August 12, 2003 - Personal Web Site: These pictures were taken by my friend Rebekah Robertson, also a PCV in Mozambique

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Mozambique: Peace Corps Mozambique : The Peace Corps in Mozambique: August 12, 2003 - Personal Web Site: These pictures were taken by my friend Rebekah Robertson, also a PCV in Mozambique

By Admin1 (admin) on Tuesday, August 12, 2003 - 9:33 pm: Edit Post

These pictures were taken by my friend Rebekah Robertson, also a PCV in Mozambique



These pictures were taken by my friend Rebekah Robertson, also a PCV in Mozambique

Mozambique Pictures

Unfortunately, I don't have any Mozambique pictures of my own yet. My camera broke early in my stay in Mozambique, so the only pictures I have are those I was able to borrow from friends, and those my friend Sara took when she visited me. These pictures were taken by my friend Rebekah Robertson, also a PCV in Mozambique who left after a year. Though they aren't of my village or my friends in Mozambique, they do give a general impression of what the country is like.

This is a house in the town of Massaca, which is about 8 hours by bus from my village, Homoine. But housing is pretty much standard in Mozambique, except for expat housing. Most people live in huts like this one, made of reeds -- usually a family of 5 to 10 people will have one or two rooms, with a cocina (kitchen) and latrine some distance from the actual "house." It's so cramped that no one much goes inside aside from some meals and sleeping -- well, and during the monsoon season!

This is another house in Massaca. Fewer people in Homoine lived in this type of structure made of corrugated metal, but only because metal is less available there -- it is farther from the large cities. The very poor in Homoine lived in mud huts, usually. I was lucky in my housing -- it was cement, which is fairly rare; so, though I had a pit latrine, I could hardly complain about anything.

This is Massaca's market. Again, though it's not Homoine, the market is similar in all the essential details. Markets are generally a grouping of reed and stick structures like this, inside which people sell cloth, beans, rice, and other essentials. If you want to buy anything luxurious like cheese, cooking ovens, or books -- especially books -- you have to go to the large towns.

This is one of the market women in Massaca. The market ladies in Homoine were incredibly friendly and open; they were among the first people in the village who made me feel at home, and every time I bought stuff from them we would banter around. They spoke very little Portuguese, so it was always cause for much hilarity when I'd trot out my Xitswa (the local language there). Most of the ladies sold tomatoes, onions, manioc, beans, rice, and pasta -- it didn't vary much at all, although some seasons we had bananas, mangoes, and papaya also. Yum!

These are two boys playing around in Massaca. One thing I noticed in Mozambique is the sheer number of small children -- it is normal for a family to have five to 10 kids, so they are all over the place. The children were always so friendly, and I consider my first Mozambican friend to be the 10-year old boy who I lived with during training. You can see that they were nto very well off, though. Most kids had one or two outfits and wore them to the point of falling off... many never wore shoes till they were teenagers. I learned so much from them.

These two girls are probably on their way to collect food for dinner. The girls and women worked hard in Mozambique, starting from when they would rise at dawn to walk for miles to get water, to watching over the many children and trying to get meals on the table -- no small feat at all in that country. The cloth that the girl on the left is wearing over her head is called a capulana, and is what all the women wore all the time -- tied around like a skirt, on the back to carry a baby, or over the head as protection from the elements. These girls look like they are almost the age to marry, which (for many) is 14 or 15, though it can be much later than that, depending on the family.

These are more kids working, probably (again) sent to the market to sell food, collect food for dinner, or work in the field with the family's plot of land. Many kids did not go to school beyond 3rd grade or so because they were needed to work so badly.

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Story Source: Personal Web Site

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS- Mozambique; Photgraphy - Mozambique

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