Mozambique
Mozambique is returning to modern existence after the end of its long time civil war. The brutal atrocities carried out by both sides of the conflict drained the country’s people of dignity, safety and stable infrastructure. The rebuilding process is ongoing. Yet the decimated local communities, now extremely underdeveloped and suffering the additional economic and social damage of an HIV/AIDS crisis, remain a significant barrier to development.
In 2003 Hands at Work began working in the central Mozambican community of Gondola, 120 km west of the coastal city Beira. Gondola is an extremely rural setting, but located on a major trucking route called the Beira corridor, leading from Beira inland to Zimbabwe, making it a flash point for HIV transmission. Subsequent work has challenged churches in communities all along the strategic corridor and into Zimbabwe. Work has also expanded north along another trucking route, the Tete corridor, into Malawi. Future expansion is planned into Nampula province in northeastern Mozambique.
Enduring Hardships at a Young Age
Martha Simão is ten years old. She lives with four siblings in Nhembia, Mozambique; the eldest is her sixteen-year-old brother. Martha watched her parents die: her father in 2005 and her mother in 2006, after suffering long illnesses. This was too much for the young girl to handle and, shortly after their deaths, Martha ran away from school and home to a neighboring town, selling sugar in the market.
Volunteers from Rubatano Home-Based Care, Hands at Work’s partner in Mozambique, had been helping the young children care for their sick parents. When the parents died, no relatives were available to live with the children, so they lived alone, and Rubatano’s home-based care volunteers watched over them. When Martha ran away, the home-based care volunteers went to Beira to bring her home. The young girl, unable to cope with life without her parents, ran away a second time. Again the volunteers went to find her and this time she stayed in Nhembia.
Today Martha is in grade 4 and in the top of her class. The once timid and broken girl who would not even smile now talks and laughs. Though exposed to many hardships in her young life, Martha’s vulnerability has not crushed her dreams and she says she would someday like to be a teacher or a nurse so she can help people. Martha is coping with the help of the home-based care volunteers who, in addition to caring for and counseling Martha and her siblings, provide the children with food and educational assistance, like looking over their homework.
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