Kiwi helps look for landmines

By liz.wylie@wanganuichronicle.co.nz

A sunny day at Koroniti on the Whanganui River is a long way from the landmines of southeast Asia.

When not on holiday, TeKimiti Gilbert is a bomb disposal expert in Laos where the detection and destruction of explosives is his business.

Mr Gilbert has been staying with his mother, Lois Gilbert, at her house at Koroniti Pa, where he grew up.

As head of mine action for Belgian non-government agency APOPO (Anti-Personnel Landmines Detection Product Development), he is charged with training and assisting local people to detect and remove landmines, unexploded artillery shells, and cluster bombs.

"The socioeconomic impact of landmines and unexploded munitions is huge.

"Those things massively block economic development, and poor people in remote areas are continuing to suffer.

"Nobody really knows how many unexploded cluster bombs are in the area but when you consider that American bombers were flying over the region for nine years and dropping bombs roughly every eight minutes that's a phenomenal number."

TeKimiti attended Aramoho School, Wanganui Intermediate then St Augustine College and served in the New Zealand Army before training at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and doing peacekeeping work for the United Nations. He took his first post in northern Iraq in 1999 and has around the world on peacekeeping and humanitarian work ever since.

He is now based in Laos since taking up the post with APOPO eight months ago and he said it is one of a number of organisations working to dispose of mines and bombs around the world.

APOPO is unique in that it uses a special strategy in landmine detection - giant rats trained to detect the presence of mines with their sense of smell.

Mr Gilbert said the foot-long giant African pouched rats are trained in Mozambique, Africa, where they have been effective in detecting and clearing almost 7000 land mines from rural areas.

"They have been trained to detect the presence of tuberculosis in laboratory samples too.

"They use them for second line screening of the samples and they have detected that up to 40 per cent of the negative samples are, in fact, positive."

The use of rats in detecting mines was the brainchild of APOPO founder Bart Weetjens, a long-time rodent fancier and Zen Buddhist who believed that rats' highly developed sense of smell meant they could be trained for the task.

Mr Gilbert said the rats' resilience to the tropical diseases prevalent in landmine-affected countries and their light weight made them ideal for the job because they would not trigger the mines.

The highly trained rodents are referred to as "hero rats" because of their effectiveness in preventing loss of human lives.

"My wife does the same work as I do and we met while we were both working for the UN as part of our efforts to clear millions of unexplored cluster bombs resulting from the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006."

Mr Gilbert and his second wife, Asa from Stockholm in Sweden, have a 4-year-old son, Tane, who was enjoying a swim in the river with his grandson, Laxon, who is also 4.

"This is what happens with second marriages - you get a son and a grandson who are the same age" said Mr Gilbert.

Laxon's mum Chanelle and her sister Renee along with their cousins Ben and Alex who live in New York were also enjoying time out on the river before heading back to their regular lives as well.

TeKimiti's mum Lois said it has been good to have the family home this year and all her children and grandchildren like to come back when they can.

"They spent their early years here at the pa and would spend weekends here when they were at school and we had a house in town.

"TeKimiti comes home every year and always enjoys being back by the river and spending time with family."

Source http://m.nzherald.co.nz/wanganui-chronicle/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503426&objectid=11384357