Hoi,
Onderstaand verslag is in het Engels, heb t namelijk waarschijnlijk in die taal nog nodig straks.
Thursday, the 6th of March 2008.
We, the RHVP team and 3 South-African guys who are going to make a documentary about the PSA program, left Maputo at 5:45 AM to visit the delegation of INAS in Xai-Xai. On our way we stopped at a restaurant along the “highway” from Maputo to Xai-Xai in Manhiça for a breakfast with nice coffee, to discuss the program for the rest of the day and to sing through the phone for the 4th birthday of the youngest son of Vaughn, one of the film makers.
When we arrived in Xai-Xai at the INAS office, the film crew had an interview with the head of INAS in Xai-Xai. In the mean time, I found two nice young kids and their uncle. I was directly their “amigo” as the youngest boy directly called me. He was very happy with the small pack of cookies he had, although he seemed to not to dare to open the pack. However the cookie that I gave him was very interesting and must have tasted good, as that was gone in a second. Here in Mozambique, there is a big difference between children when it comes to making pictures. The one half is really shy and the other half is very enthusiastic and sometimes even asks you if you want to make a picture of them.
An our later we were on our way to a payment post further in the rural areas in Gaza province (Xai-Xai is the capital of Gaza). It was a ride of about one and a half our, which led us through various little towns via paved, dirt and sand roads. One of them was Mandlakaze. When we arrived, there was no sign of the name of the place, but surprisingly my phone told me it was Mandlakaze. This is an important town in Mozambican history, my colleague Joao told me. Eduardo Mondlane, the most famous fighter for independence in Mozambique during the Portuguese colonial period, was born here. He died in 1969, so 6 years before independence. In his last 7 years of his life, he was the first president of Frelimo. Frelimo (Mozambican Liberation Front) fought for independence from Portugal and came into power when Mozambique became independent. It is is still the reigning party in the government. The gas station in Mandlakaze was remarkably old (probably from before the independence), still functioning fine and had Dutch pumps.
Out of Mandlakaze, another sand road of about 30 kilometers led us to the local building of INAS. From there, it was a 3 minute walk through the plants to the payment post. As many of the payment posts that INAS uses for its PSA programme, this was under a large tree. The beneficiaries were waiting here since 9 AM to receive their monthly allowance. For the most people this is 100 MTN, so 4 U$D. When we arrived around 1 PM they started singing and dancing spontaneously. Tuesday in Maputo / Zimpeto, the same had happened in a place where a payment post was combined with a community building for elderly people. It is really amazing to see that some elderly hardly can walk, but they can still sing and dance very enthusiastic. Especially here in Gaza, the people do not have much and are very poor, but they seem to enjoy life a lot. The people are beautiful, extremely friendly, thankful for the money they get and very willing to cooperate with us for the documentary and the research. We held some interviews with the beneficiaries for our research and the people were paid by INAS.
When the people left to their homes, we followed a lady on her way back home for the documentary. It was a walk of about twenty minutes through the bush bush. We passed the tiny centre of the rural village, with a primary school and a soccer field. When we arrived at her little house of straw, the lady was interviewed by the film crew. Under the tree, there was a young family, a mother doing her laundry and her three kids. They were all beautiful and very cute, especially the (I think) 1 year old boy. He was very interested in the radio they had there.
Around half past three we left for our way back to Maputo. 4 and a half ours later, we were back in town, tired but very impressed by what we had seen. Maputo may not be a real nice city, but Maputo is not the real Mozambique. The real Mozambique is outside of the capital, in the rural areas, where by far the most people live in this country.
A very weird road sign on our way back. A sort of a Mozambican Bermuda triangle on the road just outside Xai-Xai?
It was great to experience the real life for most poor African people in such a way. It is really hard to explain what you feel when you walk there as a Western European. Sometimes it almost looks as they are happier with their life than we are, although our life is much easier and we have a lot of things they never even heard of. A small example is that when I took pictures from various people and showed them afterwards, they hardly could believe they saw themselves. Or, with the girls on the picture below, that they were very excited to see themselves.
