Mozambique Mysteries

by Lisa St Aubin De Teran

  We got past the jam crisis by buying in dozens of kilos of mangoes as they came in season and making a lot of jam. The absence of jars was a problem we got round by storing the jam in old instant coffee tins and, when they ran out, in glasses.

  At first, Momade was very stubborn in not letting students touch our (his) machamba. Whenever students of agriculture were assigned a task by either Ramon or Tigo and then left to fulfil it under Momade’s guidance, he would instruct everyone to down tools and sit under the big acacia tree by the entrance while he carried out whatever task the students had been assigned, jealously refusing to let them get any actual contact with the soil.

  Bit by bit, we solved this problem by dividing the students into groups of three and giving each group their own vegetable bed to prepare, sow, water and tend to. Fifty per cent of all produce goes to the kitchen and 50 per cent is divided between the three students. When it comes to things to take home, the students are much more prepared to fight for their rights, even to the point of overcoming Momade’s jealousy.

  This method has also helped overcome the overwhelming lack of interest most of the girls and women have in anything whatsoever to do with the ground. The Cabaceiras are fishing villages; on the whole, people don’t grow things here. When they do, they tend to grow manioc. Manioc is woman’s work: it is a chore, almost a punishment. It is something that has to be put up with because it has always been done and the family need the money from the manioc roots. It isn’t fun, it isn’t interesting, it is hard work and there is very little to be gained from it.

  On the other hand, it has been said that there will be money in return for farming on the college market garden, which is why the local jobless women have enrolled as students. The women want the money, but no spark of interest in the work is there naturally.

  To get over the garden access impasse, I personally escorted the agricultural students in each morning and stayed with them until midday, showing them how to prepare and plant their vegetable beds and ensuring that Momade didn’t shoo them away.

  XXIX

  Planting Dreams

  AS OF OCTOBER 2005, MOMADE is prepared to believe at least some of the things I say are necessary in the machamba. This volte-face is thanks largely to the Italian tomato seeds I imported from Holland. Tomatoes in Mozambique are small and the plants they grow on are small. Unlike Italian tomatoes, which have to be staked, a Mozambican tomato is self-supporting.

  From my return in early May 2005, I had been telling Momade to stake the tomatoes. No matter how many times I asked and then told him to do this, he refused. Even if he agreed verbally, the job just didn’t get done. In the end, I hammered in bamboo canes on all the beds of tomatoes myself and personally tied each of them up. On several occasions, Momade explained to me that this was both unnecessary and wrong. Tomatoes on sticks were clearly not part of the tradição and he found their presence in his domain offensive.

  Before going back to Europe in July 2005, I instructed Momade to stake all new tomato plants in the same way that I had staked the old ones. When I returned three weeks later, I found not only that all the new tomato plants were straggling unstaked but also that my ties had been cut and the canes had been systematically removed from the older plants.

  Good as he was in his own way, I knew that if we were to make our farm commercial one day, we would have to go against some of the local taboos. To start with, we intended to grow vegetables and salads that local people didn’t eat. And given our poor soil, we would have to change the local way of manuring.

  Exhausted by its first crop, our walled machamba was in dire need of fertilizers. Momade sprinkled goat droppings onto the baking topsoil and refused either to dig it in so that the roots could get it, or to compost or mulch. His wanton destruction of the tomato stakes was a step too far in the battle of the vegetables. I took him aside and threatened to fire him unless he did what I, the Director of Agriculture for Mossuril, Ramon, Tigo and Morripa told him. Near to tears of frustration, he argued that what I was saying wouldn’t work. It had never been done before and it shouldn’t be done now.

  I pointed out to him that from having had an abundance of salads we now had hardly any.

  ‘Why do you think that is?’ I asked him.

  ‘Epa! No one has salad at this time of the year. It hasn’t rained. When the rains come, everything grows.’

  ‘But it only rains for eight weeks of the year here, and we water our plants every day, so we are not dependent on rain to make things grow.’

  He shrugged and mumbled that it wouldn’t work to dig the compost in.

  ‘So if you are hungry and Sofia gives you some bread and jam, if she puts it on top of your head, have you eaten or are you still hungry?’

  He thought about this and I could see he got the point, but he was not going to admit it then.

  Grumpily, he and the students began to dig in the manure and, grumpily, all the vegetables were mulched with cabí, a local straw. Grudgingly, over the next few weeks, Momade admitted that things were doing better in the machamba. But it was only when the Italian tomatoes began to grow that he admitted there were things about market gardening that he didn’t know and wanted to learn. One afternoon he called me into the vegetable garden and told me, ‘Eeh! Dona Lisa, you kept telling me to stake the tomatoes and I kept thinking you were wrong and I wanted to protect you from making mistakes. You told me the tomatoes would grow very tall and break under their own weight if we didn’t support them. I grew up planting tomatoes. I was taught by my father and I know that they never grow past my knees. Then I saw these ones.’ He pointed to a bed of plants almost two metres high and laden with fruit. ‘I have never seen tomato trees before. I couldn’t imagine they existed. We have taken over twenty kilos of fruit from these and they never stop flowering. I want to learn how to make more things like these grow. I want people to come from Mossuril and see what we are doing.’

  Since then, we have been working together much better. In many things, Momade knows much more than I do, how to work with the relentless African sun, for example, and I am learning from him while unlearning things I too have done all my life but which just don’t work here. His seedlings always do better than mine because he knows at exactly what height the palm shades need to be erected over each bed and when, to the hour, they must be thinned and then lifted. But despite having seen how much better tomatoes can grow on a support stake, Momade absolutely will not stake up the tomatoes. He says he will, and he will start to do it, but very early on in the process he will sabotage it by simply doing something else.

  Meanwhile, away from the walled garden, paper plans were made to expand our pilot plots into several hectares of market gardens, orchards, a pineapple plantation, a poultry farm, a dairy farm, a medicinal plant farm, an ornamental nursery, and last, but not least, a new avocado plantation.

  I have been told that I can bore people half to death talking about avocado pears, for which reason, I will rein in the urge to fill the next several chapters with my pet theme. It is enough to say that I set my heart on farming avocados again and decided with Morripa to plant an experimental plot in the Cabaceiras, with a larger project inland, away from the salty sea breeze.

  The key to all the above projects, apart from the land, the basic materials and a workforce, is water. There were enough local people to form a workforce, if need be, several hundred strong. Farming was not natural to them, but the Faculty of Agriculture would show the way and the rapid results of the market gardening and poultry farms, for example, would be enough motivation to secure a continuous supply of willing hands. The college itself owns several hectares of land, but it wasn’t enough for what was needed. When Morripa donated his own machamba, a nine-hectare piece of land with good soil less than a kilometre from his house in Cabaceira Grande, we had enough land to start. In the future, we would need much more terrain, but that was a bridge to be crossed later. The immediate concerns were how to get materials, livestock and water.

&n
bsp; Unlike the College of Tourism, which can run on a shoestring, an agricultural project needs start-up capital. Crops such as citrus fruits and avocados consume money for years before giving any back. Dairy and poultry farms require livestock, and infrastructure to be bought up-front. However, unlike the College of Tourism, which on its own could never be fully sustainable, a commercial farm could not only eventually pay its own costs, it could also help support the college and the neighbouring schools.

  Despite not having the money to start up such a farm, I knew that it had to be done, and as the one member of the consortium with outside contacts, it was up to me to raise enough funds to get it going. So I went back to letter-writing, begging, urging and cajoling other organizations to join forces with the Cabaceirians so they could start and run a farm co-operative. In a classic triumph of hope over experience, my letter campaign got me nowhere further than to hone our goals into sustainable-development jargon.

  We were just about to put the farm expansion on hold when we struck lucky. Mees had an old friend who was high up in Brussels in the financial world. Over dinner in the Netherlands, Mees explained that it was like getting blood from a stone to get any interest in, let alone funding for, water and energy projects in the sadly neglected area we were working in. Mikhail, his friend, took some information on various projects back with him and said he would see what he could do. The following week, he called to say that he had set up some meetings for us.

  One of these was with the farmers’ bank of the Netherlands, the Rabobank, which has a well-known foundation working world-wide. Their headquarters are in Utrecht, and we had a meeting with a lady called Anje Wind, who was Head of Africa for Rabobank Foundation. Neither of us was particularly hopeful, but it seemed worth a try and a meeting arranged via an introduction was better than the blunt ‘We don’t do Africa’ sort of reply we had so far encountered from other Dutch banks when tentative approaches had been made to their charitable sides.

  One of the biggest problems, even when meeting level is reached, is that no one has heard of the Cabaceiras, and because the main aid organizations don’t help it, it lacks credentials.

  ‘If it was really poor, it would be getting help.’

  ‘If people were really hungry, Oxfam would be there.’

  ‘If the malaria problem was really bad, Bill Gates or USAID would have donated.’

  ‘If there really aren’t any schools, then UNICEF would be doing something about it.’

  The fact that none of these big-budget organizations extended their help that far was tantamount to discrediting the villagers’ plight.

  ‘How can so many hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign aid be pouring into Mozambique and none of it be trickling down to – where was it you said?’

  At the end of a phone or across a large desk, the flicker of interest died. The Cabaceiras weren’t on any development map. They weren’t in the NGO guides and manuals. The people I talked to were busy people, and the implication was that I should stop wasting their time. Many were also quick to point out that they were professionals and I was an amateur. They understood and I didn’t.

  One thing I understood was that I had given my word to Morripa and Mestre Canira, to Ibraimo and the other Varanda workers, and to Adamji and Daniel, to Atija and Marufo, Victorino, Sergio, Amina, Sumaila, Vulai and all the other students that I would help them to help themselves. So it didn’t make any difference how many people in offices in Europe and America, South Africa and Mozambique itself told me to stop, I couldn’t. We’d found a spark and lit a torch, and back in the village people were running with it. I had promised to keep blowing on the flame to help keep it going. Under the circumstances, it wasn’t a lot to do: I just had to keep blowing.

  Back in Utrecht, Mees and I were shown into Anje Wind’s office. After initial introductions, I took a deep breath and prepared to dive into the subject while keeping a weather eye open for that by now customary moment when I might as well save my breath to cool my porridge because an unspoken ‘No’ was written all over whoever-I-was-pitching-to’s face.

  But it wasn’t like that. As soon as the college brochure came out, Anje picked it up, turned to the first page and said, ‘Is your Chocas, Chocas-Mar?’

  I was too surprised to speak so only nodded.

  ‘Cabaceira Grande – I’ve been there. I worked for some time in Nampula and I always went to Chocas at the weekends. You know the Compleixo Turístico? And Varanda: the most beautiful place in the world? How nice that you are working there because it is indeed very poor.’

  At last, here was someone who knew Mossuril and had seen the Cabaceiras and who knew about Mozambique. We talked for an hour and then left. No promises had been made beyond the promise to read everything we sent her. That was actually all we needed. The rest speaks for itself, the village can speak for itself; it is just so far away and so forgotten that no one can hear its voice.

  Some months later, with the utmost efficiency, Rabobank Foundation officially supported the farm project in Mossuril. The grant is much less than we need, but it is also much more than we had. It was enough to start the poultry farm and to restore four disused wells on our land, to start ordering fencing, buying seed and finding a new local partner with fertile soil inland.

  In December 2005, thanks to Rabobank Foundation, the college entered into a formal merger with the regulo of Naguema. As the traditional leader of a large chunk of Mossuril District, with hundreds of hectares of land at his disposal and hundreds of sharecroppers to work it, he was a perfect partner. The regulo of Naguema is an excellent market-gardener and grain-farmer. Thanks to the swift action of Rabobank Foundation, we were able to get corn seed planted to catch the January rains. In 2006, corn for our chickens will come from that crop. The next step is to introduce soya to Naguema. Our shared dream is for a fifty-metre well.

  With the farm beginning to expand, Momade feels safe from losing his job to another student. He has grasped some of the scale the college aspires to for its future farms; he too has become a dreamer. Sometimes we walk across the hectares between our current vegetable plots and the manure store and he fantasizes about how it will look in years to come when the land is covered with orchards and salads.

  ‘One day, people will even come from Ilha to visit here and when they see all we have they will have to revise their opinion of us Cabaceirians. They might even have to stop cheating us when we go over there to buy capulanas and trousers.’ He laughs and his small ribcage heaves.

  ‘That will be a day to remember.’

  XXX

  Consider the Lilies, How They Grow

  ALL OUR ATTEMPTS TO GAIN the interest of the new agricultural students failed for the first two months, with the exception of Dalaty, who took to the gardens like a natural farmer. Then, via a competition, even the doziest new students woke up and started working. At four in the morning and eleven at night, hitherto bad and uninterested students would call from the gate, ‘Guarda, Adamji, Dona Lisa – we’ve got plants.’

  When the flower-bulb campaign got going, I wished I had thought of it before. It is quite simple: I started a dune conservation project which requires thousands of bulbs. The bulbs grow wild all over the bush area and thousands of them get burnt each year to clear land for manioc or to cut down trees. I started off digging up lily bulbs and lugging them back myself but it was not easy because the biggest of them weigh over five kilograms and have long roots burrowing deep into the sandy soil. Adamji saw my spoils and asked if I wanted any more. I told him where I was getting mine from and he said he would go out after work and get some more.

  I didn’t actually want a few more bulbs: I wanted ten thousand. I was touched that once again he was offering to donate some extra work and decided to put a price on the bulbs to see how many he would bring in.

  Adamji then asked if he could borrow a wheelbarrow, a hoe and a couple of baskets and he jumped into action. He has a micro credit with the college with which he is now buying his own hous
e. The house has no door and the macuti roof needs mending and one day he wants to buy a bed. No doubt spurred on by these thoughts and needs, Adamji brought in 106 giant lily bulbs and their value was duly written down in a book.

  In the Western world, we laugh when we find something funny. Africans laugh when they are happy. They also laugh when they find things funny, but they laugh by themselves to themselves with sheer glee. I find this a most wonderful quality. It is how things should be. All babies do it and then lose the ability gradually as they grow up.

  As the college is a harnesser and fulfiller of dreams, there is often spontaneous gleeful laughter coming from workers and students alike. During the bulb campaign, this increased to the point when anyone visiting must think ours the most hilarious place in the country.

  When Adamji saw in black and white that he had just earned 40 per cent of his month’s salary in one night, he laughed all the way down the steps and across the courtyard. I could hear him laughing out through the gate and past the raddled kapok tree. There was a pause as he met Daniel, his fellow guard, and shared the news of his good fortune. I could hear Daniel’s disbelief and then astonishment. While Adamji started laughing again, Daniel came to me for confirmation.