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As it is amazing to see tenacity of seventy-year-old Croat shepherd Mirko Papac from the village of Gornja Duboka, located on the border between "Croatian" and "Serbian" Herzegovina. Everyday he takes his hundred odd sheep to the pasture among the minefields which, scattered across the Herzegovina karst region, were once separating two armies. When eighteen of his sheep were literally torn to pieces by one single blast of landmines, he decided to take care of mines by himself. In three years since he returned to his destroyed farm, he discovered more than two hundred mines. When he finds a mine, he digs it out, and covers with a pile of rocks in order to prevent any additional victims among his sheep. "And now, kids, watch out. Step only on the rocks! There are still mines in the grass!" he shouted at one point with a thunderous voice that echoed in the wilderness of Herzegovina karst, while he was guiding us from one pile of his unexploded trophies to another; before that we were not at all aware we were literally walking across the minefields. |
