With smiles, children received school kits

Mennonite Central Committee
Saturday, 15 July 2000

MOAMBA, Maputo Province, Mozambique -- Today we witnessed the jubilation of students receiving combination health and education kits from Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). Because of rush hour traffic, it took 2 hours to get to Moamba, a district town north of Maputo near the South African border.

We arrived at the Christian Council of Mozambique (CCM) warehouse in Moamba, full of food to be distributed in the district. The beans and maize had come from the north, and there were bales of MCC blankets waiting for distribution.

In March, Mozambique was devastated by several weeks of heavy rains and a cyclone. It was the worst flood in this southern African nation in 50 years. MCC works with partners here, including CCM, to provide food and relief supplies to flood victims.

CCM is assisting 1,456 families in 22 communities in the district. Because extensive flooding has washed out so many bridges, only 5 of the communities are accessible by road, making distribution difficult.

There were six barrels containing a total of 282 combination health and school kits in the warehouse. As we watched, the barrels were loaded onto the back of a pickup truck, three barrels at a time, which we were taking to a nearby primary school.

The community built the school in 1988. The three classrooms with reed and stick walls, covered by a tin roof, is school to 304 students in the first four years of primary school. The students split into morning and afternoon classes.

As we approached the school, we saw students lined up on the open dirt area in front of the classrooms waiting quietly but expectantly. Most of these students could not afford to have basic school supplies like notebooks and pencils. The flooding has made basic food and health supplies scarce.

The principal, Alfredo Juli o Chiongue, introduced us to the students, then opened one of the kits in front of the students to show them the contents: four notebooks, four pencils, crayons, a ruler, a towel, a washcloth, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a bar of soap, a nail file, and a few bandages. The children broke into cheers as each item was pulled out of the cloth kit bag. The principal reminded the students that they should take care of the kits.

Virgilio Mahuai, who coordinates aid distribution for CCM, told the children that CCM was there out of Christ's love for them to help them through this difficult time after the floods.

We watched as the distribution was done in an orderly way: one class at a time coming forward. A teacher called her student's names, marking those who were present and received a kit. Each student stepped forward, received a kit, then moved to the side. As students gathered nearby, their faces broke into big smiles. The first class sang after receiving their kits. They danced to the rhythm of the song.

Two hundred and five students took home MCC school kits that day.

I looked inside one classroom. It was furnished with 9 logs sitting on stones as seats for 43 students. Standing in the corner was a blackboard, with eraser and bits of chalk. A UNICEF poster hung near the door. The poster pictured a girl outside a school, with a caption in Portuguese, "Girls must go to school."

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