FROM THE FIELD: Bosnia,

Injured mine

worker gets

loan for home

By Kevin C. O'Brien

Adopt-A-Minefield

Marketing Manager

“I stopped searching, believing it had been activated by rocks, and when I stood up I stepped on the mine,”  Jovica Goreta.

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Photos ©AAM by Andris Bjornson

In June 2008 Jovica Goreta was approved to receive a STOP Mines loan for 5,000 KM  to make improvements to his apartment. When we spoke he had not yet received the money, but said he plans using it to replace windows and flooring inside the two-bedroom flat he shares with his wife and six-year-old daughter.

After the war in 1997, Goreta took a job as a landmine clearance worker for the United Nations Mine Action Center in Bosnia. “There were no other job opportunities, and this had a good salary in the beginning,” Goreta explained.

He was working clearance around a military building that was heavily mined during the war. He had a map detailing where mines were placed – but it was common in the mountainous and rocky terrain for falling rocks from the NATO bombings to have set off landmines before they were cleared.

“I was looking for a mine for 15-minutes in a very small space,” Goreta said. “I stopped searching, believing it had been activated by rocks, and when I stood up I stepped on the mine.”

In the first few seconds Goreta said, he did not realize what happened. A colleague who stepped on a minebefore him told him earlier that he too didn’t comprehend right away what happened. “I didn’t believe him – but then, when it happened to me, I realized it was true.”

Goreta lost his left foot in the explosion. He spent one-month in the hospital and then was sent to Slovenia for rehabilitation and to be fitted with a prosthetic for the next two-months.

Stuffed animals fill a shelf in six-year-old daughter's room

Goreta has not let his injury slow him down. Living in the shadow of the mountains used for the 1984 Sarejevo winter Olympic games, Goreta has always been a skier, and despite his missing foot he quickly took up the sport again.

“It felt like I was wearing a bigger shoe, and I lost a little control in my left leg,” he explained about skiing on his prosthetic foot..

Goreta participates in the Para-Olympic Association and he hopes to compete in the next winter Olympics in Canada.

In the meantime, Goreta works as a security guard for the same company where his wife is a bookkeeper. He works 48-hours on and then has six-days off, which enables him to help out raising his daughter – but Goreta said he misses the money he made as a mine clearance worker.

He doesn’t know if his injury would prevent it – but Goreta said that despite his injury, he would still work as a deminer to make the extra money.

“So many things are more complicated than before,” he explained about why he has not pursued returning to demining. “My family would be very much against it.”