Ed O’Connor, from our member company, Wincanton, spent six weeks in Mozambique with Gary Forster, our Southern Africa Programmes Manager, in September of 2007. Below are several email excerpts of Ed’s adventures, which gives an idea of the day-to-day work being carried out by our volunteers on behalf of Transaid.
8 September 2007
Hey all,
Sorry for the group email but get used to it cause the internet is dial up and very slow here whenever I may get onto it.
Flight was good but long. Landed here at 6 this morning it was already 17 degrees but not too bad it’s a dry heat.
Guy I'll be hanging round with this week is living with a family in the kind of suburb…Anyhow all good so far and this guy is really nice and going to show me round Zambia and bring me down into Mozambique next weekend.
Yes I have found an Irish bar and there is lots of Irish here too. The guy I'm with is English and most of his mates here are Irish so will meet them over the next few days…I'll try and reply to individual emails when I get them.
That’s all really from Zambia for now,
Ed
22 September 2007
Hey all,
How do you start your day? I start by trying to get out from under my mosquito net and then checking the floor and my shoes for scorpions and spiders…Anyway it’s not all that bad but it is getting hotter by the day and the places I’m going don’t have air con so I need to drink a few litres of water a day just to try counter act the sweating.
It’s really interesting here in Tete province in Mozambique cause it used to be a colony of Portugal, hence my Portuguese translator. There is such a huge influence here, its half African half Portuguese…Sometimes it feels like we are in the Mediterranean with the food and the buildings.
Not going to get to email much over the next few weeks as I’ll be taking nice long 10 and 11 hours journeys in the heat cross country to some isolated places so I’m guessing there wont be an internet café on the corner.
Anyway that’s all for now folks.
Your African Connection,
Ed
29 September 2007
The week didn’t start too bad…We (Gonçalo the translator and I) got into the main offices we go to and done our couple of meetings and information gathering, nothing too strange or great there.
We got breakfast/lunch and headed to another office at the main hospital for a meeting arranged for 12:00 since the Friday before. 12:20 we rang the guy and he said he would be 10 minutes as he was in the other office, which is literally 5 minutes away. 13:00 no sign, 13:30 no sign. We rang him again and he said he was on his way. 14:00 nothing, 14:30 nothing and then 14:50 he walks in the door as if nothing was up.
A phrase I heard in Zambia from the guy who lives there and others I was introduced to is ‘African time’. No truer phrase have I heard. People always say time doesn’t wait for anybody. Well let me tell you now that’s not true. In Africa time does wait for you…Anyway after our sitting in an office with no fan or air con for 3 hours in 40 degree plus heat we had our 10 minute meeting. Tuesday was a Bank Holiday here as it marked when the civil war started so everything was closed and it was a day at home working away.
Wednesday is when things got interesting. You know when you tell somebody your going somewhere far away driving and they kind of cringe as soon as you say the name as they know how long and far away it is? Well, Wednesday morning was the start of 3 days in the wild for us. Anytime the name ‘Zumbo’ was mentioned in a conversation the other person always laughed and cringed. Guess where we were headed.
Anyway first stop was Chifunde, which up until the tarmac ended was ok. Then it was 35KM of off road. Barely a track and up and down hills and through little rivers. Almost hit a Baboon on the way that ran in front of the jeep. They are big guys, like a small horse running by.
We got there and the people we talked to were not too friendly or forthcoming with information but that’s all part of it. Got done in a couple of hours and had that drive again to the tarmac road.
Zumbo, what can I say. 7 hours of off-road the likes you have never seen of or could dream about. That off-road is the type books are written about by adventurers or fools…Words can’t come close to describing those 7 hours. When we got to Zumbo we did our thing at the hospital again for about 3 hours and then we had to head back to the shanty town to sleep and get food…Only one generator in the whole place which gets switched off at 23:00 so we had our plate of cold chips and salad by candle light. Not as romantic as it sounds, the insects I found in my food were just pushed to one side as I kept eating.
Friday morning and the long, long, long drive back to Tete. Got in about 16:00, which wasn’t too bad, I suppose…Anyway lucky me has 3 nights in my bed then it’s off for 6 days of the same thing next week, Monday to Saturday. Lucky us, no really, lucky us for being on such an adventure. I really do feel lucky.
All is great here, only about 32, 33 degrees inside at night, which is nice to try fall asleep in!!!! I’ll email again when I get back from the wilderness so keep in touch.
Ed
6 October 2007
Monday we headed out again for some more travelling. Nothing too major to start off with. Went north to Chiuta spent a couple of hours there and then up further north to Macanga. Nice place, a kind of town with a main street. Don’t be thinking O’ Connell street (main street in Dublin City) now I mean a dirt road that a few small shacks were running along, a main street for the middle of nowhere. The one really nice thing is the Jacaranda trees. They are in bloom now and really famous in Africa. They have a beautiful bright purple flower and when a little gust of wind hits them the leaves fall off and it looks like purple snow. It really is a sight and I did get some photos but like everything out here they do not do them justice. Photos just can’t capture what you see with your own eyes here which is a shame. Anyway there were loads of them there and it was really nice to see the colour after seeing dust and sand all day. Next it was off to Ulongue in Angonia which was a shift to the east slightly closer to Malawi.
Up early the next day to do our thing in the hospital and health centre in Ulongue. By the end of this trip I will have visited around 25 hospitals and health centres, that’s a lot.
Once they were out of the way a bit of work back at our place before dinner which became very interesting indeed. The guys we were with had stories that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. As I mentioned there was civil war here and these guys were around when it was going on. I won’t name armies or political parties or even who was the bad guys and who was the goods guys so I’ll just say group A and group B. One guy told us how when he was 14 years old guys from group A came to his school gave them all AK47 rifles and trained them to use them because group B attacked schools killing everybody just to wipe them out. They had a rifle by their side at all times and armed guards while at school everyday. People here don’t like to talk about it so we just let them tell us what they wanted and didn’t really ask any questions. Villagers in small villages used to go into the forests at night, dig holes and sleep in them covering themselves as best they could because guys from group A or group B would just enter villages and wipe out everybody, men, women and children. It wasn’t really to kill them specifically so to speak but it would be just to wipe them out so they won’t get in their way and could eat their food as they had none. They told us stories of generals who could change form into animals and disappear into the forest and could make their jeeps fly. They really seemed to believe the stories and black magic is still something which plays a part in peoples lives here. They didn’t go into too much more detail but it’s the kind of thing you see on the TV while these guys were sitting there telling us about it happening to them. You can’t even begin to imagine it and all I can say is its crazy, I can’t think of any other way to describe it.
Anyway the following day it was off to Tsangano which was some drive. Not particularly hard but scenery like nothing we had seen so far. We drove through and over and around hills and mountains. The views were amazing and there was large rock mountains and formations everywhere, what a drive. Tsangano was right next to the Malawi boarder which was involved in the war so on entering the village there was 3 armoured personnel carries burnt out and in a field since the war ended. Interesting but also a visual reminder of a sort to what had gone on.
Wednesday night after dinner we got talking to one of the security guards of where we stay. It must have been a week for talking as he told us his story about the war. One day while in his village an army from group B came in and took all the young boys. There was no if they wanted to fight or who they were fighting for, they were just taken as child soldiers. He told us how he was given a rifle at 14 and trained to fight and kill. How he was involved in ambushes of group A and the killing of everybody just so they could take their weapons. He showed us a scar on his leg where he was shot. He told us how when he turned 15 he was given a radio and made the leader of his group, a man at 15 no longer a boy. For 5 years he was a soldier for group B and done what he had to. He never told us he actually killed anybody but it was a given by the stories of ambush and attacks from 5 years of fighting. It really is hard to comprehend what he was telling us and to think that children were just taken from their homes and made be child soldiers. Its not that this is the only place this kind of thing happened in as it happened in many many countries but the fact that we were actually talking to this guy about it was surreal.
Well all is set for my final week of travelling next week for 6 days so after that my emails will be much much shorter as I will only be in Tete analysing data and writing my report for the rest of my time here. Don’t worry though you will be kept up to date.
Ed
15 October 2007
Well as per usual the weekend was pretty quite. Sunday was packing for our last 6 day adventure.
Started off with the driver getting here for 6:00 which wasn’t too bad as that’s why we said 5:00 as we knew it would be later. Anyway off we went and all was going good till we got out of Tete and the driver put his foot down. It wasn’t the fact that he was going a little faster than he should but it was the fact we were no longer on tar but dust roads through villages. Trying not to look at how fast we were going or where he was driving but holding on for dear life as we bounced hard along the road. The journey was meant to take 4-5 hours but we go there in less than 3 which wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
After our drive we did our thing in Magoe although the amount of times I banged my head off the window I’m sure I had swelling on the right side of my head. Its a nice place up on a hill with nice views all around and slightly cooler. After our couple of hours there we were off home with our “driver” and hopefully get home in one piece. After an hour and a half or so drive the driver stopped, a flat tyre. We waited for his extremely slow self to change the tyre and off we went again.
Now normally after a flat tyre you take it easy in the hope you don’t get another just as human nature but our driver didn’t seem to think the same way. Off he drove with speed and literally 2 minutes later “bang” another flat. Bare in mind we were 50km from the nearest village in the middle of nowhere. 2 flat and only 1 spare tyre although we had been told drivers should take 2 spares with them our great driver didn’t. The hole in the second flat was big enough to put my little finger into yet they decided to try and fix it with bits of timber and plastic. Now the intelligent thing to do, like Gonçalo and me suggested was use the first flat tyre as the hole was smaller and we could drive on it and pump it when needed. No no no for an hour we sat on the side of the road trying to plug the huge hole. Next plan was to stay where we were and they thought another vehicle from the hospital might pass today, or tomorrow. 50 km from anywhere, 2 half bottles of water and a pack of biscuits and 6 men! Needless to say Gonçalo and me said not a chance and got the wheel changed to the first flat…We pumped the wheel and set off.
7 times we had to stop and pump the wheel on the side of the road till we reached the next village where we could get the wheels fixed. Taking turns between the 6 of us with the smallest pump I have ever seen we managed it but not something I fancy doing again in the afternoon sun with fly’s everywhere. Next was getting the flats repaired. We stopped at a little shack and that was the “garage”. They fixed them after about 2 and a half hours but you have to take into account no machines and they had to pop the tyres off the rims with bars and hammers, not easy. Not too sure about the method of repair either, a piece of bicycle tube superglued over the hole. It did the job but not getting home till nearly 22:00 was a long hard day.
Wednesday was a much better day although we had the same driver again which wasn’t to assuring. We drove to Cahora Bassa which we have been told has the second largest dam in Africa. We got to the hospital and other office and done our thing there. Was a really nice drive up into the mountains and we did get to see the dam too, which was nice. Not as big as I thought but had plenty of time to look at it as our wheel went soft so the driver had to change it. Same vehicle as Tuesday so looks like one of the repairs didn’t quite hold up. I really have to question the driver’s concept of health and safety as he waited till we were on a slope then decided to change the wheel and when he started to lift the vehicle up it started to slide so he had to drop it fast. He never even put a stone behind a wheel or put it in gear just the handbrake on, kind of. I hoped for our last 3 days we would have somebody else as we did asked for somebody new.
We waited for 2 hours for dinner which you get used to but surprisingly it was really good. Chicken, chips, rice and steaks all of which were hot and tasty, finally nice warm food. While eating we watched all the people washing cloths and themselves on the riverbank while the sun went down which was really nice. After a not so good sleep in 30 plus heat and no air con or fan we got our days work done. Dinner was ok again and while eating we were told a child had been taken off the riverbank earlier by a crocodile while he was washing with his mother. During the rainy season the crocs make their way much further inland and have taken people out of their huts, really tough life.
Bed again in our “lovely hotel rooms” and up at 5:00 for the journey home…No more staying in shantytowns which is not a bad thing but not a good thing either as I really enjoyed the travelling and was really interesting going to the different places and meeting the people.
Ed
*Please note, some of this content has been edited.
