2010. July 14.

Chimoio, Pemba, suave and culture shock – travelogue from Mozambique
8 May – 1 July 2010

After a two-day drive we have arrived at Chimoio, situated some 1200 kms from the capital, Maputo. During the trip an old theory of mine has collapsed. I used to believe that people were living in small, round-shaped thatched-roof huts only in the very middle of the savannah, where not a single soul goes and can see that far (and there too, they principally form smaller or bigger villages). Therefore I was just keeping twisting my head around as we were passing the small huts along the road, them turning up one after the other, only some 20-30 meters from us, standing mostly alone or at most three to four of them. This also shows how much the rural lifestyle characterises the everyday and real Mozambique.

During the trip I have also become certain that the highway is a dangerous place. Not so much because of the car traffic, but because of the pedestrians and vendors, and first of all for the drivers themselves. Along the road, women and children are walking in a row with buckets, baskets and hefty bunches of firewood on their head, some others are riding their bicycle swaying from one side to the other. In addition, the highway is the primary – and in many cases the only – selling place for many of their little stock of banana, orange, man shirts and Mozambique-flag flip flops. The purchase power that a jeep showing up every half an hour embodies is so promising that most of the vendors – many times only 6-8 year-old children (!) – keep bouncing in the middle of the road even 15 to 20 meters before the car approaching with a speed of 120 kms/hour, hoping, that car will finally stop. Money is money, and a bunch of banana adds 15 meticais (0.4 EUR) to the family budget…


Chimoio
From 9 May 2010

At first sight – and at second, and according to the settlement classification at home – I would call Chimoio a small town. Which would not be quite fitting since it has a population of around 240 000. A truly trustworthy number is not available because only a few mothers give birth to their child in hospital (where there is no automatic birth registration, anyway), and most of them only take the child to register at the time of school enrolment when they are asked for the papers.

The city is well- and underdeveloped at the same time. The buildings and the cityscape (just like in many other parts of the country) preserve the Portuguese colonial and the 70-80s’ socialist architecture, with pines and palms in between, street vendors around (here no stand or stall shall be imagined, shirts, shoes mostly on the ground in the dust, cashew, chocolate and books on vegetable boxes), at one site run-down, unpainted-dirty blocks, at another freshly decorated, renovated houses with green garden and grid all-around, guards chatting with each other over the fence, teenager boys sitting on the side of the pavement and the top of the concrete fence selling banana, tangerine, cigarettes, and there is a – to me at least – surprisingly great number of motorcycles.

In the baixa (“lower city”, that is in fact two streets) a row of Indian-Pakistani and Chinese shops side by side, that would rather seem wholesale stores on the basis of the amount of the goods piled up onto the selves (only the price is not wholesale) and in which 5 to 6 six salesclerks are handing out the things to the crowd of people rushing on the other side of the stall, as in most of the places there is no self-service. On the market, cheerful vendors are offering everything from in front of them – so far it has proven to be impossible to buy for instance tomato by piece without finding later one or two extra pieces pinched into your bag, into the never-missing small black plastic bag.

The “city heart” basically corresponds to the asphalted part: roughly 10 streets cross- and lengthwise. The rest of the roads and streets is dirt road, which in the rainy season makes the traffic a bit difficult, but even more the city/public hygiene, given that at least an estimated two-thirds of the city lack any infrastructure, piped water, drainage, public lighting. In these bairros (districts) live some 80 % of the town’s population.

Yet, Chimoio, the country’s fifth largest city, ranks among the developed ones, it is also an important agricultural centre and is relatively easy of approach. It has got four hotels, a backpacker, five banks, an airport (that to me resembles rather a petrol station), three markets, five pharmacies, two internet cafés, university department and it also has a mosque.

In addition, there is a Heroe’s Square, Workers’ Square and a Liberty Square, the latter one also serving as a major place for the currency transactions – with real professionals, therefore it is more worth both moneywise and moodwise going to the Pakistani shop next to the bank. For in the bank there is usually no dollars (for sale), if yes, by any chance, it takes mostly half to three-quarter an hour until it comes to your turn.

When taking a picture, a – Zimbabwean – currency dealer shouted over the street to me that I mustn’t not take a photo of him, or alternatively, I should pay him 200 dollars…

Manica is the second coldest province of the country. Therefore, Chimoio (luckily for me) does not fully correspond to the “African heat” picture – in summer, either, but especially now in winter. What’s more, after the 18 to 21 degrees during daytime the 10 to 12 degrees at night (and now in July and August only 3 to 6 degrees...) is hardly any friendly, in particular due to the fact that here there is no heating in the houses.

One afternoon my colleague, Delfim (the executive secretary of FOCAMA) and I went to a bairro to visit a so-called open center (centro aberto), that organises afternoon activities for orphan and/or vulnerable children coming from very poor families, provides them with psychological care and when necessary accompanies them to a doctor or to hospital. I was walking on the bumpy dirt road, keeping by-passing the sumps, along the houses, or rather “four-walls” put up from mud and reed, seeing all what I had described until now not only through the car window, but at close quarters some meters from me, accompanied by the look of the children with eyes wide open, who were hanging around on the “yard” between the cock, the goat, the concrete washing stand and the garbage heap and all staring at me understandably surprised, what could have brought me there – but me too, I was feeling at least that strange.

Delfim: This is how we live, in these houses in these circumstances… this is our land.
Me: It always saddens me so much when I see children grow up in these living conditions. This is not normal.
Delfim: Yes, this is normal. For us this is normal. That’s life.
Me: No, this is not normal. This is everyday and common, but not normal.
Delfim: Well, it does not matter how you call it. After all, you cannot change it…


Sussundenga – Observatório de Desenvolvimento (Development Observatory)
4 June 2010

On a Thursday I went with FOCAMA to the district of Sussundenga, located at about 50 kms from Chimoio. The organisation carried out a survey by the help of activists about to what extent the local population had been able to make use of the micro-credit opportunity worth in total 7 million meticais (167,000 EUR) made available by the central government for each district, to what extent the locals had encountered corruption and to what extent they had experienced the impact of the development efforts in their everyday life.
The district of Sussundenga, with a population of some 50,000 people, is one of the most rural and least developed areas of the country. The majority of the population still lives in small huts and cottages of hardly two-meter height, made of clay and mud, having no equipment, window, door and public utility.

One can apply for micro-credit with a project that aims at increasing food production and creating new workplaces.
Briefly summarised, the following conclusions can be drawn on the basis of the interviews conducted with the locals. A large part of the interviewees knows or has heard of the micro-credit opportunity, however, they have not applied for it. The reasons are on the one hand that they are illiterate, therefore cannot submit the necessary documents and descriptions. On the other that they cannot or do not dare to undertake the repayment with an interest rate of 5 % owing to the unpredictability of the droughts and rainfalls. Those few who had submitted an application and received too a certain amount, were not able to tell in most of the cases how much exactly they had had to repay, they had not kept book of the revenues and expenses, they were not paying any days off as well social security coverage for their employees, and, in most of the cases, they did not manage to foster their small business from the little amount they had received.

From the interview conducted with the members of the Council (Conselho Consultivo) that decides upon the awarding of the credits (with whom we could actually meet only on the following day because first our letter was said to „have been lost”, second our appointment request in their interpretation „had already lost its actuality”…) it turned out that in fact the Council had no sound regulation for such essential questions as for instance who was to be considered as needy, who should not be eligible for the credit, what should happen in the case of the death of the applicant – and yet for many other cases of similar importance. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that many who are in fact not inhabitants of the district of Sussundenga, have been granted a credit of the Council. Also, a number of farmers have been found to have been disbursed last year a micro-credit worth 25,000 meticais (nearly 600 EUR) just one day before the national, legislative and provincial elections (28 Oct. 2009)…


Do not get surprised at anything! – culture shock, suave and 69

I have read the following recently in an e-mail written to someone just before his first set off to Africa: “Forget everything you are used to and do not get surprised at anything!”

It is clearly an exaggeration to emphasise the magnitude of the cultural differences and the need for a total amnesia to such an extent, since colonisation, globalisation and (inter)national migration have all had an influence here too. However, there is no doubt a bunch of things to get surprised by…

It is fully natural for instance that the person you talk to looks at 90 degrees (or more) away in another direction. And when he talks to you, does not even look at you. Shaking hands is sometimes shaking wrists, as it is not always a hand you get to shake, but only a wrist. Which at home would just be one of the greatest improprieties…

Alike, it is not worth getting annoyed if after 15-20 minutes no one has yet arrived at the meeting, and has not even telephoned. Just suave (“take it easy”). Because as a matter of fact, there is systematic punctuality here: everything starts systematically punctually (and first of all tacitly) 25-30 minutes later than as arranged. Maybe, with the exception of the last board meeting of one of my partner organisations that started instead of 9 a.m. only at 12.30 p.m. (And at which one not enough people were present in the end, therefore after a three-and-a-half hour waiting time it was decided that that day no real meeting would then be held, just a kind of short one... While waiting, we discussed Puskás Öcsi, the results of the April elections in Hungary as well as the difference between the perception of time in Europe and Africa, so despite its marathon length, I felt myself after all a bit compensated. The anecdote of one of my Mozambican colleagues also helped me to cheer up, telling that they missed the dinner even twice when they were in Germany, because they walked down to the restaurant two hours later. Yet, the slow infiltration of the time-reformers is already perceivable. I have witnessed many times impatient muttering after a half-an-hour silence, saying why one cannot start in time, but at the most 15-20 minutes later. And though you would not assume, there is time management here as well! It means how you squeeze in all your tasks, appointments and everything else into the calculably uncalculable time gaps of the ever-ocurring waits, cancellations and delays.

Monogamy, family values and tribal origin (so…) political convictions also function according to a different system. In some regions, in particular in the northern coastal areas strongly marked by the Arabic-Muslim influence, polygamy is still widespread. During their upbringing girls are continuously prepared to that one day they would have to share their wife position, pointing at such “advantages” as the proportionally lower amount of per capita housework or “spousal obligations”… The family’s weight and the role of the family relations also differ from those of our today Western culture. The family here serves as the basis of social existence and integration, ostracism is the worst thing that can happen, bringing shame and the complete loss of the net of social protection. The responsibility of taking care of the farther family members is self-evident. In everyday life, tribal origin and political convictions play an important role, and in most of the cases, the former strongly determines the latter.

Mozambicans are fundamentally nice, hospitable, inquisitive and despite the immense poverty they live in, optimist and cheerful. The white man here is called muzungo (not mulungo, as in the south), and in the inner areas, less affected by tourists, migrants and foreign organisations still appears as a kind of attraction. Being white in fact also represents an added value: on the one hand on the vegetable market at the pricing (i.e. the tomato is more expensive), on the other hand on the marriage market, where a white intended is often the symbol of the road to Europe (exception of course always respected).

If about travelling, in the course of the past one month I have come to the conclusion that operating a chapa is actually not such a bad business. Let’s look for instance at the Chimoio – Manica distance that is 60 kms. The petrol costs of an ordinary chapa (which is to 99 % a Toyota minibus) – at 30 meticais/liter petrol price and a consumption of 10-12 liters/100 kms – is about 200 meticais. (Chapa-operators receive a minimal level of state subsidy to the petrol costs, as they take over the solution of the public transport.)
A ticket costs 50 meticais per person (physical ticket of course there isn’t). Thus, 16 travellers bring in total 800 meticais. With 16 you can always firmly count, because the chapa only leaves when it is full (which can take sometimes even 40-50 minutes…). With maintenance and reparation costs you only have to count on a minimal level, with cleaning costs not at all, and taxation remains usually undone. Another cost yet to be considered is “the small motivation” the police asks for, stopping you at least once on the way, so 50 to 100 meticais yet comes off. Thus, adding everything up, the gains per each ride is on the average 500 meticais, that is 250 % pure profit! And you can even listen to your music loudly while driving…
Furthermore, the chapa is a good transportation possibility for the travellers themselves (although they would not actually have a choice to travel with something else). Not really because of the comfort, but in case they wish to progress during the trip with their shopping agenda, they just have to call and the car stops at a vendor on the road for some lemon, garlic, potato or fresh fish.

Similar customer-friendly I find the cellular industry. At any moment you need a recharge, there is either an m-cel or vodacom stand at every third corner, mostly both, with a fixed-line phone on the top as demonstration(?). At those corners where there is no stand, young teen boys are selling the credit of both providers, just next to each other, in the greatest “business peace”. Should you have passed the corner already when it strikes you that you are out of credit, it is not a problem, either. Last time Delfim and I were already waiting for the chapa in the stop at the next corner, when I made a low note that I would have yet to buy credit later somewhere. Delfim then just stepped two meters to the side towards the corner, shortly hissed, lifted his arm and the m-cel guy was already racing to us from the previous corner, from some 50 meters.
How all the young boys and teens selling recharge cards make their bread from this, I do not know. But I know how the plastic laminator does it. Making one photocopy of your passport costs 2 meticais (5 eurocents), the authentication by the public notary costs – putting the Hungarian public notaries quite much to shame – 5 meticais (12,5 eurocents!), however, the laminating at the laminator costs 50 meticais (1,25 EUR)... Though, it may actually be that the authentication only did not cost much more because it was our Mozambican empregada (housemaid), and not me who has requested it…

A similarly good business is to work as a traffic policeman. At least on the highway where there is always someone who drives “too fast”. On the way back home from Beira (highway EN6) a policeman stopped us for, according to him, we were racing at 69 km/h. The speed limit, again according to him, was 60 km/h. Of course, no road sign before, and for the lack of road construction, reconstruction, flood and heavy snowfall nothing (would have) justified anyway the speed limitation. Simon, my colleague who drove, asked the policeman to show him then the speed detector before he would pay the fine of 1000 meticais (about 25 EUR) (that equals for instance the half-month salary of an average home guard – and here being guard is the most average occupation). The policeman replied that he “had unfortunately deleted the detector already, but we had anyway accepted the fine already!” When we asked for an official paper to state what happened (the fact too that he had deleted early), he became already somewhat unsure, leading him finally to the decision that the fine was actually not that much necessary anymore.


Pemba – the East, Wimbi and a flock
23 – 29 Mai 2010

Every year, DED (in English: German Development Service) holds an annual meeting for all of its colleagues posted in the country, each year in a different place. This year it was organised in Pemba, the capital of the northernmost province Cabo Delgado.

Instead of the five-star accommodation and all inclusive catering we received (that is financed, thank god, not from the budget line allocated to the development projects – though this budget division itself reveals the root of the problem…) rather a few words about Pemba. Beside the official programme I could only spend a brief afternoon on the city, that too only as a private action. Although in general the city does not offer any spectacular sights, the impressions and the atmosphere has more than compensated for the short amount of time.

The province of Cabo Delgado is one of the least developed ones in the country. Its inhabitants, mostly Makua, Yao and Makonde have a much stronger like for freedom and being independent in comparison to their fellow nationals in the south. This was the region where it took the longest for the Portuguese colonisers to get a foothold (only in the early 1900s) and from where the armed liberation struggle started off (in 1964).

The Eastern-African and Arabic-Islam historic influence can be felt from the very first moment. The narrow alleys of the street market bordered by palms hide small mud and bamboo huts, with vendors in front of them wearing Indian-Arabic clothes, oriental music is mingling with Swahili, oriental-style cloths, spices and carved wood articles are on sale on the bamboo boxes.

The main attraction of Pemba is, however, Praia Wimbi (also Wimbe) situated some 5 kms from the town: far-stretching white-sand beach, azure-water ocean, several diving and water sports facilities and despite being a highly-favoured tourist destination, a quiet and not at all overcrowded strand.

One afternoon, as an optional programme, we visited a bird reserve at a lake located at a one-hour drive from Pemba. Though the number of the birds and the species were little convincing, the hospitality of Metuge village lying at the shore of the lake kept us occupied much firmer. Having noticed the camera, three little boys walking with sacks and buckets on their head stopped immediately and asked me with an irresistible cheerful smile to take a photo of them too. I took one, showed it to them, and when I looked up some seconds later, already 25 small heads were keeping bouncing around me, all calling for a picture and grinningly discovering after their own face on the display. The flock of kids just kept increasing so I continued taking the photos… When we finally set off, they were whooping and running in group after the bus, while the villagers standing at the side of the road were waving and saying good bye to us with a broad artless smile on their face.

In very brief summary, the official programme consisted of the following: project and financial reports of the previous year, delegation of the different posts (e.g. representative of interests, spokespersons of the thematic groups, responsibles for the 2011 DED-calendar etc.), furthermore training in two subjects: impact-oriented project planning as well as consultant role in the cultural context of Mozambique.

The project is carried out within the framework of the Junior Expert Programme (NFP – Nachwuchsförderungsprogramm) of German Development Service (DED – Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst). The coordination and background support for my participation were provided by the Hungarian Volunteer Sending Foundation (HVSF – www.hvsf.hu).