Letters from Overseas

March 2008

If you...satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness.

Isaiah 58:10

Over a month ago in the community of Pinda, along the Chire river flowing from Malawi into the Zambezi, more than 1,200 families fled suddenly inundated islands. They'd lost their fields of corn, sorghum, millet, and sweet potato. They'd lost their goats and chickens. Two-thirds had lost their houses and the rest have houses badly damaged. They've joined families who resettled in Pinda after the floods of last year. Pinda is one of dozens of affected communities. They continue to receive emergency food aid from the World Food Program, distributed at first by the Christian Council of Mozambique (CCM).

Esmenia Benedito is a member of the CCM team in Pinda who went house to house with the mpfumos, or local chiefs, to register the refugee beneficiaries, to make sure that no needy family was left out—and no one would receive goods twice. She has just finished her Grade 12. Her team is living in a campsite by CCM's temporary brick warehouse, several kilometres from resettlement sites. "We've travelled by bicycle to the people but now thank God we have one motorbike." She'd never worked in emergency conditions before, and was dismayed at first. "These people have nothing." But now she has adapted; they're a team and each has his or her role. "We all were trained together in Morrumbala"—the district capital town.

On February 28 CCM began to distribute domestic household kits. Each family arrived at the announced distribution site in the shade of a large tree in the locality of Gera, each clutching their all-important yellow registration card. The team set up a table and called the 200 families one by one. Each family head came forward, most of them women, many carrying infants in cloth slings. Many are single heads of families—with an average family size of six people, according to the registration data. Each presented the card and “signed” with an inked fingerprint to certify having taken part. Then in groups of 10 they filed down the dusty road 50 metres to the orange 10-ton CCM truck loaded with kits in white sacks under the next tree.

There each presented her or his card again for signing, and advanced to the truck where the CCM worker from above handed down one precious kit. Each hoisted the kit to her head and strode away back down the dusty road to the grass shelters where they'll continue to live till the process of resettlement begins. A 20-litre pail, two cooking pots, four cups, four spoons, four plates, two blankets, a bar of soap, two mosquito nets, and 15 square metres of plastic sheeting to roof a new house once they have one. They'd been living for weeks with none of these basic household items.

Before the distribution started, one beneficiary, Anabela Alexandre, strode forward spontaneously and addressed the assembled crowd. "We're getting support here," she told them, nursing her baby. "My children can go to school here. Even if my husband wants to go back to the islands, I'm not going back." Many people applauded.

Distribution of seeds to replant fields started the next day: corn, beans, tomato, cabbage, okra, watermelon, pumpkin. Some of the funding came from the United Church of Canada, via ACT International—Action by Churches Together—monitored by CCM's partner Christian Aid.

In mission and service,

Karen and Bill Butt

Karen and Bill Butt are United Church of Canada Overseas Personnel serving with Conselho Cristao de Mocambique in Mozambique. The work of this ecumenical partner and the work of overseas personnel are made possible through your gifts to the Mission and Service Fund of The United Church of Canada.