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 that eventually the center would become self-supporting, i.e. generate its own income without relying on support from abroad.

The two Norwegian couples were now responsible for finding ways of generating income for the center. Their current idea was to make money by selling water. It turned out that the water below this property was of extremely high quality, and they were hoping to make the sale of this water into a business.

It was very interesting to listen to him and learn about the problems they were facing. All of them had only arrived a few months ago so they were still idealistic and full of enthusiasm. However, it appeared that the Mozambique bureacracy was doing everything in their power to stop them from helping. They still hadn't received the necessary permits for staying in Mozambique, even though they had been here for several months and were in contact with the authorities every day. As a result, they were at the moment staying illegally in Mozambique and were all receiving daily fines of around 10000R each. Obviously, they didn't have the money to pay for this, nor did they have any desire to pay these fines because the children definitely needed the money more than the bureaucrats! This was one problem they had to solve very quickly!

After talking to Ove for some time, we went to visit Gro Eva and Sigurd in their home inside the center. Their house was decorated very nicely inside, just like a typical Norwegian living room. We were treated to apple cake and chocolate mousse, and sat there a long time chatting with them. We were very impressed with their enthusiasm for the cause, even though the buraucracy was working hard against them. We hope they can keep their enthusiasm and idealism alive because it seems that in Mozambique they would really need to.

Around 2130 we said goodbye and went back to our house. Borgny and Gunnar went to bed first, while May Tina and I stayed up a little bit longer, discussing this very eventful day and reading some Norwegian comics that were lying around. Around 2215 we were too tired and also went to bed.

After lying in bed for a while, I suddenly woke up because somebody seemed to be trying to open the door to our house. May Tina had also heard this and we were slightly worried that someone might be trying to break in. However, nothing seemed to happen, so either the guy had given up, or maybe there wasn't really any danger at all. In any case, we went back to our rooms and fell asleep quite quickly.