Word: samos
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Three-year-old Samo scurries across a grassy field, his nose twitching furiously. Hooked up to a harness, he darts back and forth across the roped-off minefield - then, suddenly, he freezes in his tracks, sniffing the air. After a concentrated pause, he scratches vigorously at the ground, a signal to his handler, Shirima Vendeline Emmanuel, who stands in a safe zone a few yards away that he has found a landmine. "Good boy, Samo," shouts Emmanuel, as he scampers over to receive his reward - a banana. Samo is not some exploited child-soldier, however; he is a bristly giant...
...Samo is already a veteran: Last month, he was part of a crew of 10 rodents that successfully sniffed out all the mines in fields totaling 130,000 square feet around the village of Macia in southern Mozambique. But today's exercise is only a practice run. A grassy field on the edge of town has been set up to resemble a real minefield ready to be cleared. Dozens of 100-square meter (1,076 square feet) plots are demarcated by markers and strings, red perimeters signify areas of dangers, while green marks the safe zones where the handlers stand...
...have already cleared thousands of mines across the country. "Two rats can clear a 200-square-meter area in one hour," says Mkumbo. "It takes one [human] de-miner two weeks to do the same area." And all that the rats ask in return is tasty food. When Samo signals the presence of a mine by scratching the ground, Emmanuel, his handler, presses a clicker which makes a noise that Samo has been trained to associate with food. He scampers over and snatches his banana from Emmanuel, devouring it in a couple of quick bites. To maintain their conditioning...
...leave a lump of revolt in your gut. Revolt and, if ITMFG gets to you, an aching premonition. For beyond the gore is the void. We are all facing death, these movies say, and when we smell its fetid breath we have only two choices. Laugh and fight, as Samo does. Or scream and fight, as Lily Chung does against her super-subhuman attacker in ?Red to Kill.? But never submit...
...Close Encounter,? skeleton fingers grab Samo Hung?s butt; skeleton teeth snack on his ample flesh. (It?s a nightmare, the kind the ITMFG films rarely wake up from.) You?ll need a high threshold of pain for roughhouse and Cantonese insult comedy, for fall-on-their-asses reactions that Shemp Howard would have rejected as overly broad, and for supporting players with cross-eyes and a huge, hairy wart (a talisman of sorts, don?t ask me why, for martial arts movies of the period). But along with some cunning, made-in-the-basement special effects, ?CESK? includes...