A War

 

A War.

On the left side of the photo you find Faraji who lost his parents in Northern Mozambique. He doesn’t know where they are nor if they are alive. On the right side of the photo is Urença who lost her entire family. She met the young boy while they were fleeing and took him under her protection and care. She’s probably raised tens of young boys and girls between her own children and her grandkids. And she is doing it once again.

They’ve fled an active war zone; the numbers vary widely depending on who is trying to approximate - many people have died and over 100,000 people have fled and are now refugees (Joseph Hanlon probably has the most accurate data out of any report I’ve seen/read).

In the summer of 2017, my parents came to visit me in Mozambique. We went to Ibo island; pristine beaches and wildlife. Between the war and the cyclone last year, the lodges no longer exist. At first many people fled to Ibo. Now people are fleeing even further south and fleeing FROM Ibo.

In February/early March I was personally in the town of Mocimboa da Praia. A bustling town despite the various clashes and attacks that had occurred. The district of Mocimboa da Praia had 127,000 residents as of the 2017 census with about 30,000 to 40,000 living in the district capital (also called Mocimboa da Praia). Mocimboa da Praia is a ghost town. No one lives there from what I’ve been told. Gone. Completely gone.

I live about 250km from the war zone (as the crow flies). Our city leadership is trying to accommodate for the 20,000+ refugees that have arrived. I don’t believe anyone knows the actual number of refugees that have arrived here.  We see truck after truck after truck arriving from the norther road full of people and mattresses. The wealthy people fled to Nampula months ago. The middle-class would have fled to Pemba or Montepuez. Those without means are still fleeing.

This war has broken and torn many families apart. Loved ones who have gone missing and may never be found again. Siblings who have disappeared and you can only hope they’ve made it south but when you hear of their disappearance your gut says, they probably got killed in the woods. Hopefully someone took the time to bury them. It’s not a straight forward war. There are not two sides directly fighting each other. There’s one side expressing a lot of distress and pain and misery and anger at being forgotten. Then there’s the other side profiting from it hoping to only do as much as needed to keep the gas projects going. Or at least that’s how it all started. And then the drug trade got involved. Then sex trafficking got involved. Then people started profiting off the security contracts. Then there was more oppression and violence and heart break. Then Islamic organizations started throwing support around and religion become a cornerstone to it. I don’t know what the solution is. My gut says that security contracts alone will not solve the problem.

There’s some aid programs providing food to refugees. Some of our colleagues have distributed food as well and we’ve provided the crops we have available as well. We’re trying out a couple ideas to do our part:

1)      We’ve taken on 10 new staff persons for about 1-2 months to help in our construction and reserved these positions for refugees (2 of them we’re looking at offering 1-year contracts that could extend into permanent positions). In the grand scheme of 20,000+ it’s barely even a drop.

2)       Knowing that the market in Palma for fruit & veg is growing rapidly, we’re planting thousands of papaya trees. Once ready for transplant, we’ll give 5 trees per refugee family (if they want more, they can order more) all free of charge of course. The hope is they either have a little food when they plant the trees or they can sell us the fruits and earn a little income

3)      We’ve gone to one of our partnerships (TNS) to ask if Total would be interested in funding an agriculture livelihood project

For those reading this post, I have a couple simple requests. One, pray/send your thoughts to those fleeing the war. Two, talk about it. If you’re interested in hearing more about the backdrop of what’s currently happening, let me know. Third, any ideas about how we could help the refugees (we being our farming company)?  

With all my heart,

Daniel Bladow