NOTE #13 THE DEMINING GIRLS

There is a place on this earth that is so inhospitable that no one wanted it. Not even Algeria, which owns the most barren of all deserts. And yet, for almost 50 years, a people on the run has been living there. When Spain relinquished its colonial claims over Western Sahara in the mid-1970s and left its African citizens to their fate, Morocco annexed the territory south of its national borders, triggering a mass exodus. The dream of an independent Western Sahara, as promised by the UN, was quickly forgotten. To the east of the annexed territory, the Moroccan military erected a 3,000 km long sand wall and made it the most mined place on earth with 20 million landmines. The wall separated the Sahrawi refugees from the sea and tore countless families apart. Many had no choice but to flee to the east. To the Hammada, hell on earth. The place no one wanted. Not even Algeria, to which it belongs.

I travelled to the Sahrawis to shoot my film ‘Separated’. A film about dividing walls. I had been told that young Sahrawi girls were working on demining the wall. I wanted to meet them and tell their story. A sandstorm swept across the rocky Hammada at night as we set off. A 1,000 km journey through the narrow strip of land known as the ‘Free Zone’ and through Mauritania lay ahead of us. A pickup truck filled with soldiers from the Polisario Front escorted us. Pako – the Spanish firefighter I had met in Haiti while shooting my film ‘Gaelle’ – accompanied me and never let me out of his sight. Because I was probably the only female creature in that godforsaken desert within a radius of 500 km. Sidi, our driver, a true son of the desert, always followed the stars, parallel to the wall, always heading south. Not too far to the right, where the mines lurked, and not too far to the left, where gorges furrowed the desert. There were no roads, not even a sand track, and to this day I still don't know how Sidi was able to find his way.

After two endless days, we reached the newly built mine clearance camp south of the wall near Mijek. The day before, a sandstorm had devastated part of the camp, and the men were busy repairing the mine clearance equipment. I was quartered in the deminers' tent and felt very lucky. Still dazed and exhausted from the long journey, I stumbled into their tent and was greeted with broad smiles from the girls. I smiled back and the spell was broken. We didn't need a common language to communicate. Ten minutes later, I was sitting next to them on the floor, drinking mint tea and marvelling at their cosy sleeping quarters, protected by mosquito nets. They were coquettish, painting their fingernails and making themselves pretty for the next deadly mission. And they had dreams. They all dreamed the same thing: to live in their own country without Moroccan repression. And they dreamed of their families in the north, in the refugee camps of the Hammada, whom they could only visit very rarely. The route along the wall was too far and too dangerous. The mines had become part of their everyday life. They spoke of them almost as if they were their children. How they had to be treated tenderly. With a lot of patience and respect.

I only spent a few days in Mijek, but the images have stayed with me. The small shower cubicle at the edge of the minefield. The pretty, cheerful girls in their blue, loose-fitting robes and protective masks covering their faces, which would not save them in the event of an accident. The cosy atmosphere in the tent and our conversations in broken English about my world and theirs. They belonged to the generation that had been born in the refugee camps of the Hammada. They knew nothing but their desert and the sand wall. They had never seen the sea that once belonged to the Sahrawis. We chatted night after night while the sandstorm raged outside. A small oasis of life in the middle of a place that had been so unnecessarily condemned to death by humans.