Mozambique and Beyond

We just returned a week or so ago from a long road trip through South Africa, our much-loved Mozambique, and (briefly) Swaziland.  There were many highlights on a very memorable trip indeed, but chief among them was the great joy of introducing Malena to her homeland.  Caleb was about four when we left, and he has a surprising breadth of memories of our time there - his very earliest memories, in fact, are of Moz.  But Malena was only one when we departed, so all she knew of the place were stories she'd been told and pictures she'd seen.

Driving into Maputo brought back to us all we'd forgotten, and revealed how different it is from Gabs: crowds of vibrantly dressed people all over town, riding perched on top of 18 wheelers, hawking steering wheel covers on the side of the road, women carrying their little ones wrapped up in capalanas, commuters packed by the baker's dozen into honking, sidewalk-driving minibuses.  Maputo is a seaside mix of high-rise communist era apartment squalor, decaying excesses from the days of the Portuguese, interminable hovels made of concrete blocks and aluminum roofing, and narrow slices of opulence, which the cynical among us would say are inhabited primarily by UN aid workers and other governmental development people.

We stayed with my old Air Serv boss, Chris Branks, and his family for a few days while we reacquainted ourselves with the city.  It turned out to be quite an adventure.  Riots started in the city over a rise in the government-set price of a basic staple, bread, just 36 hours after we arrived.  We were forced to hunker down for a couple of days, listening to sporadic AK-47 fire and keeping a close ear on the radio news.  We were distraught to hear that ten or so folks died and a good number were injured in the chaos, with people lighting tires on fire and burning buses and cars around the city.  Mozambique remains one of the poorest countries on the planet, with a vast gulf between the rich and poor.  What we consider an inconsequential rise in food prices can have a substantial impact on those living on very little indeed.

Fortunately, things calmed down enough to get around the city a bit.  We visited our old house, which we believe the current tenants have not improved.

Caleb and Malena believe our old back yard may have shrunk in our absence

We also were able to visit the Hospital Central where we first found Malena, and to see the orphanage where she would have grown up had we never met.  At the orphanage, Malena spent a bit of time with a baby that looked much like her at six months.  I found myself simultaneously occupying both 2003 and 2010, looking down at the beautiful daughter that God brought into our lives, and that other little girl that very well could have been Malena seven years ago.  I wondered what Malena's life would look like today, and perhaps more acutely, what our lives would be like today had we never met.  We wouldn't know it, but we would be impoverished beyond reckoning had this clever, lovely, and funny girl never entered our lives.

outside Hospital Central

getting to know some of the kids at Primiero do Mayo orphanage

Primiero do Mayo

We also spent some great time catching up with our dear friends the Reeves, and had some serendipitous chance meetings with a number of old friends and acquaintances around town.  Then it was north to Chris's beach paradise near the town of Xai-Xai, the subject of my next post. . .