Mine Kafon - deminer

27 years ago I was born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1983. Before I turn 14 years old, I lived in several locations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. Then I immigrated in the Netherlands in 1998. The first chapter of my live began in Qasaba, Kabul. That was when we moved with our family to Qasaba in age of 5. My life of survival began at there together with my brother. Back then there were several wars going on.

Me and my brother Mahmud, we played every day on the fields surrounded with the highest mountains in our neighbor hood.

On young age we learned to make our own toys. One of my favorite toys was a small rolling object. It was powered by the wind. We used to race against the other kids on the fields in our neighborhood. There was always a strong wind waving towards the mountains. While we were racing against each other, our small miniatures rolled way to fast and too far. Mostly they landed in areas where we were not allowed to step a foot on. Those areas were properties of great dangers and landmines. It was full of them. I still remember those friends that we have lost and saw them getting injured.

Almost after 20 years, I went back to my childhood and made those toys all over again. That was because of my graduation project for the Design Academy Eindhoven, the Netherlands. I remade one of those objects, 20 times bigger, heaver and stronger. It is powered by the wind and it’s meant for the same areas where were full of land mines.

Now if it rolls over a land mine, it will destroy itself and the landmine in the same time. It’s made from bamboo and biodegradable plastics. It has also a GPS chip integrated in it. So you can follow its steps on the website. You can see were it went, where are they safest paths to walk on and how many land mines are destroyed on that area.

In Afghanistan there are 10 million land mines on paper. In fact there are much more.

Every destroyed land mine means a saved life and every life counts.

Mine Kafon – Deminer

Massoud Hassani