Some landmines in Angola shoot from the earth to chest height, spraying metal fragments that leave the vital organs in ribbons.
Others set off a blast that forces dirt, stones, plastic and metal into the lower limbs, ripping apart bone and muscle.
Many are picked up by mistake, mostly by children who think they’ve found toys.
Minga was five when she spied a shiny object she thought might be a tin of tuna by the side of a road, and excitedly tapped it against a rock to remove the dirt so she could make her family’s day by bringing home dinner.
She realised it wasn’t tuna but wasn’t sure what it was, so began to play with it.
It exploded, robbing her of her sight and her right arm from below the elbow.
Ten years later, all she remembers is a flash followed by silence.
Sapalo was 14 when a huge dung beetle fell out of a rubbish bag he was moving from his parents’ kitchen.
On the table was a piece of metal his uncle had brought in the previous night.
He used it to brush the beetle out of the house. It was a grenade, which exploded, taking both his legs and one eye.
They’re just two of more than 88,000 Angolans maimed by the legacy of the 27-year civil war that left a million mines in the fields, villages and roads of one of the poorest countries on earth.
Prince Harry will be there next week to honour the memory of his mother, who walked through an Angolan minefield months before her death in 1997 to bring the cause to the world’s attention.
Shortly after she died the Ottawa Treaty, outlawing the use and production of landmines, was signed by 122 nations.
The issue has fallen down the global agenda, which is why Harry is there to push it back up, as part of the goal to make the world landmine-free by 2025.
In Angola, with at least 1,220 areas still affected and international and national funding being decimated, that deadline looks beyond ambitious.
Seeing the problem first-hand is beyond tragic...
Seventeen years after the civil war ended there are more than 70 different types of mines, supplied by 22 nations, still active in the huge West African country.
As well as taking lives and wrecking bodies, houses can’t be built, fields can’t be cultivated and villages can’t grow.
It’s the closeness of ordinary life to such appalling twists of fate that shocks most.
Women walk up to six miles to the nearest river to fetch water, often through areas they know are mined.
Men cultivate contaminated fields, even when the de-miners are working in them, in the knowledge that any second a hoe could hit something that takes their limbs.
They have no choice. No water and no food equals no life.
Every hour of the day is a deadly risk-assessment. Even for kids at play.
The Manchester-based Mines Advisory Group, which in the past decade has cleared nine million square feet of Angolan minefields, is doing its best to rid the country of an evil weapon that shames the human race.
Their teams cleared Lucusse village of mines but all around lie weapon parts.
Kids clamber on to blown-up tanks that still have live rocket shells in them.
As I watch, two men tell MAG workers they’ve found shells inside another tank.
The previous day a boy chased a rat under a tank and found three explosives.
In another part of the village boys play football using parts of tanks as goalposts.
Twenty yards away, in May, Emilia, nine, and Jamba, two, lit a grass fire. Underneath lay a live grenade. They died instantly.
It’s scary going into minefields.
I joined the de-miners at Luathamba, where 138 explosives, 56 of them huge anti-tank mines, were found in one field.
Just putting on the body armour and protective visor gives you the chilling realisation that one mis-reading of the colour-coded sticks that indicate where mines have been cleared, could blow you apart.
And I’m colour-blind. And two hours from the nearest hospital.
In the village, MAG’s community team is giving the kids a mine awareness class.
They’re shown different explosives and how to react if they see any.
Two boys say that they’ve seen rockets in a field, then lead the team to the spot.
Under a tree lies the deadly weapons.
The de-miners bury them, wire them to a detonator, walk 100 yards away and let me press the button that produces a deafening bang and a plume of smoke seen for miles.
It was a weird Dr Strangelove moment.
There were 29 nations involved in the Angolan civil war, a proxy war between Communism and the West.
Man is very good at starting bloodbaths but not too good at cleaning up the devastation they wreak.
Due to international aid falling by 90% and Angolan public spending being slashed because of a collapse in the price of oil, it’s more important than ever for nations and individual donors to step up.
Only three of its 18 provinces are mine-free and there is an estimated 105 million square metres to clear.
MAG reckons £300million is needed to stand a chance of making that 2025 deadline in a country where it’s claimed one-in-98 of its 32 million people has stepped on a mine.
But statistics can’t tell the story as well as a human face.
A face like Minga’s whose left eye is closed, her right half-open and her skin scarred.
She’s 15 now, and has made a proud effort to meet us.
Her hair is freshly braided and her black shoes with a gold clasp match the leather bag she hangs from her shoulder at a place where her lower arm should be.
When I ask her what she wants to do when she grows up, she gives a self-conscious shrug and an embarrassed smile, as she says she wants to teach.
It’s the expression I recognise in my 15-year-old daughter.
Like Minga, she was born when her country was at peace.
Unlike Minga she didn’t have her childhood stolen by the most evil of weapons.
Which is heart-breaking. More so when every hour, somewhere in the world, a person, most likely a child, will have their life ripped apart by a long-gone war.
