We’d been buying timber on and off when it was available at the market and on Sunday five new mestres and two ‘roof engineers’ raised the skeleton of the roof. They asked for very little money, just breakfast, a decent lunch and twenty litres of soura (an alcoholic drink made from siphoning off palm sap). We didn’t see the logic of having five drunk men balancing on planks, but we were reassured that this is how it was done in Mozambique. The timber was arranged around the house, and before it was raised we had a little ceremony where coca cola and red wine were poured onto the floor of the house to cast any evil spirits out who would make the mestres fall off the roof (not the home made alcohol then) or hinder the construction in some way. This exorcism would also ensure that we would have a successful and happy time in Maganja da Costa.
By Tuesday morning all four sides of the roof had been covered and the house began to look like it might be finished before Christmas. The two original mestres who hadn’t been fired didn’t show up at all and we figured that we were probably better off without them. We found two people to make the veranda, plaster the inside and outside walls, another man to cement the floor, another to build a latrine and fence around the back garden.
The difference between the last week, and all previous weeks is huge. Not only has the house moved on leaps and bounds, but our mental health has improved greatly. There have been no tears, no shouting, no cycling to mestres house and asking why they haven’t arrived for work – in fact, we don’t even have to turn up at 6a.m. anymore to check they’ve appeared and aren’t stealing cement. The new men have built themselves a little shelter to cook under, they sweep the garden, work super efficiently, are pleasant and always tell us what they are doing, when they’ll be finished and what they need in advance.
Scorpions and Spiders and Snakes, oh my!
The next day, we set off to buy nhoca – covering for a roof made from coconut palms – at a tiny place called Mugeua famous in the region for their skills. We drove through some beautiful scenery, and to our excitement, crocodile and hippopotamus infested rivers. We arrived and began counting nhoca, a thousand in total. We then carried them to the car and realised that these nhoca were homes to numerous animals. Not only were there hundreds of baby cockroaches and other small creepy crawlies running up our arms and legs, but we saw two enormous, dangerous-looking spiders, a snake and a baby scorpion which was promptly eaten by a mangy chicken. We decided straight away to line the roof with thick black plastic, sacrificing aesthetics for a house relatively free of midnight animal assaults. Unloading the nhoca at the house was exhausting because of the beating down sun, but we would choose 1000 nhoca (animals included) over 1000 blocos any day. We returned home filthy from palm mould, dust, squashed insects and covered in scratches and splinters.
More problems and more blocos
Now that the mestres had the blocos, one would think that they wouldn’t waste any time beginning the construction of the house. How wrong we were! The walls went up slowly, and the mestres found a new reason not to work every day. They took three-hour lunch breaks until we agreed to provide food on site. They couldn’t work because they didn’t want to mix cement, so we paid an extra person to mix cement. They didn’t work because they didn’t have materials, despite having told us the previous evening that they had everything they needed. They didn’t want to work because it was too difficult with blocos queimados. They couldn’t work because the blocos were too far away, so we paid sixteen children to carry blocos 10 metres to the mestres. They didn’t turn up to work because of the rain. They didn’t want to work because it was too hot. They didn’t want to work because they wanted more money. Basically, they didn’t want to work. They were very good at stealing cement, causing problems, asking for money and making our lives miserable.
We had a couple of other adventures, such as going to buy sand and stones, but apart from the initial stress of finding a car and agreeing a price, none were as traumatic as the blocos.
So, you can imagine our distress when we discovered that we needed to buy another 650. Instead of heading back to the original place, which we hope never to see again, we found some more, a mere 200 metres from the house. We arranged to meet the owners at 5a.m. where we would find the 650 blocos already counted. Sound familiar?
At 5a.m. the blocos had not been counted and the owners were no-where to be found. We found a truck, which needed a push to get started, and set off with eight boys to load up the blocos. Now that we had mastered the art, it only took us an hour. The only minor problem was push-starting a car, weighed down by bricks, in a muddy field. Twenty men pushed while a pick-up truck pulled, which snapped three ropes and moved the car 5 metres into a rut. We, with the help of seven other women, two with babies on their backs, unloaded 450 blocos and managed to start the truck, which disappeared for three hours, with 200 blocos and 200MTn of our money. By nightfall, all 650 were duly delivered to the house, even though a third had been broken and our finger prints had disappeared once more.
Two days later the inside walls were finished, despite having a momentary panic when we were told that there weren’t enough blocos. We frantically ran around the garden finding seventy-five nearly whole ones and told the mestres they would have to make do.
Everything then ground to a halt. To cut another long story short, the mestres, mainly João, decided that we had cheated them out of money – they said the demolition was an extra 1000MTn (£20/2500ISK) despite the contract clearly stating it was part of the initial sum agreed. They also decided that the roof was not included in the construction of the house, despite having spoken to us at length about what materials they needed and how they were going to do it. There was lots of shouting, tears on both our parts, some of the staff from ActionAid were called to help resolve the issue. The contract was waved in João’s face, who laughed and refused to listen to reason. We decided to fire João and keep the other two mestres, who would divide the remaining 50% of the money.
We had a couple of other adventures, such as going to buy sand and stones, but apart from the initial stress of finding a car and agreeing a price, none were as traumatic as the blocos.
So, you can imagine our distress when we discovered that we needed to buy another 650. Instead of heading back to the original place, which we hope never to see again, we found some more, a mere 200 metres from the house. We arranged to meet the owners at 5a.m. where we would find the 650 blocos already counted. Sound familiar?
At 5a.m. the blocos had not been counted and the owners were no-where to be found. We found a truck, which needed a push to get started, and set off with eight boys to load up the blocos. Now that we had mastered the art, it only took us an hour. The only minor problem was push-starting a car, weighed down by bricks, in a muddy field. Twenty men pushed while a pick-up truck pulled, which snapped three ropes and moved the car 5 metres into a rut. We, with the help of seven other women, two with babies on their backs, unloaded 450 blocos and managed to start the truck, which disappeared for three hours, with 200 blocos and 200MTn of our money. By nightfall, all 650 were duly delivered to the house, even though a third had been broken and our finger prints had disappeared once more.
Two days later the inside walls were finished, despite having a momentary panic when we were told that there weren’t enough blocos. We frantically ran around the garden finding seventy-five nearly whole ones and told the mestres they would have to make do.
Everything then ground to a halt. To cut another long story short, the mestres, mainly João, decided that we had cheated them out of money – they said the demolition was an extra 1000MTn (£20/2500ISK) despite the contract clearly stating it was part of the initial sum agreed. They also decided that the roof was not included in the construction of the house, despite having spoken to us at length about what materials they needed and how they were going to do it. There was lots of shouting, tears on both our parts, some of the staff from ActionAid were called to help resolve the issue. The contract was waved in João’s face, who laughed and refused to listen to reason. We decided to fire João and keep the other two mestres, who would divide the remaining 50% of the money.
Blocos Queimados
Sadly, this was only the beginning of our problems. The houses in Maganja, and most of Mozambique are made from mud blocks, some fired, but mostly not. We had talked about reusing the salvageable blocks from the old house, the unfired variety, and buying extra ones. Because the rainy season had just begun and the unfired blocks dissolve if not covered by a roof, one of the builders said we should consider buying fired ones instead, even though they were more expensive. So, we set off to look for these ‘blocos queimados’. We cycled approximately five kilometres in the burning sun to look at some blocos. We were told that we would need four thousand, which at 1MTn each would cost us 4000MTn (£80/10000ISK). We had slowly begun to realise that the 5000MTn price tag was a gross underestimation.
We arranged to come back the following morning at 6a.m. to buy 2500 blocos, which we were told would be sitting in piles ready counted. We woke up at 2a.m. to torrential downpour, which continued until 6a.m. No one showed up at the house until 8a.m. when the rain had completely stopped and the roads began to resemble roads again, and not rivers.
We set off the 5km with a very grumpy driver and promptly got stuck in a river, which did nothing to improve his mood. Half an hour, fifteen men, numerous rocks and branches later we managed to get the truck on the road once more - only to find it blocked by a fallen tree. We were still blissfully unaware of how much worse the day was going to get.
When we eventually arrived not only were the blocos not ready to load onto the truck, but the owner was nowhere to be found. We began dismantling the ovens and piling up the blocos. The two of us tried, logically, to make rows of ten, stacked four high. The rationale of this system seemed to completely escape those present.
Many of them weren’t sufficiently fired and were still clay, others were too fired and crumbled on the slightest touch. After about two hours we had counted three hundred decent blocos. Only two thousand two hundred to go. Eventually a pile of 500 was counted, probably incorrectly due to some rows having nine, and others eleven.
The blocos were carried 50m uphill to the waiting truck. Half the village turned up, not to help, but to watch and laugh. The truck only could take 500 blocos at a time, costing 750MTn (£15/1900ISK) a trip. Another hour later, all 500 blocos were ready to be taken to the site of the house and then loaded off. Did I mention we hadn’t eaten breakfast?
Another driver was procured, with a bigger truck and asking a more reasonable price. We quickly ate some lunch, as we were on the verge of collapse and set off for round two. This time we took seven local boys between ten and fifteen years old to help. I’m not sure if this is tantamount to child labour. The new truck was able to drive further down the hill, but it couldn’t turn off the engine, as it couldn’t start without being pushed. We created a chain of people, and nominated ourselves to arrange the rows in the truck to facilitate counting. The blocos are not light. We were carrying two, at most three – the boys were carrying three on their heads, or four or five in their arms. This was all done standing in thick petrol fumes. After numerous arguments about money and lots of shouting, we drove back to Maganja, bouncing around in the back on top of approximately 650 blocks, singing, clapping and waving, with grit from the blocos in our eyes – elated that the day was finally over.
I think we can honestly say that it was the worst day so far in Mozambique – we were both left with no skin on our fingertips, grazes on our arms, aching backs and long-lasting psychological damage.
We felt guilty, but secretly relieved, that we had to go to Quelimane the next day to organise new visas. We left Mariamo, along with ten children, to collect the remaining 1350 blocos. They were faced with other problems, the principal one being that the second driver from the previous day didn’t show up, despite having been paid.
Buying a house
We had a fairly clear idea of what kind of house we wanted to buy for the project and shortly after arriving in Maganja da Costa we set about looking for a suitable place. We wanted it to be located as centrally as possible, with a small amount of land to build an awning where meetings could be held. With the help of a local lady, Mariamo, we found a house in an excellent location, a five-minute walk from the market, and set slightly back from the road. It had a small amount of land, complete with two papaya trees, two orange trees, lots of bananas and an enormous cashew tree. The house on the land was quite small and had too many small rooms. It needed to be re-faced, re-roofed and have the internal divisions removed to create more space inside. We also thought we should add some extra windows.
The first step in buying the house was a visit to Herménia, the Rainha – the queen of Maganja da Costa. She came to look at the house and the land along with the owner, and agreed to let us buy the property. A few days later we went to finalise the sale at her beautiful traditional house boasting a large flat screen television. We signed the declaration, along with Magadabale, the seller, and the Rainha, and the money was counted about ten times, just to make sure.
We spent an excited 2 days in Quelimane, the capital of Zambézia province, buying things to repair the house. When we returned to Maganja and were given the keys to the house we had our first good look at the interior. It was glaringly obvious that the house was in terrible condition; the walls inside were crumbling, and it seemed unlikely that it would stand for another year. The amount of refurbishing needed, its inadequate size for the project, and the fact everyone assured us that building a house would cost 5000MTn (£100/12500ISK) and take four days, persuaded us to knock down the old house and start again.
The next morning we met with three mestres (builders) to discuss the building of the new house. Adelson, the coordinator at ActionAid and our flatmate, stressed the importance of drawing up a comprehensive contract. We eventually agreed to pay 5000MTn, not including food. The contract, all six pages of it, was printed out and given to the builders to sign. What we had not initially understood was that this did not include materials, although we now realise that the builders would now be seriously in debt if that had been the case.
The destruction of the house only took a day, and meanwhile we worked on the garden. The Rainha came by as we were flattening the machamba (Mozambican word for field where they grow cassava) with a special type of shovel/axe, told us we were doing it all wrong and took over momentarily, standing in the mud in white trainers with a shiny capulana and matching top.
Our first problem with the house were its dimensions. When asked how big we wanted the place to be we said 4.5 x 5m, without really realising how small that was for three rooms. The builders, João, Julio and Samuel, had to layout the house three times, and we eventually settled on 7.5 x 6.5m. We have since measured the house – it’s 7.3 x 6m.
Plan B
We moved to Maganja da Costa, the principal town of the district of the same name, in anticipation of the contracts materialising and were fortunate enough to be provided with accommodation by an ActionAid employee.
Our ideas for the project developed further and we decided to purchase a house to be used as a base for the women’s project.
The women in Mozambique wear colourful patterned sarongs called ‘capulana’ that are wrapped around their waists, used to carry babies on their backs and tied around baskets of produce to sell at the market. We had seen children wearing simple dresses made from these capulanas and thought that they would be marketable in Europe. They couldn’t be sold locally as the dresses would be too short for Mozambican women to wear; the profit margin would also be much greater if they were sold abroad.
Training the women to make dresses was our initial idea of how to make the project financially stable. The money made from the sale of the clothes was going to fund training for the women, build up a library and maybe in the future enable micro-financing.
Our ideas for the project developed further and we decided to purchase a house to be used as a base for the women’s project.
The women in Mozambique wear colourful patterned sarongs called ‘capulana’ that are wrapped around their waists, used to carry babies on their backs and tied around baskets of produce to sell at the market. We had seen children wearing simple dresses made from these capulanas and thought that they would be marketable in Europe. They couldn’t be sold locally as the dresses would be too short for Mozambican women to wear; the profit margin would also be much greater if they were sold abroad.
Training the women to make dresses was our initial idea of how to make the project financially stable. The money made from the sale of the clothes was going to fund training for the women, build up a library and maybe in the future enable micro-financing.
Introduction
We spent the first month in Maputo e-mailing various NGO’s and International organisations and speaking to people already living and working in Mozambique. We were given a contact for ActionAid by a mutual friend and after a couple of weeks were told to book flights to
Quelimane, the capital of the Zambezia province.
On arriving in Quelimane it became apparent that the volunteer positions with ActionAid would take time to organise and might not even be available. We were faced with the prospect of spending a further week or more in Quelimane, or flying back to Maputo to start the job-hunting again.
One benefit of having nothing to do was that we were able to talk to each other about what we wanted to achieve in Mozambique and what kind of projects we would be interested in. Over the course of a week we formulated ‘Plan B’. If the ActionAid volunteer positions fell through we would stay in Zambezia and begin our own project.
One thing we felt was that women, especially in rural areas, lacked the opportunity to speak freely among themselves. Their roles were primarily as wives and mothers. In Western society women are able to meet with their friends in confidence to discuss, advise, console and commiserate. We also have access to a wealth of information: magazines, books, television and internet.
We wanted to improve the lives of marginalised women by increasing access to information, access to training and accessibility to other women in similar situations to exchange ideas and advice.
Although neither of us had any experience and knew that most projects were destined to fail we felt that they had some good, clear ideas, and lots of motivation.
Quelimane, the capital of the Zambezia province.
On arriving in Quelimane it became apparent that the volunteer positions with ActionAid would take time to organise and might not even be available. We were faced with the prospect of spending a further week or more in Quelimane, or flying back to Maputo to start the job-hunting again.
One benefit of having nothing to do was that we were able to talk to each other about what we wanted to achieve in Mozambique and what kind of projects we would be interested in. Over the course of a week we formulated ‘Plan B’. If the ActionAid volunteer positions fell through we would stay in Zambezia and begin our own project.
One thing we felt was that women, especially in rural areas, lacked the opportunity to speak freely among themselves. Their roles were primarily as wives and mothers. In Western society women are able to meet with their friends in confidence to discuss, advise, console and commiserate. We also have access to a wealth of information: magazines, books, television and internet.
We wanted to improve the lives of marginalised women by increasing access to information, access to training and accessibility to other women in similar situations to exchange ideas and advice.
Although neither of us had any experience and knew that most projects were destined to fail we felt that they had some good, clear ideas, and lots of motivation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)