Khongolote

This past Sunday was an exciting day for us because it marked our return to the church in Khongolote that we helped to build two years ago. We got to see it completed and being used for the first time.

Khongolote is best described as a suburb of Maputo. It is an area of very dry, red clay that the government set aside to relocate victims of Mozambique's severe flooding in 2000.

The satellite photo to the left shows the Khongolote property, and provides a flavour of this African suburb. It was taken three years ago, so doesn't include the new church building (to the lower right of the marker pin is the tent that the community had been using as a church building). Pictured above the marker is a preschool attended by over 100 children. I was on the site this morning working with Melvin Kelly (a construction engineer colleague from Northern Ireland) and two Mozambican nationals -- Belarmino and Carlos -- creating a sketch plan for a kitchen that the Mozambicans will build on the site in the coming months, funding permitting.


More Than A Church

This week, I have been working with several Mozambicans -- Raul, Ricardo and Alfredo (shown in the picture) -- on an experimental two-week long business training program for a group of 18 or so Mozambicans who expressed an interest in a pilot training program. (My role has been to encourage and support from alongside the leaders -- there are several good reasons for not standing up and doing the business training myself (aside from my lack of fluency in Portuguese), but I'll write more on the philosophy of sustainability in a future blog entry). It's exciting to me that the church in Khongolote has provided the stage for these two weeks of training.

We've also been conversing with Banco Opportunidade -- the local microcredit lending bank run by Opportunity International -- about the possibility of providing business loans for this group of trainees. Several months ago, my thinking about microcredit lending revolved around originating loans, but the reality is that I am only here for a short time and want to create persistent change. I've realized that I can have a greater impact by partnering with existing organizations and empowering Mozambicans, rather than reinventing the wheel at every turn -- and making mistake after mistake that others have already learned from.

Once these two weeks of experimentation have been completed, Glenn and I will evaluate its successes and failures, and will hopefully have inspired a couple of Mozambicans to start their own businesses in the process.


Homes in Khongolote

Driving to and from Khongolote every morning this week for the training sessions has provided me much time for questioning Raul, who has become my "cultural champion." Raul Manhica is a 28-year-old man who is living in Maputo with his older brother and family. Raul was born in Inhambane, a province just north of Maputo, until his parents were killed when he was just two years old. I wanted to ask more about his parents -- my guess is that they were killed during the country's civil war -- but the topic of conversation shifted to other things.

I asked Raul many questions about the housing in Khongolote as we drove through the village. I learned that the people who live in Khongolote are generally able to own their own homes, which are simple clay brick structures with tin roofs (stereotypically African reed-construction housing is still popular in Mozambique, but not in Khongolote, where there are no swamps for reeds to grow).

A basic starter home in Khongolote costs about $4,500 to build, for which you would get one or two bedrooms, a living area and a kitchen. The brick work would remain uncovered, and the washroom would be out back.

A fancier home, with an indoor washroom and plastered and painted brickwork (similar construction as the Khongolote church pictured above) could cost twice that much.

(Minimum wage in Mozambique was raised this year, to US$57/month for general labourers, and US$40/month for agricultural workers. Of course, many people are not fortunate enough to have jobs in the formal economy.)