Part 5: 'Blessed are the Hole Fillers, for They Shall Inherit the Roads'


Speak to people in Maputo, and two things that really annoy them about how the city is run: rubbish and roads. On almost every street corner there is a rubbish skip, usually overflowing, which is rarely emptied. Piles of rubbish just seem to appear and are never cleared. After a while you don't even notice them. There is a city policy to clear the streets of rubbish, and refuse trucks do occasionally appear, but too rarely to make any real difference. A local joke is that the trucks are sent out to move the rubbish from one corner to another.


Overflowing skip


Sometimes the results of this neglect are just grotesque, like last week when someone decided to set alight the rubbish skip situated outside the exquisitely beautiful, bright-white building where civil marriages are held. Bride, groom and guests emerged after the ceremony to be enveloped in clouds of black, acrid smoke. Not the most auspicious start to married life.

A Road in need of repair!

 The bride and groom would then have been whisked away for a very bumpy ride down Maputo's disintegrating roads. The pot-holes are seriously large, and turn into lakes when it rains. I was told with a smile that when the Portuguese left, the Mozambiquan's did not realise that paved roads needed maintenance. They thought, quite logically, that paved roads lasted forever. Unfortunately, the increase in traffic, and in particular the popularity of SUVs (or FU2s as they should be called) has carved and pummelled the roads into a moonscape.
 

Which brings me to Ernest Angley Ministries. The evangelist from Akron Ohio decided that Maputo needed four days of his Miracle Crusade 2004. For my sins, my apartment was close enough to the stadium to hear the ecstatic cries of gratitude as the blind saw, the lame walked, and the deaf heard. I don't know how many people were converted. What I do know is that if Ernest could have cleared the rubbish and filled the holes, the whole of Maputo would have signed up on the spot. Take a tip from me, Ernest. Next time you come to Maputo, choose the right miracle for your audience.

Sid Verber

27th March 2004

 

  More Rubbish


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