Ethiopia

My first Humanitarian Demining mission was in Ethiopia. What a shocker for me. It was like nothing I had ever been exposed to before. From the very beginning I found Ethiopia a strange place. It was very different to what I was used to. The over population of the city, Addis Ababa, the traffic, the smells, the strange food, the constant begging from kids and handicapped people was overwhelming.

There was so much to learn from my part. I was very familiar with the US military way of demining and this was completely different. This mission was taught in accordance with the United Nations Standards for Demining, which I had never seen in my life. Suffice to say I was lost for the first weeks of being in country. The only way for me to learn everything was to volunteer to write as many lesson plans and to teach as many classes as possible, which is what I did.  I didn’t want to seem like I was kissing ass, but I needed to learn, and that was the best way for me to do it.

 Dealing with new students was a different story altogether. What a chore that was. I have a short temper and a short tolerance for incompetence. I only like to say or show things once or twice. Seemed like with these students you had to say things 15 times before they even understood what you were trying to say or demonstrate, let alone comprehend or be able to perform a task. My blood pressure was always high. My two other colleges, John Payne and Larry Brophy were great. They were able to keep my temper in check. They taught me not to take anything personal. That was very hard for me since I am such a stickler for doing everything right. I am a perfectionist and expect the same from everyone that works for me.

 We were teaching the Ethiopian military engineers how to demine according to UN standards. The problem was that the students didn’t care about shit. They didn’t care because they had all been demining during the war with Eritrea and thought they were the best. Not only that, but being that they all were military, no matter how bad they did during training, they knew that we couldn’t kick them off the course and they would be getting their training certificates regardless. The vast majority of them came from rural areas with a maximum of a third grade education. So it was very hard to comprehend some of the theories we were teaching. There was also a language problem. None of the students spoke any English, except maybe words like “you”, and “give cigarettes”. We had been provided with military translators, who knew enough English to get by. So we had no idea what they were telling the students. We were certain that some ideas were lost in translation. Every evolution or drill had to be explained in detail a few times, along with hands on demonstration by us, step by step. Otherwise, they would not get it.

One day I gave one of the translators two Igloo jugs of water. I told him that it was for the students so that they had drinking water everyday. He was to make sure that they came back every morning full of water. Easy instructions, so I thought. The next day there were no water jugs. The day after there were none either. So I told the translator to send someone to get them. The deminer came back with them 20 minutes later with them…EMPTY! So I had to explain it like this: “take two deminers, each carrying a jug, walk to the water spigot, remove the covers, one at a time, place jug under the spigot, turn spigot on until water starts flowing. Ensure that water is going into jug. Once the jug is full, turn spigot off, remove jug from underneath and replace cover on top tightly, so that no water spills out of it. Then, place the next jug under the spigot and repeat the preceding procedures. Once both jugs were filled with the lids in place, each deminer is to pick a jug and walk back to the training area.” When they returned to my area I almost exploded, they only brought one jug, half filled! It was a great temper-training situation.

 And the smell these people had!!!!! Personal hygiene is not big in these parts of the world, so when you get 84 students in a classroom intended for about 20, the smell can be sickening. What a funk! It was very hard to resist the urge regurgitate breakfast. Especially in warm afternoons. We always insisted in having all windows open during lessons, but these fellows did not believe in that and always closed them. It was a daily struggle with them. I would like to say that sometimes, with time, you get used to smells but I never did. It was nauseating to me.

On June 23 we graduated the first company of deminers. We had preferred to have a small ceremony with us handing out all the certificates of completion and then having a few beers. But that would not be the case. Tom Barnes, our Chief of Party, decided that it would be better public relations for all parties involved to have a formal ceremony. So many VIPs, from the U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopian generals were invited, along with representatives from the U.N. and the World Bank. In addition to these people, the head in charge of the Ethiopian Mine Action Office (EMAO) had invited the local media.  My first tasking was to go to the Embassy and escort the Ambassador to the training area in Holeta. I arrived at exactly 0840, with 5 minutes to spare and proceeded to Sgt Hill’s apartment where I was to meet her and SSgt K from the Defense Attache Office (DAO) office. Then to pick up the Ambassador. It was a miserable morning, cold and raining. Mike and I stood in from the Ambassador’s residence and waited. The Political Officer came out and invited us in. What a “duffus” that guy was. A typical brainy nerd. We stepped into the house and I personally was flabbergasted at the opulence of the residence. The Ambassador came out and turned out to be a very nice fellow. I answered a few smart questions from him and a few stupid ones from the PO (yes, there are stupid questions). The Ambassador made us wait for his family to be ready, they were all going. We left the compound only 10 minutes behind schedule. Even though the reason I was assigned this duty was only because the other trainers were Canadians and I was American, I still didn’t want to fuck it up and put everyone behind schedule. That morning was one of the worst ones as far as weather was concerned, and myself along with the others had serious doubts whether the graduation would actually take place. By the time we got to Holeta, the weather had cleared considerably and all of our doubts dissipated. We even got to the training area in perfect time, thanks to the speedy driving of the Ambassador’s driver and Mike.

 We put on a “dog and pony” show for all the VIPs, where we demonstrated all the capabilities we had taught the students. I was in charge of demolitions. Larry had demining and Don had medical. John gave an overall speech on training. Larry had some deminers working in their lanes and Don was giving his speech on medical; when Don tipped his ball cap (his signal to me), I detonated a couple of blasting caps I had rigged about 5 meters in front of one of the deminers and hidden from the VIPs. To say the least, the explosion caught everyone by surprise, including Tom, who had no idea. Up to this point my mind had been racing with possible scenarios, such as the caps failing to detonate, or having the deminer actually hurt by flying debris and so on. I was sweating bullets as they say. I, as well as the others, didn’t want anything from going wrong at this stage of the game. We knew how important this graduation was to the fate of the Ethiopian Demining Project; we knew there was a lot riding on the next few hours.  As practiced, Don’s medics sprang into action and “saved” their fallen comrade, to the delight of everyone present. We then proceeded up to the base theater for the formal graduation. The Ambassador and Generals all made their speeches and certificates were handed out. We had set up demonstration tables with a sample of the gear given to the deminers. After the graduation, the VIPs toured our tables and we fielded questions from all of them.

 The graduation was a big PR success and everyone was thoroughly impressed with our program, which meant support from the Embassy would increase (and it did) tremendously. The World Bank representative was very impressed and opened his checkbook to our company. The media had a field day with us and we made it into the evening news.

After everyone went home we asked some of the medics to help us bring the demonstration gear into our classroom. We had brought some Ouzo and vodka along with some fine Cuban cigars to celebrate. So we proceeded to give them shots of Ouzo, they took it well but I can see by the expressions on some faces that they will be praying to the porcelain god later on, if not sooner. Tom came in the classroom and we chatted and celebrated our job well done. He informed us about how impressed everyone was and all the great comments he had received through the morning. Tom is a great politician and he played everyone to the greatest advantage.