A Mozambican boy shows his XXI century automobile
Faranaz Keshavjee
Yesterday the Mozambican people went for elections. Their economy has improved in the recent years, and although it has left the status of " the poorer country in the world", the Mozambican newspaper today reveals a total estimate of 270 thousand people who will "experiment dramatic food insufficiency".
Poverty and wealth, although can be clearly estimated, it can also be a relative thing. As an example of this, the media report "Grande Reportagem" produced by Cândida Pinto, and presented on channel SIC, showed among others, a family of 4 orphan children, where the eldest, a boy of 15 years, looked after the rest of them, being the youngest only 4. After their daily shores, the thing that most amuses them is football. The 4 year old' dream is to have a proper new ball. At the end of the interview the journalist asks a final question: what is that which you miss most. The eldest boy replies: "I miss...; well, no, I do not miss a thing. Not a thing. Yes. There's nothing I miss!"
Publico newspaper mentioned yesterday that this was a land occupied by the Portuguese for 470 years! It became independent in 1975. One could say that it was the people's choice, that they wrote the lines of their own destinies and outcomes; however, it is not fair to say that they had time enough to build neither their present nor their future of prosperity. It takes a lot of time, years even, to build bridges, dams, highways. It only takes a couple of seconds to destroy all this. After the years of a war for Independence, what knowledge, what resources, or infrastructures have the Portuguese left in a country where the natives new well how to serve their masters and were many a times treated as sub-humans?
Through the villages I travelled last year, in the deep steppes of Mozambique, when the AKDN
invited Publico newspaper to look at their work, one can still listen to people cry about lack of water infrastructures, a simple well, so they can avoid a barefoot walking for 30 to 60 kilometers carrying the water buckets on their heads!
What do they miss then? They miss Portugal and Portuguese help and support. They need their time and knowledge, to help construe more comfortable environments, more just and well-balanced realities; ultimately, they need to be compensated for the 470 years they were dominated. In a very simple but extremely important word : they need hope.
