March 23, 1997

Subject: Mozmambique Newsletter
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 97 23:41:02 UTC
From: mpilert@yahoo.com


Greetings from Quelimane!

The last couple of weeks have been hectic, as the flood waters continue to overflow the Zambezi, and it's tributaries, making travel by road to many destinations impossible. I've been flying all over the northern half of this country.

I went to the village of Chinde, at the mouth of the Zambezi. I was working with my friend Eric from the British NGO, Mariners. Mariners is helping the Mozambicans to build a shallow draft steel barge to service villages along the Zambezi. I have mentioned before the dangers of the crocodiles and hippos on the river, but until now I've never heard of river sharks. According to Eric, there is a variety of shark that has adapted to fresh water. They are not only found at Chinde at the river mouth, but have been sighted as far upstream as Caia (80 miles). I haven't seen one yet, but Eric has a video of one, I'm looking forward to seeing. Just as the salt water croc in Australia has adapted to life in salt water, so has the river shark adapted to fresh water.

Speaking of animals, we now have two monkeys living in our yard as pets. Their names are Amanda, and Mitchell. Monkeys are easy to feed. our bananas always go bad before we can eat then all. Amanda and Mitchell love them extra ripe. They are omnivores, so we can throw almost anything at them.

Has anyone seen the comet: Hale-Bopp? Sounds more like a dance than a celestial body. As a matter of fact that's just what I was doing the other night, when I decided to try to find it. I'd been out to the Bar Africa, a little local spot out in the Barrios of Quelimane. It is real dark around there, so it's real good for star gazing. The only trouble was, I had no information on when or where to look, so I thought I'd just try looking up. I walked outside the bar, the sky was clear, and as I turned my head upward to gaze upon the heavens, a small crowd gathered around me. They all started looking up. Somebody asked me what I was looking at. In my best fractured Portuguese I told them I was looking for a "special Star". Well that got them going. The crowd grew larger, everyone with their neck bend skyward, trying to get a glimpse of the estrella especial that the crazy white man claimed had come just for this month, never to be seen again for 4000 years. This went on for 10 or 15 minutes. Someone asked me where I was from. I continued to look up, and replied calmly: "you see that bright star there to the left?......." We never did see that comet, but a good time was had by all.

Those folks out there in the barrios all live in mud huts, no water or other amenities. Most of them get enough to eat, but the poverty here is staggering. The diet is mostly masa, a corn meal porridge. Medical care is very limited. Mozambique is the poorest country in the world. When you live and work here day after day, you get used to it. Some days I hardly even notice it, I've learned to live with it so well. Other days the sight sound and smell of poverty hits so hard that there is no way around it. Some days it seems that I have the weight of the whole world on my shoulders here. One evening you may see a man going through your garbage, which is not so very strange (nothing is wasted in Mozambique), but when the next morning you find that man dead on the street, it really makes you think.

This week I'm off to Tete on the upper Zambezi to do some work for the World Vision Agricultural, and Flood relief programs. There will be a feeding program soon for those hardest hit by the flooding. Some food airlifts have been in progress for a month.

That's it for this week -- Mike