Word: casspir
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Hope is Africa's rarest commodity. Yet buried though it is amid the despair that haunts the continent, there is more optimism today than in decades. Francisco Mucavele found hope last September when an armored steel Casspir rolled over the hill and began to blow up the land mines contaminating Mozambique's rich soil. Olga Haptemariam acquired it in Eritrea's war-scarred port city of Massawa when she laid down 2,000 birr for a license to open a building-supply store. The villagers of N'Tjinina are finding it as they prepare for the solemn experience of voting...
That is where more rural magic comes into play. The newest local healer lumbers into the countryside on 17 tons of armor plate and giant steel wheels. The Frelimo government has invested its scarce cash to bring in a fleet of Casspir demining vehicles, operated by a private subsidiary of the South African army, to get rid of the mines that keep farmers and herders off the country's lush lands...
Standing among corn shoots already knee high, Francisco waves toward other fields where the telltale puffs of black smoke show mines detonating beneath the Casspir's wheels and talks of planting there too. Then he can not only feed his family of seven children but also sell for a profit. "As we get our land back, we can cultivate more and graze more cows. Then maybe we can get roads, and trucks will come to take our food to market. And then the stores and clinics will come back," he says. Already his younger children can go to school again...
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