Posted by Adam (Britzilla) Volerich

MAG stands for Mines Advisory Group. Visiting Mag was a really great experience. We began our visit with a short briefing in their main office, where we looked at charts of the process of their clearance since 1992. Out on the balcony was a giant model of a bounding fragmentation mine, it was incredibly accurate and looked really dangerous. After the meeting we got into vans and drove to a mock mine field a few kilometers away.

Upon arriving at the minefield we were given another short briefing concerning what we would be doing. There were four small stations set up acroos a cleared sandy area of the field.
At the first section a fully geared man toook out a long stick and pretended to prod around in the air and at the ground, he would do this sort of thing to check for trip wires incase the area was booby trapped to stop somone from de-mining the area. At the second station the area was no longer clear and had plants around it. The man took out a pair of vegetation cutters and cautiously cut down each stalk from top to bottom. At the third station a man witha metal detector surveyed the land for and buzzing noises, if the detector buzzed at all he would then have to dig. At the fourth station the man took out a prod and prodded at the ground a few centimeters down at a diagonal angle, to check for any objects that could be mines.
After viewing the stations we all got to try on the gear and try out prodding and cutting, it was a really fun thing to do. Then came the best part. A man went far out into the field and set up a bomb. He connected a wire to it and brought the wire back to where we were standing, he connected a detonator to it. The detonator was small and green with a button on either side. Both buttons would need to be pressed at the same time for the bomb to go off. I was picked to press the buttons. The man next to us said he would blow a whistle three times long and three times short, at the end of the third short whistle i was instructed to detonate the bomb. He blew and i pressed the explosion was loud and black smoke erupted from it, it was amazing and it felt really cool. I liked it a lot! Got to go now, be home soon.

-Adam