By
Prairie Summer
Adopt-A-Minefield
Program
Coordinator
Today we visited a primary school in Tordinci in
eastern Croatia that used to be surrounded by landmines. The school is filled with with 190 students from this village as well
as from three neighboring towns, and it was mostly destroyed during the
internal conflict in the region during the 1990s.
The school was rebuilt in 2002 after the land was
cleared and declared safe, but some of the surrounding land – only 100
meters from the school – remains unclear and potentially contaminated
with landmines.
As we entered into the 6th grade
classroom, students painted pictures of sunflowers and as they showed
off their work they told us about how landmines affected their lives.
Before the area around the school was cleared by Adopt-A-Minefield in
2007, they were not allowed to play around the school and parents feared
for the safety of their children. Now it is much easier for parents to
send their children to school knowing they are in a safe environment
when they arrive.
While the conditions at the school have improved,
not all children are free from the threat of landmines. One of the boys
I spoke with said he cannot play in the streets or outside near his home
because there are so many mines. He has heard them explode and hopes
some day to be able to play at home without fear, as he now does at
school.
Several other students said they had no mines near
their homes.
As they showed off their paintings, I tried to
imagine what it would be like walking to school knowing there could be
mines in the ground along the way. Outside your front door or just over
the next hill.
Imagine if your dog ran off into the woods?
Or your children chased a stray ball across the street into a
contaminated field?
