Home » Mozambique » South African Adventure 1999, Part 10: Mozambique -- symbolising the best and worst of Africa

After a game drive in the park, we crossed the border to Mozambique and drove to the capital Maputo. The country immediately seemed very different from Swaziland with the climate being much more tropical and the living conditions apparently much worse. This resulted in people being very aggressive in their efforts to sell us things and despite us being very careful, there was an incident where a group of people tried to steal from us. However, Mozambique was also a place where we experienced extreme generosity, and in retrospect I think our short visit was the most interesting experience on the whole trip.

South African Adventure 1999, Part 10: Mozambique -- symbolising the best and worst of Africa

Jan Arild Teland
2006-05-08 20:33:32

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was a lot of food left for his family now. However, they had other plans as we were not allowed to leave without taking the leftovers from the meal with us. They put everything in a large pot for us and carried it out to our car, making sure we would not forget anything.

When we finally got away it was only a short drive to our accomodation for the night, the "Centro de Recuperacao Juvenil", a center for streetchildren. The purpose of this center was to get children off the street, give them some education and help them to a normal life. It turned out to be run by two young Norwegian couples.

The place was very nice and the children who come here must really consider themselves very lucky. On first arriving, we were met by a young Norwegian woman called Gro Eva who was out talking a walk with some of the children. She welcomed us and told us where we should stay.

The house in which we were staying was currently empty as it was intended for someone who were to be in charge of the place, but had not arrived yet. There were four bedrooms so we all got our own room again, and we also had a huge living room and kitchen to ourselves. None of the children were living there as they had their own buildings.

After settling in, we took a short walk around the area. Time must have been around 1830, as the sun had already set and it was dark. However, the change of temperature from Swaziland and S.A. was very noticable. Even though it was dark, temperature must have been around 20 degrees. It was very pleasant to walk around in shorts.

Coming back to our living room we vere visited by a young man called Ove. He and his wife were in charge of the center, together with the other couple of Sigurd and Gro Eva. He told us about how things worked (or rather didn't work) in Mozambique. Apparently the center was funded by Norwegian foreign aid at the moment, but the support from Norway was decreased by 10% every year. The idea was ...