history of Moz

It’s Sunday, November 5, 6:30am and I am writing this from Marromeu (a 6 hr trek on a dirt road north and a little east of Beira…but only about 180 miles away) visiting 6 of the villages we work in around this area (villages we are potentially closing). Before I fill you in on life here I want to give you some history on Mozambique.

Mozambique was colonized by the Portuguese in 1505 (Portugal was the first colonial power in Africa and the last to leave) and stayed under their control for 470 years. I have not found much information about what life was like under the Portuguese, but one article offered these 5 words, “Portuguese colonial rule was repressive”…not much information for 470 years worth of history! In 1964 a guerilla movement began to grow and the fight for independence began. The name of the party that led the war was called FRELIMO (Mozambican Liberation Front). After almost 10 years of fighting, Mozambique gained it’s independence on June 25, 1975. The majority of Portuguese left virtually overnight leaving the place in chaos. They had dominated the education system and provided the majority of the skilled and professional labor so with the mass exodus, Mozambique was left with a population that was 80% illiterate. A few years after gaining their independence the country fell into a civil war between the government and antigovernment guerillas, the Mozambique National Resistance (MNR or Renamo), who were backed by the white minority government in South Africa. A cease-fire agreement was finally signed in Oct. 1992 ending the 16 year civil war. President Chissano
led the country from 1995 until 2005 and economically things began to get better for the country until 2000-2001 when Mozambique suffered enormous setbacks due to heavy flooding in which hundreds died and thousands were displaced. In 2005, the current president Armando Guebuza was elected president. So, in reality if I had grown up in Mozambique the first half of my life would have been lived during wars! So, that is some perspective on what people here have gone through…


Roman">Maybe you would rather hear funny, interesting stories of life in Africa, but I would like to follow up with some thoughts I had from one of my first emails about Bolivia. I had been questioning why the country was still in poverty and how different the poverty was from that of Africa, or more specifically West Africa and now I can add Mozambique to the list. In the Peace Corps we were taught how to come into a village and learn about the culture, the language, the norms and taboos. We were taught the importance of tapping into local knowledge and figuring out what a village CAN do and encouraging that effort and also teaching them to be able to do more. One of the lessons I learned from that experience was that sustainable development is NOT making a village or community reliant on outside sources. This was all good and valuable for trying to figure out how to bring a village from extreme poverty (to borrow a term from Jeffrey Sachs) up the ladder a bit further, but the question of why does extreme poverty still exist, what is the root, why in 2006 are there still people all over the world not living with enough of the basics (clean water, food, shelter) to be able to take care of themselves. That question has plagued me since I set foot on African soil in 2002.

One of the lessons I am learning from working with Food for the Hungry is the way they attack the problem of poverty. They (and I absolutely agree with this) believe that poverty begins with a mindset or a worldview. In order to understand the poverty in Mozambique I first need to understand how they view the world and start from there. For example, ancestor worship is still very much a part of this culture. Many still believe that disasters happen because the ancestors are not pleased and that animals need to be sacrificed in order to gain protection from the ancestors. Another main theme to the worldview here is that of gender inequality or specifically women are devalued (seen as tools for production and
reproduction) and children are seen as tools for getting work done. In order to get to the root of the poverty in this country these are some of the issues that need to be addressed.

This idea of getting to the root of what a country or village or family or individual believes and deciding whether that thought is based on what is true can be translated to anyone anywhere. I realize that this is something I have to do on a regular basis in my own life and hope that many of us often challenge our thoughts against what is true. This can also translate to what we may fear in life as well. To come face to face with our fears, our beliefs, our perceptions of life or others and question why we believe the way we do is key to us growing up. Look at the history of the United States. The way we treated slaves, the segregation laws we put in place, why did we do this? Why were there laws against marrying a person of color? Because we believed that the color of skin determined a person’s value? This was a lie that took a long time to get rid of and it started with a few people standing up for what they knew to be true and eventually there were laws put in place to change behaviors. Now, generations that come after this time period are taught a different way of looking at others. The phrase I have come back to again and again since
getting to Mozambique is one I picked up in the training in Bolivia:

Ideas have consequences
What we believe determines how we act. I have seen this so clearly played out here in Marromeu. We work in about 4 villages that are along the same route. They are not far from each other, they are all just a few hundred yards from the river Zambezi, and yet 2 of the villages still have food shortages right around this time of the year. While visiting these villages I could hear their ideas and way of thinking by the way they talked. Their mindset was one of needing outside help to get along. Going just about 8 miles down the road to 2 other villages we work in there is enough food and never any shortages. Why the difference? I believe the people in the first 2 villages have resigned themselves to needing outside help for food and the last 2 have worked the land to be able to produce the food they need. I am starting to understand that in doing this work the most important thing I can impart to the people I am working with is the ability to dream. To envision what they want from life, from the land, in school, or at whatever stage they are in and then encourage them to make this vision or dream a reality. I am so tired of
hearing…”we are poor, we need outside help, we will always be poor”…that mentality fosters poverty! And let me also challenge what you all may believe about Africa, it is NOT a poor continent! It has been said that just Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Zaire (DR Congo) have the potential to feed the entire continent, and do you realize just exactly how big Africa is? You can fit the USA, China, Europe, New
Zealand, India, and Argentina into Africa!!! Some of the greatest rivers in the world are in Africa, the Nile, Congo, Niger and Zambezi…maybe I will try to attach a power point presentation I heard recently about the richness of Africa that was given by Darrow Miller. It challenged my perspective of the continent! Whew, okay enough about that…it’s just something that I am wrestling with
on a daily basis trying to figure out what programs to implement, whether to close some of the programs we currently have going, which villages we should potentially start working in and at what level do we start tackling these issues.

Do we focus on the children as they are the next generation and still easily moldable? But they spend the majority of time at school so do we focus on training up better teachers (the majority of teachers here and the same holds true for most of West Africa quite frankly suck. They beat the children, don’t let some of them into school, sleep with students, play favorites, and in the children’s own words “they are unfair” and quite honestly I think the lack of good teachers comes from a corrupt government who trains and places teachers in an unfair manner) or do we focus on parents as they are the ones that have the power to encourage or hinder their children from going after an education. It is the parents who decide whether their children will get to go to school or whether they will spend their days fetching water, working in the fields, and will most likely marry at a young age and start the cycle over again. We don’t have enough people to tackle all the issues. So do we focus on a few villages and try to do an excellent job or do we spread ourselves a bit thin but in so doing we are hopefully making an impact in more of the country? And it is at this point that I throw my hands up and say, “I cannot solve the Mozambique’s problems…” but I need to do the best job I can at the task I
have been given. Sorry, maybe the next email will be a bit lighter!!

Until next time,
Melissa

I just have to add one story that happened tonight (Sunday at about 8pm). I have been eating dinner with one of our village promoters (Ricardo) for FHI and his family while here in Marromeu. Tonight he and his wife and I went to the market to get some food for dinner and we ended up with a chicken (live) an onion, some tomatoes, garlic, and spaghetti. We went back to the house and so I watched the entire process in the poor chicken’s last bit of time. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t feel right about eating it if I wasn’t willing to watch what happens. I need to build back up the tough outer layer that understands that animals suffer and I can’t cry over it every time. And let me just say that Bolivia was hard in that sense because there were so many dogs and they were American varieties. I am used to seeing mangy African dogs that don’t resemble dogs we have as pets in
the states so when I got to Bolivia and saw German Shepherds, Golden Retrievers, poodles, weenie dogs and the like living on the street…I’ll spare you the stories, but that was difficult!!

So anyway I was watching the process of killing, plucking, and cutting up the chicken (much to the amusement of everyone) when Ricardo finally asked, “so how do you prepare a chicken in your country?” I’m still not so good at Portuguese so I said, “well, not like that…I usually go to the supermarket and buy…and here is where I fumbled for words, how do I say chicken breasts? So, I improvised and pointed to the chest area and said I buy this. He and his wife said, “oh” and later we sit down to eat dinner outside on a mat on the dirt under a full moon and the “meat” that she gave us to eat were all the innards!! They had thought I bought the insides of the chicken and so that was what I was given…ah, the misunderstandings of not being able to speak a language very well :o)