It
has a market, a clinic, a shop or two, a church and several schools.
Not much happens here. Traffic tends to pass right through. Most people
who live here were born here or here abouts. It’s not uncommon for
people to know each others business and there are families that have
been here for longer than anyone can remember. For you and I, Mandimba
might remind us of the towns and villages that raised us in our youth.
It has a feel of home.
Except that Mandimba is in Africa, in Northern Mozambique. Beautiful though it is, it doesn’t really look like home. The roads are dusty red and full of potholes. Most roofs are made of grass. The sounds of frogs and crickets drench the night-time air. It’s mostly very hot and sometimes very wet.
But most of all, the reason it’s not like here is that the industrial revolution passed it by. Sure, it has electricity and the occasional truck that passes through. But the plastic bags and bottles that clog the storm drains are echoes of industrial change that happened far away. Hardly anyone has a job that you or I would recognise. There are no factories or offices. And because wages are so scarce, there isn’t really any money. Each village grows its food, stores it for the year and ekes it out from one harvest to the next. Anything more complicated than maize or beans is imported from abroad. Few people know any other life, although a lot of people leave to learn a trade in the cities far away. But none of them return.
The problem isn’t that there isn’t any water - there’s plenty not far underground. But people in Mandimba don’t have pumps or anywhere to store the stuff. This means they only grow one crop a year. And that means they’re often hungry - and mostly undernourished. The problem isn’t the soil - the ground is fertile beyond anything we could hope for - but they only have the seeds and know-how to grow the simplest of crops. And there isn’t any market for anything more complex (unless you count tobacco, which nobody can eat). And the problem isn’t labour, there is quite enough of that, although many of the adults are sick with Malaria and AIDS. The problem isn’t really education or knowledge either. There are schools. Primary schools are free, and most can read and write. But anyone who is bright and able tends to leave the district. The problem is not the civil war. That finished nearly fifteen years ago, although it’s left its scars. And the democratic government is stable by the standards of the region and isn’t too corrupt. But for lack of resources (for which read money) national government policy stops at the district. It rarely reaches individual villages.
So the problem isn’t any one of these. It is all of them together: not enough water; not enough food; not enough trade; not enough knowledge; not enough healthcare; not enough education; not enough government.
And the result of this is death. A lot of death. A lot of unnecessary and untimely death from malaria, pneumonia, tuberculosis diarrhoea and, not uncommonly, death in childbirth. And stalking all of this and hastening these deaths is the greatest plague of all, HIV and AIDS.
But it doesn’t have to be like this. And in the next few years we’re going to help the people of Mandimba fix all this.
MaMA is going to prove that for Mandimba - and for the millions of towns and villages all over the world that are, like Mandimba, unnecessarily poor - it doesn’t really have to be like this.
Source: http://www.ma-ma.co.uk/about-mandimba/4530606387
Except that Mandimba is in Africa, in Northern Mozambique. Beautiful though it is, it doesn’t really look like home. The roads are dusty red and full of potholes. Most roofs are made of grass. The sounds of frogs and crickets drench the night-time air. It’s mostly very hot and sometimes very wet.
But most of all, the reason it’s not like here is that the industrial revolution passed it by. Sure, it has electricity and the occasional truck that passes through. But the plastic bags and bottles that clog the storm drains are echoes of industrial change that happened far away. Hardly anyone has a job that you or I would recognise. There are no factories or offices. And because wages are so scarce, there isn’t really any money. Each village grows its food, stores it for the year and ekes it out from one harvest to the next. Anything more complicated than maize or beans is imported from abroad. Few people know any other life, although a lot of people leave to learn a trade in the cities far away. But none of them return.
The problem isn’t that there isn’t any water - there’s plenty not far underground. But people in Mandimba don’t have pumps or anywhere to store the stuff. This means they only grow one crop a year. And that means they’re often hungry - and mostly undernourished. The problem isn’t the soil - the ground is fertile beyond anything we could hope for - but they only have the seeds and know-how to grow the simplest of crops. And there isn’t any market for anything more complex (unless you count tobacco, which nobody can eat). And the problem isn’t labour, there is quite enough of that, although many of the adults are sick with Malaria and AIDS. The problem isn’t really education or knowledge either. There are schools. Primary schools are free, and most can read and write. But anyone who is bright and able tends to leave the district. The problem is not the civil war. That finished nearly fifteen years ago, although it’s left its scars. And the democratic government is stable by the standards of the region and isn’t too corrupt. But for lack of resources (for which read money) national government policy stops at the district. It rarely reaches individual villages.
So the problem isn’t any one of these. It is all of them together: not enough water; not enough food; not enough trade; not enough knowledge; not enough healthcare; not enough education; not enough government.
And the result of this is death. A lot of death. A lot of unnecessary and untimely death from malaria, pneumonia, tuberculosis diarrhoea and, not uncommonly, death in childbirth. And stalking all of this and hastening these deaths is the greatest plague of all, HIV and AIDS.
But it doesn’t have to be like this. And in the next few years we’re going to help the people of Mandimba fix all this.
MaMA is going to prove that for Mandimba - and for the millions of towns and villages all over the world that are, like Mandimba, unnecessarily poor - it doesn’t really have to be like this.
Source: http://www.ma-ma.co.uk/about-mandimba/4530606387
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