In these difficult times, Mozambicans lend a hand to one another

Mennonite Central Committee
Saturday, 25 March 2000

MAPUTO, Mozambique — For Joaquim Gujamo getting to the Anglican Church in Maputo on Sunday, March 19, was the easy part. The difficult part, if it could be called difficult, was figuring out how he and his wife would go home, their arms filled with bags of used clothing and food they had just received from the church.

"I have not received anything until today only," Gujamo, 54, said, going on to describe how since early February he and his family have been struggling against stubborn flood waters which have inundated their mud wall and tin roof house. "The water is still up to our ankles," he said. "We raised the bed out of the water so the children can sleep on the bed."

The bags of used clothing and food given to the Gujamo's and 30 other families came from Mozambican members of the local Anglican churches who are in the first stages of a localized relief effort to reach as many families as possible. All of the used clothing and funds to purchase food comes directly from the local congregations.

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) workers in Maputo have participated in the effort by assisting with bagging used clothing and provided some transport. "This is their project," James Kornelsen, an MCC worker from Winnipeg said.

"The first thing we need to do as believers is to pray and act," Hilario Mungoi, one of the organizers of the effort said. "The people are giving of what little they have," Mungoi said of the effort. "Many people lost everything. But then, others who lost only a few things have brought clothing for others," he said.

Many of the recipients of the aid are Anglican church members, but a number are simply neighbors affected by the flood. The local parishes have now formed the Anglican Committee To Help The Victims Of The Flood. The first phase of the effort will reach people in the parishes. Further efforts will move beyond the church, depending on the availability of resources.

The call to respond came first from the youth within the church and then later was organized by members of several congregations who had formed the relief committee, Mungoi said.

"At first we felt very strongly to do something in this situation," said Sara Mutemba, another organizer of the relief effort and a member of the St. Stephen and St. Laurence Church. "This is a spiritual healing, like a feeling of brotherliness."

Standing outside of the distribution center, which is the church owned house where MCC workers Kornelsen and his wife Michelle Janzen live, Amina Samja has the same problem Gujamo has, how to transport the clothing home. She doesn't seem overly concerned as she patiently waits for her friend and neighbor Leonora Raul Zavala.

Amina Samja has other more pressing concerns. The water in the house has still not receded. She points to her bare feet to show the sores that have resulted as of walking in ankle deep water for the past month. "We don't even have a straw mat to sleep on," Samja said. Like Gujamo, the aid she is receiving from the church today is the first she has received since the floods.

"The food will last one or two weeks," she said. By then perhaps the rains will have ended.

The clothing has been gathered into one of the lecture halls at the Anglican Seminary in Maputo. Three times a week committee members have been busy sorting the growing piles of clothing.

With a 4-foot high stack of clothing in front of her, Victoria Paixao patiently pulls one piece from a stack, examines it for size and gender, then places it in an appropriate pile. Earlier in the week a large pile of broken toys lay in the center room surrounded by the clothing. The clothing came in so quickly the committee barely had time to move another project the church is working on. The toys were all broken guns children handed in to receive a "non-violent" toy. The toy guns now sit in a box at the side of the room waiting for the floods to be over.

For more information, or to contact Mennonite Central Committee, see their website at: www.mcc.org