"I am so happy to have joined HALO and to now be working with GIS, because I am rescuing my community and bringing freedom to them."
No one in Delight Manyange’s hometown of Nyatsato, Zimbabwe could have predicted that this once fearful young girl would emerge as a powerful young woman leading the charge to map and destroy the deadly landmines that robbed her of a normal childhood.
“The journey to school was filled with dangerous areas suspected of having landmines. I was constantly aware of the risks,” Delight, now 28, says of life growing up along the heavily mined border Zimbabwe shares with Mozambique. “In fact, to maximize my safety, my dad would escort me to school on his bicycle. If he wasn’t around, I usually needed to skip school.”
Delight Manyange with a Trimble DA2 GNSS receiver
Zimbabwe is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, and its mines still impact more than 75,000 rural residents today. During the Liberation War in the 1970s, the Rhodesian army laid dense belts of landmines along the country’s borders with Mozambique and Zambia.
The unknown dangers lurking beneath Delight’s feet not only affected schooling, but even her ability to have friends. Her best friend’s father lost his leg after stepping on a landmine, and her parents were so anxious of the risks that landmines posed that they wouldn’t let her play outside.
Those childhood memories of social isolation are hard for Delight to recount. “If I wanted to play, my parents insisted the kids come to my house rather than letting me go to theirs…but the parents of other children would say, ‘why should you go to Delight’s house if her parents won’t let her go outside?’”
The presence of landmines also impeded broader economic development and opportunity in Nyatsato. Wanting a better life for their daughter, Delight’s parents sent her away at age 13 to live with her aunt in Mashonaland West, a district that borders Zambia. But, after paying Delight’s school fees, her parents could not afford to visit her or allow her to return home on school breaks.
Despite all these obstacles, Delight was smart and tenacious. She not only managed to graduate high school but also to attend university, where she studied urban planning and development. She even took courses in geographic information systems (GIS). “Since I wasn’t employed after university, my main goal was to get a job and remove my parents from the danger zone.”
In 2019, Delight finally reunited with her parents in Nyatsato. It took some time, but she ultimately landed one of the few available jobs working as a deminer with The HALO Trust, the leading humanitarian landmine clearance organization. Working in northeast Zimbabwe since 2013, although HALO has destroyed more than 100,000 mines, roughly 4,400 acres of contaminated land remains.
Even though she had landed a meaningful job, Delight was now an unstoppable force and eager to continue her professional growth. “I kept searching while working as a deminer, and one day I stumbled on an advertisement doing work for HALO that focused on GIS.”
Through the Trimble Foundation’s innovative Women in GIS Demining initiative – Delight applied to and was awarded the opportunity to be part of an innovative fellowship designed to empower women from disadvantaged backgrounds, build national capacity, and make humanitarian landmine clearance more efficient using geospatial technologies. Delight is one of 11 women who will benefit from this fellowship and become a GIS specialist over the next three years. HALO heavily relies on Trimble’s Global Navigation Satellite System technology and Esri ArcGIS Survey123 software to effectively identify and clear land riddled with landmines.
Delight spent the first months of her fellowship from April through June of 2024 practically applying the GIS theory she had learned in school. “My job now is to create maps, to train field operations supervisors and team leaders on how to use the Trimble technology and Esri ArcGIS Survey123, and to continue the GIS training that’s part of my development plan,” Delight explained.
Today, Delight is mapping the landmines around Nyatsato school – her alma mater – so that the next generation of children can freely play and focus on learning without fear.
“I am so happy to have joined HALO and to now be working with GIS, because I am rescuing my community and bringing freedom to them,” Delight said with evident pride.
