Mine Awareness

The Mine
Waiting for the police
The address we gave to the police to try to find us

Last Saturday Paul and I took off from our flat in Ciglane for a walk in the sun into town. Ciglane is a very urban neighbourhood situated on a hill facing the city. It is a series of buildings at various points in the hill and it's pretty cool safe neighbourhood.


Nostalgic about our nearing departure Paul and I looked extra closely at the details of our neighbourhood trying to capture them on film and in our minds. Then looking down into the grass, a stretch where the concrete building end, Paul noticed something unusual under the 11th guard rail in the shade of a tree. He called me over and asked what I thought it was. Instantly I flashed back to our mine awareness presentations.

Mines look like small brown hockey pucks that are brownish in colour( check )
Mines are usually found in fields but after rain storms they can be shifted and moved into residential areas ( check)
Do not touch a mine and resist the desire to poke it with a stick ( check )

We looked at the "mine" with a cautious distance. We resisted poking it with a stick We kept walking. Then several meters further over come with strong sense of responsibility and guilt we turned back. If we did not report the mine what if someone got hurt? What if some child picked it up? Or the rain moved it closed to the street and a car drove over it?


Yup it sure looked minesque. Unsure of what to do we called all the people we had logged into our phone. Finally after several calls we learned the number to the police ( something we should have probably known ourselves) . The operator spoke limited English and the word mine had to be repeated 8 times before she seemed to get what we were trying to say. We hung up and crossed our fingers that she understood our location.


1 hour and once ice cream later, the police showed up. They smiled politely as they got out of their car and let us lead them to the mine. Officer one looked at it closely, hesitated for a moment, and then picked it up and threw it in the large dumpster near by. Paul and I stared at each other slightly horrified and embarrassed. The officers took our names as a formality and said something in Bosnia which I could only assume meant " you idiots tore us away from the soccer game for this". Once they pulled away Paul reached back into the dumpster to take a closer look at the plastic 'mine like" object which we can only now presume is the top of a giant water jug.

At least no one got hurt.