Tired

A sun is setting on a common criminal.

The gathered crowd forces an old car tire around his neck.

A spark is lit, then a blazing fire.

Hearts pound to the rhythm of drips of flaming rubber hitting the ground below.

Screams of pain echo past the crowd's silent relief.

Justice and injustice are fused together in this most awful crucible. Where guilt ends and innocence begins, no one is quite sure anymore.

This tragic scene could be cut from the Civil Rights era, or from South Africa's struggle to loosen the noose of apartheid.

Lessons have been passed on from one oppression-weary generation to another.

But this scene comes from present-day Mozambique, brought about by desperate neighbours frustrated by the height of crime. And frustrated by the inaction -- or outright complicity -- of the justice system. Police officers are accused of being paid off by criminals in exchange for front-door prison breaks.

Mozambique is tired.

* * * * *

Give me your cell phone.

As Samuel told me of his experience at the Xipamanine market this morning, he recounted being slow to understand the boy's request. I like my cell phone, he thought to himself. I want it.

I want to keep my cell phone, he said out loud to the boy's repeated request.

You don't understand, the boy said. And very quickly, Samuel did understand.

Just as quickly, there were six boys where the first had stood alone. Samuel was surrounded, then on the ground. A fist struck his jaw, and a knife cut somewhere through the confusion.

As Samuel recounted the story, he still wore a shirt with two slashes in the back and one on the left shoulder. A plastic bag held more destroyed clothing, but luckily the knife didn't penetrate deep. Samuel's skin will heal.

His fear welled up; so did his eyes. He cried for his clothing, for his cell phone. And he cried for his country. Mozambique, he said to me, shaking his head, braving a smile.

Samuel is tired.

His cell phone has been taken. It will cost a month's salary to replace, unless he goes to the black market to buy a stolen one. Those are the choices he faces: a month's salary, or reward the crime of his attackers.

A rich benefactor buys him a new cell phone to dull the pain of the loss. I don't mind. The cell phone may be a month's salary for him, but for me it's just a fraction of what I keep hidden in my sock drawer.

* * * * *

Xipamanine market is crowded with people, but nobody sees Samuel's attackers. Not a person helps. Not a person notices.

Today, the thieves slip safely into anonymity. If they attack another, they may not be so lucky. Eventually, the community will rise up with matches and an old car tire. A series of petty thefts will turn into the irony called vigilante justice.

Mozambique is tired.

The Deafening Echoes of War

Flooding, drought, and cyclones have filled the news over the past three months in Mozambique. The southern capital of Maputo has -- for the most part -- been spared these destructive forces.

Until now.

Laura and I sat at home, writing a few emails to friends and family, when the distant rumble of a strange African thunderstorm started. It must have been far off in the distance, because we couldn't see a cloud in the sky. The storm must be just over the trees.

The thunder claps rolled in with a fury, getting louder and louder. The shockwaves were more intense than I had ever experienced. At several points, I looked outside, believing that a truck had hit our building. We decided to shut our curtains in case the windows shattered. As I was standing in the front window doing so, I noticed one dark cloud off in the distance. Then I noticed that it had a tail trailing down to the ground.

The thunderous booms grew in power.

Neighbours' windows were blown out, but I didn't realize that the experience was much more severe for others in the city until we made some phone calls. The country's largest armoury was on fire again, flinging old soviet projectiles in every direction. For more than four hours, munitions as small as bullets and as large as vehicles were sent flying kilometres away, killing, maiming and destroying houses.

Mario told me that the armoury was in Malhazine, right beside Zimpeto. Suddenly the tragedy was brought a frightening step closer to reality for us: we have a friend in Zimpeto, a Canadian visiting for two weeks, working at an orphanage there (more on that next week).

Our cell phone reception was lost briefly as we tried to make contact. The electricity was spotty, as well. We finally received word back from the orphanage: please pray. Projectiles were flying over their heads. Everyone was huddled together in a small building, volunteers comforting orphans, volunteers comforting volunteers. It was a frightening, albeit accidental, war zone in an otherwise-peaceful country.

A shell tore through the roof of the chapel where they were scheduled to be worshipping but thankfully were not.

Once again, by the grace of God, Laura and I were protected in our cocoon, but had no way of helping our friends as the danger unfolded.

I didn't fully grasp the magnitude of what was happening until the next morning when I drove to Zimpeto to get Julie and bring her to the airport for her scheduled departure. Malhazine is right in between our home and Zimpeto, forcing me to drive by the now-quieted armoury. Crowds were gathered around trying to learn what they could. Holes were punched in large buildings; small, simple houses were flattened. Military personnel were gathering large ordnance from people's yards, placing them on the backs of trucks and parading them down the street to the false safety of their storage facility. Back to where the explosions started.

Only a kilometre before arriving at the orphanage, I passed a psychiatric hospital that had been destroyed.

Once at the orphanage, the first person I encountered was a long-term volunteer whose children Laura teaches at school. She and her husband were visibly shaken, feeling the burden of caring for their own family and the hundreds of scared orphans under their watch. At that point, they still weren't sure where all the children were: frightful of war, Mozambicans' habit is to run aimlessly (recall Olga's frayed nerves last time this happened).

The government is reporting the death toll at 96. That's how many bodies are accounted for in the morgue, but everyone knows more will be found over the coming days. Hundreds of people crowd the hospitals maimed and wounded. The hospitals have run out of blood for transfusions.

I was relieved to hear that there were no injuries at the orphanage, and that Julie was fine, though shaken. We spent the morning at the airport, waiting for the uncertain hour of her departure as the airport's damaged runway was repaired.

By late morning, rumours were circulating that the explosions had resumed. Laura's school was closed early; Julie's orphanage was evacuated.

By early afternoon, the airplane that would take Julie home had arrived from Johannesburg, and the crew seemed more eager than normal to make a quick exit. As Julie boarded, I wondered if their haste was because the plane was so late already, or because of the black smoke visible on the horizon at the end of the runway.

Barely half an hour after landing, the plane had loaded its new passengers, refueled, and was again airborne. It was soon a speck in the sky, distancing itself from the chaos below, safely on its way to Johannesburg.

Don't Blink

Mozambique's flood waters are receding and the news cameras are shifting their focus to other crises elsewhere in the world. Blink.

As the water recedes, the full extent of the damage can be assessed. The government has estimated that cleaning up the mess will cost US$71 million, but that grossly underestimates the extent of the damage. More telling are the personal impact statistics: an estimated 494,000 people impacted, including 38 deaths.

Survival is assured only by the tenuous strength of a thread, as thousands depend upon the acts of selfless front-line volunteers like David Morrison and the countless people whose support allows them to fill their convoys of trucks with maize meal and supplies.

But for many in Mozambique, the real crisis is just beginning.

Over the coming months, hundreds of thousands of people will leave these temporary refugee camps and return to their homes to find little more than piles of mud. Their crops, which would have been harvested this month and stored to feed their families until the next harvest, have been washed away. There will be little to eat in the coming months, not to speak anything of excess to hawk at the market.

Those who do have excess to sell will have difficulty recovering their costs, having to compete against the tons of international food aid that will depress local market prices. The arrival of food is good news for the starving, but bad news for the small-scale merchants trying to make a living. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which coordinates food aid in such crises, has said that they will purchase as much food locally as possible, and is asking donor nations for cash to do so.

The WFP's challenge isn't restricted to feeding those families affected by the flooding. In the south of Mozambique, a short but intense heatwave this summer caused nearly three times as many hectares of crops to wilt as washed away in the floods. The heatwave didn't make the international news because, well, watching video footage of a heatwave is like watching video footage of paint drying. It's dull. Raging floodwaters, low-flying helicopters, washed-out bridges and dramatic rescues all help the newscasters to compete against other shows that feed our Hollywood-induced attention deficits.

Despite the action-packed video footage, floods are slow-motion disasters. Judging by the datestamps on the emails that we received, Mozambique was flooding for at least six weeks before it was severe enough to make the news back home.

And its people will be recovering long after the last news crews sign their bylines and file their stories.

Blink.

It's not realistic to think that the news could broadcast every emerging crisis around the world. That's not the point. But featuring these stories creates two opposing problems: first, that viewers assume that when there's not a story on the evening news, that there's not a problem. Far from the truth. Second, they paint these places as dens of permanent disaster, of places they would not like to visit.

Mozambicans that I've talked with are embarrassed that the floods make international headlines. They're embarrassed that the international community will think of Mozambique as a country that hobbles from one crisis to the next.

They want the news to focus on Africa's humanity, not its poverty. They want people to know that many great things happen in Mozambique in all the space between the punctuations of tragedy.

When we turn the channel, they continue to live. When we send our aid cheques to the next country, they continue to live. When our attention shifts, they continue to live.

Don't blink.

Feed My Sheep

Over the past number of weeks, many people have been asking us about the impact of flooding in Mozambique. There has been a small amount of flooding in Maputo. Yesterday, Laura and I noticed a floor of water flowing through dozens of caniço homes in Alzira's neighbourhood.

The major flooding -- the emergency that has been broadcast on the international news -- is occurring primarily around the Zambezi river in central Mozambique, perhaps 500km from our home.

David Morrison is a missionary colleague from Toronto who is based in Malawi, bordering Mozambique to the northwest where this major flooding has been occurring. He has been assisting with the relief effort by bringing trucks of maize meal and the Bread of Life to starving refugees, and shares the following glimpse of his trip into Mozambique's newly-established refugee camps last week:

It is 4 a.m. and we are barely awake as we load the last few relief items into what is already an overloaded Pinzgauer to begin our seven-hour journey back to Mozambique. Our convoy will bring hope and 17.5 metric tons of maize flour to some of the thousands who are suffering in the flood zone in Mutarara district. I’m accompanied by three of our national church leaders: Timothy, Ali and Samson, who are squeezed in among beans, clothing, soap and salt, as well as supplies to sustain us on the journey, like clean water and 100 extra litres of petrol.

The rains this week have made the roads more challenging. We drive slowly and stop to navigate our way through each washout before proceeding. The strength and maneuverability of the Pinzgauer get us through many difficult patches of flooded road. We see field after field of destroyed crops, collapsed houses, and several refugee camps with grass huts close together on isolated pieces of high ground. Our pastors in the back are bashed around as we make deep ruts in the muddy road. Mud shoots down the sides of the truck and splashes up on the windshield. After about 10 kilometres of driving, with heart beating fast, I am soaked in sweat from maneuvering the truck through the challenging conditions.

We are carried by the strength of God, and His grace sees us through the borders and to our first destination -- a refugee camp we visited the previous week. A place of great despair and suffering.

We pull off the road into the camp and are warmly greeted by the village headman and the other leaders. They are grateful that we have kept our promise to return, and look eagerly to see what we have brought. All are gathered and take refuge from the blazing sun under the shade of a large tree. Our church leaders begin singing praises to God.

The community is so welcoming. The people are so hungry. They tell us that already one person has died from hunger.

I start to cry -- the situation before me is too overwhelming. Tears of sadness for the people’s suffering mix with tears of joy knowing that on this day everyone will be filled. I hide behind my camera and start taking pictures.

Moments later the truck in our convoy pulls up… and stops! The people's despair is quickly lifted from their faces. The songs of worship grow more passionate. Hope has arrived!

Until now the camp had been overlooked. For weeks its inhabitants have been hungry, eating grass, roots, bugs and lily bulbs from the crocodile infested flood areas. People are sick with malaria, dysentery, eye infections, skin infections and coughs. I see many babies with puss oozing from their eyes. Children have bloated stomachs and wear rags. Many of the young ones have nothing to wear at all.

I watch the village headman as the truck approaches. His face is filled with disbelief. Can this be true? Is this really happening? Is this food for us? For a moment he looks stunned, but moves quickly to make a plan to ensure that the supplies are distributed fairly.

Over the past weeks these people have stood in this very spot and watched as many trucks similarly loaded with relief supplies drive right past them on route to Mutarara. They have become used to being passed by. I share with them that Jesus knows their pain and He does not pass them by. I proclaim verses from Romans 8: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship, or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword... or floods? No, for I am convinced that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God.”

People listen intently to the message and are wanting more.

The mood in the camp is changing. There is hope, peace and joy. Revival has come! Praise be to God!

The 287 families are called one by one to receive food. All is done with order and without any fighting. As well as 50 kilograms of maize flour which should sustain a family for a month, each family receives a portion of beans, soap, salt and some clothing. The children who are naked receive theirs first. Those children in rags also take priority and receive new clothes. The patient wait for hope lasts several hours, after which we continue down the road to the next camp.

David Morrison lifted the spirits of these battle-weary refugees by reminding them that nothing -- certainly not a flood -- can separate them from the love of God. That same chapter of scripture, Romans 8, also includes the encouragement that "we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him." That may be hollow comfort for the people of Mutarara district right now, but its truth can be observed seven years after similar life-endangering flooding struck southern Mozambique.

The community of Khongolote has been a central point of our ministry here. It was there that Laura and I helped to lay bricks of a church building in 2004. It was also there that we held a micro-enterprise training course last fall. And it is there where Mario and Samuel will begin implementing the village-based savings and loan program.

That community would not have existed but for severe flooding seven years ago that washed away homes in other communities. Africans are resilient people. They are survivors. The sun will come out, the floods will recede, and the seeds of new life will germinate and sprout up amongst the muck of this tragedy.