Calamity's New Face

A journalist reporting in the midst of Mozambique's brutal civil war once wrote about a young girl who, standing near him, pointed to the sky and whispered, "calamidades." Calamity. The year was 1988, and the journalist was in Morrumbala in the province of Zambezia. By the journalist's account, he didn't know what to expect. Perhaps the keen young observer was tuned into the early rumble of an incoming war plane, or perhaps warning of the onset of a torrential downpour that could lead to an equally devastating flood.

The journalist looked to the sky, to the southeast where the girl's small finger pointed, and saw nothing.

The rain fell gently. The child, thin, shivering and clad in burlap, continued to point to the sky, repeating the word: calamidades.

Calamidades was the child's shorthand for the Mozambique government's Department for the Prevention and Combat of Natural Calamities, and what this particular child noticed was a distant airplane approaching their airstrip near the Morrumbala mountain. (1) The calamity, as it turned out, was already present in her starving body, and her ears were acutely tuned to the hum of relief approaching from a distance.

Nearly 20 years have passed since that plane arrived in northern Mozambique bringing food and clothing to that weary child and her family. In June 1999, with civil war comfortably behind the country, the corrupt and discredited "calamity department" was replaced by a slimmed-down and modernized National Institute for the Management of Emergencies.

These children, now grown, still talk about calamidades, except that in urban Maputo, the colourful word has taken on a slightly new meaning.

With $100 a month, a Mozambican need not be too concerned about where his or her next meal is coming from. That level of income even leaves a little extra to spend at the local used clothing stores, shopping for calamidades, the word now used to describe the boatloads of used clothing donated by wealthy nations and sold in poor ones.

Timoteo showed me his shoulder bag, a stylish grey bag with the initials DKNY branded on its top. It's in good condition, which also means that it wasn't cheap. Calamidades, Timoteo said, are becoming very expensive. He spoke as if they have a cool allure about them, not unlike, I suppose, teenagers at home who shop at the local Value Village in search of the prized bowling shirt with some stranger's name embroidered on the breast pocket.

He pointed at the running shoes on my feet. Another example of something that he could buy at the local calamity shop, he said.

For those living in the city, Mozambique has taken a small step back from the precipice of poverty. Enough of a step back that these children have now grown up and purchase their calamidades at local shops rather than waiting for them to arrive by air drop.

A tentative step, but a hopeful one.

In urban Mozambique, calamity has become a good thing.


(1) William Finnegan, A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).