First
impressions of Mozambique... First impressions of the real Africa...
Such a banality to
speak of red dust and warm scents, of endless roads and smiles, everywhere big
wide smiles. Commonplace as these are in any foreigner's testimonials, it still
blows you in the face and your senses are overpowered with feelings when you land
from “that other world” up in cosy Europe. Tenderness feelings, helplessness
feelings, guilt feelings, adventure feelings, hope feelings.
The road is long, scenic and scattered
with people from Maputo to Chokwé, hundreds of all ages selling, bartering,
trying to make a living from whatever trade or crafts they have, hanging on the
sidewalks, hanging on local buses, everyone surviving over the long dirt road.
Chokwé town, a piece of no man´s land that no one choses to visit but where one
happens to be born, study in subsidized schools like our charity´s SLM and SVP
ones and later come to visit the family abandoned for a better trade in
neighboring South Africa. The beautiful Pacific is only 100kms away but our
children could not live further from it in a place where the earth has not seen
the stubborn rain for most of the year, cattle is meager and week in dry
pastures and hunger rises everyday.
BANG
I am overblown as soon as I arrive to SVP school, 1000 kids total, 200 of the
poorest ones under our care, just landed with our documentary volunteer Niko T.
Greetings from total strangers, young and old, staff, children, Vicentine nuns,
that welcome us like old family aunts kissing us and hugging us as if we are
precious and they have waited to embrace us half their life. And your usual habits
of the “civilized” western world of keeping
a respectful distance, let´s talk business, just go unforgotten and you hug
back and ask for the kids health and what they had for lunch. You pick up
little children you never saw, some you recognize from our extensive charity
reports but that till now were names with no faces, and they cuddle touching
your face and hair. And it takes time, lots of endless warming Mozambican time,
to just say hello and even more to greet goodbye. Have we forgotten in our busy
full lives the joy and richness of getting acquainted with a new human being?
Edson,
BANG BANG, scrawny fragile delightful strength of this 11-year old just under
our Sponsorship programme that fell young into a wheeling chair. Edson who
everyday goes all alone to school, with his long lean arms, through dust and
wind, shy smile and so proud when, mouths open, we see him drive back home. We
wanted to follow him on the spot and do a full documentary on him alone. And I
muse how my concern flying that night had been how reliable my internet would
be because it is absolutely impossible to the human race to now survive without
24-hour whatsapp.
Four
wheel car out, drive out of town into the little oasis of the neighboring SLM School.
Romantic despite its neediness, this little compound of the Vicentine sisters
with scattered trees and half-surviving vegetable huts and little buildings in
a school to which I probably dedicate some 70% of my “free” time. Feeding 800
kids every day, sponsoring 170 of these, putting them through after class
tutoring, technical courses, can a few attend university once, an HIV centre
for 32, let´s get the mums involved and generate family income, endless tiring project
lists where I always want to do more, faster, higher, broader, more essential, more
efficient, more, MORE!!
Will
I and ALG be able to do more…? Do we need to do more…? Is less sufficient…?
Will more still NEVER be sufficient….?
Sleep,
sleep, and forget the mosquitoes and the adrenaline, the day starts at 5.50am
tomorrow…
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