The Sunday Mail
Debra Matabvu
Six-year-old Brighton Mandemwa is visibly traumatised. Leaning on his mother as they sit on a small hospital bed, the boy looks lost. He constantly glances at his right palm that has been disfigured. Despite the wild cries from the other children in the same ward, Brighton appears unperturbed.But as one female nurse draws near the boys’ bed and accidentally knocks a push tray, producing a sharp sound as it hits against the wall, Brighton suddenly springs up and stands on the bed.
“He has been like this ever since the incident,” says Ms Mandemwa, the minor’s mother. “It gets worse during the nights, he has nightmares. “The other night, he jumped off the bed and sprinted towards the hospital’s exit.
“It took an alert nurse to stop him. As his mother, it pains me to see him go through such torture.” Brighton was brought to Chitungwiza General Hospital a fortnight ago in a critical condition. He lost four fingers when a device he picked near an illegal granite blasting site detonated in his hand.
Brighton used to accompany his friends and sometimes his mother to fetch water from a nearby borehole in the dormitory town where water is a scarce resource.
As he made one of the numerous trips with his friends a fortnight ago, he spotted an old vehicle tyre that had some contents inside. The boy took the tyre and its contents home.
Like any boy his age, Brighton became inquisitive with the objects he had found inside the tyre. Together with his friends, the boy concluded that he had picked a tyre and some fire-crackers.
Totally oblivious of the danger lurking within the “fire-cracker”, the minors found some match sticks and lit the device before patiently waiting for it to pop.
It took a while for the device to explode, prompting the boy to play chase with his friends whilst holding it in his hand and scaring them with the fire.
Then suddenly there was a loud explosion.
What followed was a deafening silence; and then screams.
Upon realising that his fingers had vanished, Brighton ran in an opposite direction to home with blood oozing from the hand.
“When I heard the sound, I dashed out of the house trying to establish what had exploded,” said Brighton’s mother.
“Within a few moments, I saw my son running towards me with blood all over his hands and clothes, I fainted.
“It was after I re-gained consciousness that I realised some neighbours had administered first aid on Brighton. We then took him to the hospital,” she said.
She said although Brighton might fail to use his right hand to its full capacity in the future, he is lucky to be alive.
A police report was later made and the suspected owners of the explosive arrested.
When The Sunday Mail visited the illegal rock blasting site, a few men were manually crushing the rocks into smaller stones.
Numerous huge holes with smoked sharp pieces of rocks emanating from previous blasting sessions were evidence that a lot of blasting takes place at the site regularly.
One of the men who preferred anonymity indicated that the place is dangerous.
“We buy a set of these dynamites for $5 and a set can blast a 500 kg rock,” he said.
Stone blasting and crushing is not confined to Chitungwiza alone. It has become a lucrative business for those in the construction industry.
A wheelbarrow of three quarter stones is sold for $2, 50; with quarry dust which is used in moulding bricks going for $1 for a 20 litre container.
