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Last Tuesday I made my first real trip outside Maputo, to Xai-Xai, about 200km north. Xai-Xai was the town most devastated by the floods of 2000, as it lies on the Limpopo river flood plain. You can still see the tide mark high on some of the buildings, and they are still now repairing the damage. Life is full of surprises - about the last thing I expected to see on the dirt-track streets of Xai-Xai was a lovingly restored Morris Minor with alloy wheels. |
We were in the area to visit some resource centres used for training teachers. They varied dramatically in the facilities they offered, and in one case the resources consisted of little more than an atlas, a dictionary, and four booklets. This centre was located in a primary school, where most of the classrooms had no desks and the children sat on the floor. I remarked on the advanced age of some of the pupils, and was told that the oldest pupils were 18. Although primary education is normally up to age 11, the west-backed destabilisation war of the 1980s destroyed a lot of schools and meant that a lot of children missed out on primary education. There are so few schools, and so many children wanting education, that schools like this have three shifts a day. |
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They would have four shifts, including a night shift, if the electricity supply were more reliable. Once you get away from Maputo, electricity is only found in and around the larger towns. I asked a Mozambiquan colleague whether people steal electricity (illegally connecting to the power lines). I was told that of course they did, if they were close enough. What was more interesting though was to be told that people actually stole the cables. Visions went through my mind of being approached on the street by someone saying, "Hey guv, want to buy 2000 metres of high-tension cable?", and I asked what they did with them. My colleague said that they melted them down and made traditional cooking pots. |
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Although in no way condoning this, there is a certainly irony. If you can't afford the electricity, you steal it and use it to cook. If you are too far away to steal it, you steal the cable and make pots so you can cook on open fires. Not having adequate resource centres in some areas doesn't mean people aren't resourceful in others!
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For more information,
contact World Spirit by email
Morris Minor
