Wednesday 12 February 2014

The homes




Last week we had an opportunity to visit some local’s houses in Chamanculo. Three students from our English and IT course agreed to show us their homes, and an ASSCODECHA worker, Zego came to translate for us and also showed us his home. Today we went to look at the only ditch in Chamanculo and saw two more homes from the inside. We’ve filmed everything and got quite good material, I would say. Unfortunately it’s not possible to upload even pictures to this blog because of our lousy or expensive internet connections. Perhaps we can upload some from South Africa’s side next week or after we return to Finland.

Even though everything seems quite similar from the outside (corrugated iron (?) and concrete) the houses are actually very different from the inside in terms of facilities and furniture. The first house we visited was somewhat wealthy – they had quite nice furniture and the home inside didn’t look that different from a normal house. There were sport trophies and pictures on the shelves. Currently they had an improved latrine with an underground tank and a toilet bowl at the backyard, but they had plans of building an indoor toilet and had already got at least some of the equipment, like a new toilet bowl and a bathtub along with some pipes. The mother of the family happened to be one of the success stories of ASSCODECHA – she had taken a sewing course and had since been able to do many improvements on the house, send her kids to school, feed them well and make the initial investment in her son’s egg business. She also told that until recently she had been making hats for a South African company. She used to make 40 hats a day and earn 100€ a month (very little, but double the minimum wage – public doctors earn 350€). Now the hats are not manufactured in Mozambique any longer due to a government decision. She also showed us her wedding dress and other work, and talked a lot in Portuguese. Perhaps we can get it translated from the video some day. We were also served tea and some chips and sausage as the African hospitality mentality requires.

The next house was less comfortable, and their electricity didn’t work at the moment. The house was mostly built of corrugated iron sheets. There were four brothers living there with their mother in jail and father dead. They had also an improved latrine with an underground tank, but they had an issue with the water from the shower – it was flooding their backyard and not being absorbed in the soil. The boy we interviewed told that he had tried to get into the university but was not admitted. Now he wasn’t doing anything, but he hoped to become a policeman or work in the army.

Then we visited the house of a 23-year-old English course participant, who had one child and lived there with her mother, uncle, his children and grandmother. They had a traditional toilet, and the uncle told that it was the last hole they could dig – after that the toilet area would be full. They didn’t know what they would do then. There had been plans of building a sanitation block that they could’ve used too, but the owner of that land had not accepted the building. We interviewed the uncle, and he had been living there since the 80s. He had currently lost his job and was making some money by doing artist gigs. The women were also selling some coal, and his oldest son sends money when he can. He told that he needs at least 8000-10000 meticals (200-250€) a month to support his family. He also told that to improve his life he would need a better house. (We found this quite strange as he had lived in the same house already for decades without making any improvements.) But he was hopeful that through education his children would get a better life.

Today we saw two more houses with traditional latrines. The first one with 3 rooms accommodated 6 people and had minimal furniture, including beds. The second house was practically empty. There lived only one man in a four-room house, but he actually used only one room where he had a thin mattress, a piece of glass with some verses of the bible and his mobile phone. No cooking equipment, nothing else. He had a garden though, and he grew chili, pineapple and some other plants. He claimed to only water them, so we suppose the sandy soil isn’t hopeless for gardening (we also saw some tomatoes growing on a pile of sand and trash elsewhere).  He lived there alone as he had inherited the place from his family, who had all died during the 11 years he spent in prison in South Africa for hijacking cars in Johannesburg. It had been a bit of trouble getting the house back as there were others already living in it, and they broke everything when they left.



All the possessions of the man living alone next to the ditch.


His shower and toilet (under the smaller square rock).

Our main attraction today was the ditch of Chamanculo. It was built by a catholic organization after the big flood in 2000 to prevent such disasters in the future. However by now it had turned into a pool of sitting water and waste. It smelled and there were mosquitoes and algae breeding in it. The residents next to it told that they were tired of trying to clean it, as people would throw their waste in it anyway. Now it was completely blocked from several places.  It causes a lot of malaria and diarrhea, which kill children. The ditch was long and it was going through some people’s yards creating a big hazard for playing children. There were also a few broken water pipes that were all the time filling the ditch with fresh water. 


The ditch.

People saw the ditch as an extremely negative thing.  ASSCODECHA had previously organized some cleaning of the ditch, but that never helped for long. Now the locals are thinking about filling the whole thing with sand so it wouldn’t be there killing their children. The ditch was supposed to run to a bigger canal that eventually ends up in the river, but also the bigger canal seemed to be blocked from all the trash people had thrown there. People actually seem to go through some effort into getting their trash into the sewers, as they stuff it underneath the grids of the water harvesting holes everywhere where there are sewers in Maputo. In some places they have painted pictures around the grids saying ‘I don’t eat trash’. 
The bigger canal leading to the river.

We also encountered and interviewed a couple of guys collecting trash in wagons from people’s houses. They say they come everywhere twice a week to get all the rubbish except for broken glass bottles from the people. There are no public trash bins practically anywhere (and where there are, they are overflowing).

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