District Blues

So I went to Mandlakaze with my special friend Jaime. Getting there was sort of a hassle, leaving only at 18.00 hs on Friday night, picking up more people (in the end we were 7) and then the car starting to have problems, ending up with just stopping and not wanting to start anymore, some 20 k out of Maputo. That was around 22.00 h and we waited along the road in the dark (well, with moon and stars) till midnight when we got a replacement and arrived only at 2.30 at our destination, deadly tired and getting up next day at 7.

In the morning there was this session of the Children's Parliament, with 12 kids between 10 and 14 years old from all seven administrative posts of the district (including 2 girls from Macuácua, the village where Kheto was born), first receiving training about basic stuff of how to organize and how to speak in public, and in the afternoon preparing their press conference for Sunday morning, where journalists from Maputo and Xai-Xai (provincial capital) would attend.

Once that was all over, at the end of the day, Jaime told me to jump in the car and go for a ride, to my surprise driving outside into the bush and ending up at his grandparents' home with grandma - Jaime's "wife" in the tradition - still alive (102 ys old and still quite clear-minded though tired and a bit deaf). His father, whom I knew from Maputo, was also there and very delighted to see me. He would have his anniversary the next day, becoming 78. And with some other very old and some younger uncles and aunts and neighbors joining in, it became quite a party. We all having supper there, delicious Mozambican food, with some wine and refreshments that Jaime and me brought. A small house with no electric light, but candles and a petrol lamp, and no water - had to be fetched quite far away as the pump had broken down. Dad told a lot of stories of who was related to which historical figures, one aunt being related to Eduardo Mondlane (the first president of Frelimo who through the Swiss Mission studied abroad, doing PhD in the US, marrying a white american wife, and when he came back organizing the liberation struggle from Tanzania - always insisting on the union of the 3 different nationalistic movements and on the fight not being racial but anti-colonial. He was the founder of Frelimo, but was killed by a letter bomb in Dar es Salaam before independence, after which the non-intellectual, militarist and populist Samora Machel – whom despite of all that we all loved and admired a great deal - took over.

I won't repeat all the history lessons I got that night, but it was really impressive and everyone so eager to tell me those things. And once I got out my camera they got hilarious, insisting especially on a pic of the very old uncle and aunt who had to kiss each other on the mouth for the pic. Hey, we all had so much fun. In the end they started to sing church songs and when after a while dad lent me his reading glasses so I could sing along from the psalm book (in Changane of course), there was no stopping them. When we finally got back to our pension, we made out to start at 7 next morning to go in the direction of Macuácua, Kheto's birth place. Kheto’s late father used to be the local chief there, the regulo as it is called here. As the press conference of the kids would start at 10, it wouldn't be possible to go all the way to Macuácua before the work started, but Jaime wanted to show me something.

So we left early in the morning, first dropping off a lot of fresh breads at granny's home, and continuing north, stopping at the monument of Coleela, the place where the historic fight took place between the troops of Ngungunhane, the great Mozambican warrior, and the Portuguese. Ngungunhane was captured there and taken into exile to the Azore Islands and later to Portugal, it was the end of his fierce resistance against the Portuguese.

Coleela is a very large open space with no bushes where those battles took place, and later that day Jaime's dad would tell me that in those days both sides would combine at what time the fighting would start, like (he said) in the Middle Ages in Europe. It was an open battle of forces, where the strongest would win. And the Portuguese had more sophisticated weapons... Anyway, Ngungunhane is on the one hand seen as a great African warrior who for a long time resisted the Portuguese, but here in the south of Mozambique he's not so beloved because he made these southern people slaves of his empire. Reason why many of them fled to what is now South Africa - it was of course before the Berlin Conference of 1885 where the European colonizers divided Africa amongst themselves.

Continuing our trip into history, Jaime took me to the birth place of Eduardo Mondlane, Nwandjahane, which is now finally being converted into a museum. It will officially be inaugurated on the 20th of June this year (his birth date, born in 1920). The road leading up to it is still under construction. When we arrived it was not clear if one were allowed to enter the area, but I said "hey, the gate is open, let's just go there as long as nobody stops us". So we went in and parked the car somewhere, watching from a distance if that threatening bulldozer wasn't going to crush it, but when we walked on we met a guy who was taking care of the place and after some introductions showed us everything. There is the (rehabilitated) hut where Eduardo Mondlane was born, the house he built for his mother which now contains an exhibition of pictures of his life (including some with Che Guevara), the grave yards of his father, his mother and the first wife of his father, and a lot more. Only the library was closed that day, but hey, that whole place - quite an area - was impressive, not to say overwhelming to visit. We got really into that "Mondlane feeling" of what Mozambique was supposed to become, so contrary to what it is today.

When finally we had to sign the visitor’s book, I signed (after some historical, emotional remarks) with my name and under that “former activist of the Eduardo Mondlane Foundation in the Netherlands”. I felt kinda, not proud, but special. For sharing all this history, up to today.

After this we had to rush back to be in time for the kids' press conference (after all Jaime responsible for that whole thing), which is a whole story by itself. Especially because of all the political influences that everyone wants to hold over this kids' initiative. Ah but in this Gaza province, of which Mandlakaze is an important district, Renamo rebels have done so much havoc during the war, even occupying the local hospital and killing the patients, not to speak of all the terror and killings they inflicted on Kheto's, Jaime's, and by extension on all families in the area. There isn't any space even after 17 years for Renamo as a political party. It's just absolute Frelimo territory. So even in this very well-prepared, supposedly children-owned event, at the last minute the District Administrator showed up together with the district’s health director (both Freli of course), and the whole kids’ protocol was broken.

The kids were sitting all next to each other in their red Children Parliament’s t-shirts, behind an extended table, facing the public. That way each would have an equal chance to answer any journalist’s questions. But this set-up was broken because now the Administrator had to sit in the middle and have a chance to speak. The president, a girl of 13, dealt quite ironically with it, after her own welcoming speech she said: “now I give the word to the Administrator, in case he has anything to say”. Afterwards the adults thought that this was a lack of capacity of how to deal with authorities (protocol), but I thought she did great.

During the weekend I heard some more negative remarks about the “too” outspoken girls, but I was secretly very proud of them. Mind you, this is not in Maputo, this is in a very lay-down rural place, where life is pretty conservative. And then these girls speaking in public, without any inhibition. I got on good terms with a number of the kids during the weekend and am planning to follow their future meetings.

After the work was over – this was Sunday afternoon - we went back once more to granny's home to deliver a cake for dad's birthday. With all the other people waiting for us in town to get back to Maputo, we couldn't stay long, but even so, now in the daylight, granny stood up from her mat to come to me and greet me, so I quickly helped her to sit down again and sat beside her and the other women on the ground. She asked where I came from and Jaime's father told her: "our friend Elma comes from Holland" (had to repeat 3 x the word before she acknowledged: "Holanda"). And he continued: "In Holland they know very well how to rob" (repeated 3 x). So I was curious what this was about, bycicles? Did he know about that detail? Then he said: "They robbed the land from the sea, can you imagine that, they robbed the land from the sea!" And asked me to teach them that, how to rob land from the sea and protect the land with big dykes.

Now I take my late-night snack which is a big, fresh, tasty tomato.

And I go to sleep.

Freedom of Expression on the agenda

To start with I must say that I'm back to zero in terms of laptop logistics. No internet, no sound, not even microsoft office. Too much help from too many machos around me who each wanted to do their thing, trying to get me on the fixed internet line (which all 3 other laptops in the house now have), but in the end left me in the dark, blaming my laptop - which I know is not right. Well, I take a deep sigh and hope for better days.

This week is World Press Freedom Week (at least baptized as such by the Mozambican Media Institute - around the occasion of 3d of May, World Press Freedom Day). So MISA had organized a number of afternoon debates around media matters in the country, which I could all attend. Was good to take the media temperature in this election year (28th of October: presidential, parliamential and for the first time provincial parliaments' elections). And interesting to see the actual level of debate, with a handful of journalists really having grown to a professional level (the most outspoken one rightly saying that even he was far from being at an international level, compared with the New York Times and such), whereas others claiming that "we now have so many educated journalists who passed through the Journalism School", implying they know all the tricks of the trade and don't need to learn more. Whereas the sad truth is that, for lack of good salaries and means, everyone depends heavily on the party, government officials and even the firms that finance the "independent" press in buying advertisement space. It's true that nowadays there are a lot of stories on corruption at high level in the press, but always based on anonymous sources (everybody afraid to loose jobs, promotion chances or study opportunities abroad for their kids). But then, one can hardly expect the journalist class to be way ahead of the rest of society in this country that is still struggling to become a functioning state. South Africa was often mentioned as an example where, despite high levels of poverty and unequalness, at least the justice system is functioning.

I'm reading new publications, scientific or journalistic, where the memories of the war are still very present, all the destruction and massacres, the difficult peace talks that lasted over two years in Rome, and those days come easily back in my memory. Compared to those days, Mozambique has come a long way. It really should be an example to a number of other African countries. And in a strange way I'm proud of somehow being part of its history since the liberation struggle. Maybe proud is not the word, but it makes me part of everything, makes me somehow responsible too (for all the negative things the "West" did and continues doing to this country, and for the positive things as well).

I had underestimated the weight of the "cunha" system, giving jobs and contracts to family and friends not on the basis of merit but of social relations. I also hadn't counted with the high level of distrust, unfair methods (stealing each other's ideas) and general falseness in the consultant community. Which is, therefore, no community at all. Quite unlike Holland, where we have this association of consultants in development (Nedworc), continuously striving for more ethics in the job, a code of conduct, continuous individual learning and also generously sharing experience (of older ones) with those that are just starting. My idea to start a kind of Nedworc daughter for local consultants here, possibly with some small funding from the Netherlands, will need a lot of ponderation. But some old friends of mine from different backgrounds (economic justice, journalism, anthropology) that have started consultancy companies besides their other jobs, say I'm welcome to join once I come with creative ideas. That's a challenge.

And so, with support of my always creative Southafrican friend Carva, I'm starting to work out alternatives, not just waiting till someone will give me a contract. C is willing to share his own course material with me, which I'll have to adapt to the Mozambican situation. Plus look for funding possibilities etc., but it's a good exercise to think "out of the box". Meanwhile continuing to contact all kinds of organizations. I just need patience, and hard work, and an end to technical problems...