Vapor technology and giant rats

THE ROOTS OF APOPO BEGAN SPROUTING when I saw the dependence of African communities living in postconflict areas. There was a reliance on expensive imported know-how and technology to help rid their landscape of the destruction caused by landmines. It also lay in the unfairness of how we as a human society have evolved, and what we evolved into, with huge differences between the wealthy and the unfortunate. This is especially true when looking at the dependence of African communities on foreign input to create the most basic circumstances for development, which are simply not available. So in starting Apopo, I put myself in the situation of a subsistence farmer in an African village, unable to access his farmlands because they were filled with landmines. And I began looking at what these people had at hand and what resources could be utilized to tackle the problem of these buried landmines more independently. And since rats were plentiful everywhere, and I already knew that rodents had the capability, the idea of training them to smell the TNT in landmines and react to it became a solution to a very real problem. My intention, however, was not initially to train rats, but rather to deal with the dependency that had developed because of the existence of these landmines and empower these people.