Victor!

Since then I have reported here about his birth, his growth, and his training.  It’s been a while since I updated you.  Today I am proud to report that he is fulfilling a great purpose.  In my last report, I bragged that he had proved his capability at sniffing out explosive material.   Here are some milestones that Victor has achieved since then:

March 11^th—At the young age of ten months, Victor was accredted as a explosives detector in Tanzania and earned his airline ticket to his first job in Mozambique.

March 28^th—He was on his way to join a 200-strong team that has, so far, returned 11 MILLION square meters of land to local Mozambique communities.  They have found and destroyed

• ·      Landmines—13,273
• ·      Explosive remnants of war—1,113
• ·      Small Arms and Ammunitions—28,792

April 8^th—Victor earns his International Mine Action Standards accreditation.  He gets a feast of bananas and avocados to celebrate.

April 22^nd—Victor finds his first Landmine.

         **cost to me for this achievement, at that point: $96!

All this before…

May 8^th—Victor’s first birthday

So on he goes.  Here is Apopo’s description of the problem he now continues to combat.

“At almost three thousand, annual global landmine accidents are unacceptably tragic; 80 percent of them involve innocent people unrelated to the original conflicts; 46 percent of these are children.

Every bit as tragic, yet going largely unrecognized, is the immense and negative impact posed by landmines to the development of mine-contaminated countries such as Cambodia and Angola. Vast tracts of productive land have been rendered off-limits for decades, yet only about three percent of that land typically contains any explosive material at all. The rest sits needlessly idle, whilst desperate nearby communities are too afraid to use it.

This is where the HeroRATs step in where others fear to tread.

APOPO specifically targets large areas near towns and villages where the existence of landmines is not certain, checking them swiftly and efficiently for explosive remnants of war.”

And here is great story about from Apopo’s efforts in Angola:

"For years, school children in Angola played football 20 meters from a live landmine recently detected by the HeroRats

The sight of children playing is commonplace all over the world. For youngsters in Ngola Luije Town, Angola, the landmines add an extra, and deadly dimension to their games.

Angola’s prolonged conflict was a bush war. Rural populations fled to the cities to seek refuge, whilst their towns and villages became fierce battle zones, strategic military encampments and no-go areas.

Fourteen years after the conflicts have ended, rural Angolans have returned to their villages to find themselves surrounded by explosive remnants of war such as old landmines, unexploded bombs, grenades and bullets. This leaves them unable to develop their towns and farms and makes everyday activities such as playing, agriculture, or collecting firewood, a deadly endeavor.

The children would nominate one of them to go and get the football.

In Angola, APOPO supplies mine detection rat units to its mine clearance partner NPA. Together they cleared the land surrounding Ngola Luije in 2014, which was a defensive military base during the war. In the process, a landmine was discovered less than twenty meters from the town school. It had lain hidden for over twenty years.

Francisco Mauricio, the school’s headmaster explained that while the minefields were clearly marked, the children’s football was inevitably kicked into the mine-ridden overgrowth. If no adults were around, the children would nominate someone to sneak into the minefield to retrieve it…"

 Now, thanks to Apopo's HeroRats, the danger is gone.  The children, who were at risk of losing their legs, their classmates, their lives, can play in safety.  

Mine is a hope-seeking soul.  Perhaps because I had to find my way to adulthood through some considerable obstacles, I am drawn to warmth and light.  To joy.  To dancing.  Rather than to darkness. Or despair.

Victor, and all those fabulous, patient, determined, optimistic people who make his feats possible: theirs is a road I am happy and privileged to travel.  The sunshine of hope glows at its end.  Hooray for good news!

You can find more about Apopo and how to join the fight at apopo.org.  

Update: Victor the HeroRat at Six Months Old

Annamaria on Monday

Readers who have followed this blog over the last several months will have met Victor, my adopted HeroRat.   I heard about the work of APOPO from a blogpost of Michael’s last April.  They are a Belgian NGO based in Tanzania, Mozambique, and Cambodia  that trains African giant pouched rats to detect landmines and tuberculosis.   I adopted one of the critters at the cost of $8 per month, named him Victor, and designated that he would work in mine detection.  From time to time, I update everyone on Victor’s progress so far.   He is six months old now.  Here is the latest report:

Victor just sniffed out its first deactivated landmine!  

The landmine that Victor detected is an "anti-personnel" type, and is only the first of many, many more that it will help APOPO's mine action teams detect in the years to come.  And because the mine contained TNT, Victor needed almost no additional training to be able to correctly identify it.   Starting at this stage of training, Victor will work in areas of APOPO's training field that contain some partially exposed and some completely buried, deactivated landmines. 

There are many different types of landmines that endanger civilian populations around the world.  Some are "anti-personnel" and some are "anti-vehicle," but nearly all of them contain the explosive compound, TNT.   Anti-personnel landmines pose a direct threat to human and animal life in dozens of countries and are specifically manufactured to target people.  The anti-vehicle mines are used primarily during wartime to prevent the trucks and tanks of the conflicting groups from entering an area. 

Manufacturers of landmines use TNT because it is stable, even in moist environments, meaning that the landmines can remain active in the soil for many decades, a hidden threat to anyone who passes by or wants to develop the land. Once through with the full training, Victor and the other rats in its team will be able to detect not just mines, but also other explosive remnants of war such as bombs and small arms and ammunition.



 Victor’s training is taking place simulated minefield in Tanzania, where, in collaboration with Tanzanian Peoples Defense Force,  APOPO has developed a beautiful 240,000 square meters training ground at the foothills of the Uluguru Mountains.  Victor and his trainers work among more than 1,500 deactivated landmines.  The field also contains grass, rocks, insects, and many other distractions.  There Victor is becoming accustomed to the challenges he will face someday in a real minefield.

Victor would like to introduce you to one of its favorite trainers at APOPO in Tanzania, Mark Shukuru.

  

 

This province of Mozambique now mine-free thanks to HeroRats like my Victor!

It is not just humans who suffer from unexploded mines.

In the past, Victor’s predecessor HeroRats and their APOPO handlers turned over a mine-free Gaza province to the government of Mozambique and Instituto Nacional de Desminagem (IND).  APOPO's Mine Detection Rats and its Mozambique country staff accomplished this feat more than a year before the deadline!

APOPO is now preparing their heroes—humans and rats—to go to Cambodia, where unexploded ordinance has taken its greatest toll in history.  40,000 Cambodians, over one-third of them children, have lost limbs.  There are an estimated 4 to 6 million mines and unexploded ordinance in that small country.   Perhaps, once he is fully trained, Victor will go there to help.  Whether or not he himself does, his APOPO teammates will soon be there, saving lives and limbs. 

If you want to help by keeping Victor’s HeroRat confreres in mangoes and peanuts and their trainers and managers in business, you can do so by going here:

https://www.apopo.org/en/donate/order/start/app

VIVA Victor.  Onward to Victory.

Victor the Hero Rat: Chapter Two

For those of you following the news of Victor the Hero Rat, I have a bimonthly update.  The little guy is growing up fast.  Here is a bit more about his species and a report of his progress since my last post on this subject.

Victor’s species (Cricetomys gambianus) are commonly called African pouched rats but not because they are marsupials.   They have large pouches in their cheeks which they use to carry food and “other things.”  I am not sure what those other things might be.  A cell phone, a lipstick, an ATM card, house keys, the stuff I normally tote around in my handbag seem unlikely choices.

Their name in Afrikaans—reuse rot—carries some weird connotations if you read it as English.   I prefer their Swahili name—panya buku.  “Panya” sounds like “panda,” a legendarily loveable creature.  The more I learn about Victor and his confreres, the more loveable they become.  “Buku” sounds like it means “many” or “much,” a concept that definitely applies to Victor and his cohorts.  First of the all, there is a plentiful supply of them.  And even more important to their hero status is the number of attributes and capabilities they have to help humans accomplish critically important tasks.  They are inexpensive to find, feed, and breed.   They don’t see well at all, but their noses are amazingly useful.  They have more genes dedicated to the sense of smell than any other mammal.  And they’re too lightweight to set off land mines.  That size also means they are easy to transport.  Plus they resist most tropical diseases and live eight years, meaning that once they are trained, they can be helpful for a long time.

Victor graduates kindergarten

When little Vic was only a few weeks old, his handlers started him on the path to becoming a hero.  They do not use obedience training on pouched rats, as might be involved in educating  guiding eyes or bomb-sniffing dogs.  Vic is being trained by operant conditioning, step one of which is forming a connection between the sound of a clicker and food rewards.  So they put him in a glass-walled cage with a small hole in one wall.   Vic’s job was to learn, when he heard the sound of the click, to stick his little snout out of the hole and get fed.

You’ll be proud to know that Victor acquired this initial critical trick.  Now he is on his way to work hard and successfully, literally for peanuts.

Elementary school for Victor will be to test his ability to detect the scent of  TNT or of tuberculosis.  If he does that, he can learn to become a detective expert at spotting land mines in Africa or Cambodia or medical samples from infected people anywhere in the world.  Both of Victor’s possible career paths are critical to the health and well being of humans.  I have no preference between the two.  He will choose.  I await  his next report card.

By the way, supporting Victor and the fabulous people who are educating him and will supervise his eventual contribution to the welfare of the human race costs a mere $8 per month.  You can get involved and adopt such a critter here.

It’s fun.  Believe me: it will make you feel good if you do.

Horning in on Zoe's territory:

1. In rhetoric, chiasmus (Latin term from Greek χίασμα, "crossing", from the Greek χιάζω, chiázō, "to shape like the letter Χ") is the figure of speech in which two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger point; that is, the clauses display inverted parallelism.
   In the US Declaration of Independence, a bone thrown to the Mother Country: 
2. The closing words--"Enemies in War, in Peace Friends"--employ chiasmus, ...

Annamaria - Monday