A New House and Ancient Customs

Our new house

Many of you know that over the past 6 months, we’ve been looking hard for new house with space for us as a family, a garden, rooms that could be used as guest accommodation and a little office space. Whilst the search has been going on for what has seemed like ages (we’ve now become self-confessed experts at guessing exactly how ridiculously high the rental price might be for property in Beira) last month, at last, we managed to move into a fantastic new house.

Discovering that it’s actually cheaper to live in a $100 a night hotel than rent an average 4 bedroom house in good condition in the city, we’d begun to look in an informal residential area on the outskirts called Manga (literally meaning ‘mango’, I’d guess because there’s a lot of mango trees around).  Manga has a very different feel to the city and here cultures new and old collide. People commute into the city on the minibus taxi service that run up and down the main tarmac road whilst at the same time filling their gardens with rice or maize to sell and eat.

It’s a beautiful area and we have a fantastic house with a garden full of fruit trees, bananas and vines. The only slight disadvantage of living here is that mains water is turned off each evening (we have plans to make our garden well water drinkable) and electricity is much more unreliable.

Although summer is slowly petering out, nights are still pretty hot and sticky so we all sleep in the blast of an electric fan. This overpowers much of the noise from outside, but during a power cut, the night noises reveal something of a hidden side to Mozambican life.

Without the fans and muted behind the screeching cacophony of crickets and frogs, we sometimes hear drums: fast flowing hypnotic and repetitive rhythms beating out into the dead of night. This is the sound of the Tradição (traditional beliefs) and the drums are one of the tools of the curandeiros (traditional healers) intent on calling a spirit into conversation. His (or her) plan is not to expel the spirit out of the person he is trying to help, we’re told, (after all, where would it go?) but to find out why it is angry and tormenting the person it is residing in, and discuss with it, in its own language, just how it might be appeased.

The drums are just one aspect of the Traditição that is alive and strong in Mozambican culture. Any exploration around the base of a prominent old tree or termite mound may reveal fetishes (gifts given to the ancestral spirits that live there). These take the form of half buried clay pots that contain the ingredients of mysterious spells: chard cloth, bones, ash etc. This is the work of the fetiseiros (witch doctors); the charms are intended to bring illness, misfortune and even death to the unfortunate victim.

Mozambicans are a fantastically warm and friendly people, but if you scratch beneath the surface you'll find a deep undercurrent of very real fear. If someone does well for themselves, if their crops or goats do a little better, if they start to make money for themselves, they fear the possibility of being cursed for it by jealous neighbours.

The challenge for anyone working in development in Mozambique is that before you can have any conversation about improving the quality of local peoples’ lives, you first need to face this atmosphere of fear. We believe this can only be achieved by a loving God who is so much bigger than fear and jealousy.

The British and the Weather



Neighbours' children playing after the rain

It’s been a very long time since our last blog post, but in that time we’ve moved house, passed level 2 Portuguese and had no less than three colleagues staying with us including the intrepid Brad and Ruth Biddulph (BMS Zimbabwe) and our first BMS Mozambique team member, Annet Ttendo. Geoff has travelled as far as Harare in search of a good answer to mulching maize and I (Christine) have discovered that, after days and days of ridiculously hot weather (i.e. a heat index over 50°C), I need a jumper on as soon as I go anywhere with air conditioning!

Well, this takes me nicely onto the theme of today’s post…

I thought when I left Britain that the standard conversations about the weather were firmly behind me.  After all, what is there to discuss in a country where the weather apparently alters very little beyond day after day of glorious unbroken sunshine?

So you can imagine my disgust that nearly every day here in Mozambique there is some sort of discussion about the weather. What’s more, the weather is linked to everything: It’s the cold in winter (25°C) that means that you have a cold (of the runny nose variety). Of course, the summer heat causes the same.  In winter, people cannot be found outside their houses because of the cold; in summer they’re at home resting because of the heat.  And of course, you should all be warned of the dangers of wearing a red top in a thunderstorm (it’s fatal, you know!)

Our kids have the same idea!

However, the ‘hot’ weather topic at the moment is no different from back in the UK:  RAIN, RAIN, RAIN!  Recent comments include: ‘It’s been too long since the last rain’ (the rains have been very late this year), ‘The amount of rain received is too small’ (i.e. it won’t help the crops), ‘The amount of rain received is too big’ (i.e. the dirt roads are flooded and cars keep getting stuck in mud).

After our last blog post, far too long ago I apologise, we are pleased to say that actually rain has at last started to arrive and just in time for some of the wilting rice in the fields. And so far not too much flooding!  Yes, there is the occasional car stuck in mud but overall things aren’t too bad and I haven’t heard of people sleeping on their dining tables yet (which is what happens when houses flood properly.)

To finish I feel I must give a short update about the cyclone that affected people that live just a short way from Beira.  We were delighted to hear that the local government had given some seed to affected areas near us and although the rains have been late this year I guess it means the late planting of crops was not as disastrous as it could have been. We thank God for the way in which people have begun to rebuild their lives.

I think that is enough weather talk for now.  So what is the weather like there?  Is it spring yet?

P.S. Brad and Ruth’s most recent blog post says a little about our life in Beira, if you’re interested, you can find it by clicking here.